Policy Observatory
Between 26 and 29 September, the annual Freedom not Fear (FNF) conference and barcamp will take place in Brussels. Privacy advocates will tackle surveillance, censorship, net discrimination. Simon Davies, publisher of the Privacy Surgeon and co-founder of Privacy International, will present the first global analysis of the impact of the Snowden revelations and Paul Nemitz, Director at DG Justice of the European Commission, will discuss the data protection reform and the future of the EU-US umbrella and Safe Harbor agreements.
The concept of platform neutrality implies that web platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and the Apple Store do not abuse their position to the detriment of other stakeholders.
The report aims at the application of the neutrality principle and the regulation of dGoata systems. It is structured in three main parts: the opinion of the CNNum, thematic fact sheets that clarify that opinion and an in-depth economic analysis of platform neutrality. The full report is available in French and the two main parts also in English, German, Spanish and Italian.
EU commissioner-designate and vice-president Andrus Ansip told MEPs he backs robust net neutrality rules.
EDRi together with several NGOs, consumer groups and industry representatives sent an open letter to the Council of the European Union, calling for Telecoms ministers to support strong net neutrality rules in the EU. The Council is currently reviewing the proposal of the Telecoms Single Market Regulation, voted on by the European Parliament in April.
Today, across the United States, Internet users are gathering for an emergency vigil calling on the FCC to protect the open Internet. According to news reports, the FCC is leaning towards a proposal that would protect the relationship between ISPs and big web companies, but not the relationship between ISPs and users. This “hybrid” approachwould leave the door open for all kinds of discriminatory practices against end-users and is less likely to hold up in court than the clean proposal we’ve been supporting. Even rules that sound good aren’t going to help anyone if they wind up being struck down. And it doesn’t even make sense to differentiate between users who are “subscribers” and users who run websites; all users send and receive information online and any “subscriber” could start a website tomorrow. At best, such a distinction is factually incoherent, and at worst it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, legally assigning “subscriber” and “provider” roles to people and companies on the Internet.
U.S. President Barack Obama, in a strong net neutrality policy statement, has given the Federal Communications Commission the political cover it needs to move ahead with new rules by reclassifying broadband as a regulated utility.