Policy Observatory

Access criticizes the latest Net Neutrality proposal in the EU

Wed 4 Mar 2015, 22:20

Today, 28 member states of the European Union presented a joint proposal on the Telecoms Single Market — legislation that will determine whether Net Neutrality will become a reality throughout Europe. The proposal officially triggered the start of joint negotiations between the EU Commission, the EU Parliament, and the Council of the EU to produce a final text.

Tags: Internet, tech companies, Telecoms Single Market, law proposal, net neutrality

EDRi comments EU Council proposals on net neutrality

Thu 5 Mar 2015, 15:40

After the European Parliament voted to protect net neutrality in April of last year, the EU Council of Ministers has just adopted its text on net neutrality (pdf)*. It claims to aim to defend the open internet, but would, in fact, permit every imaginable breach of net neutrality.

Tags: open Internet, law proposal, EU Council, net neutrality

Europe reverses course on net neutrality legislation

Thu 12 Mar 2015, 14:07

Less than a year after the European Parliament voted to enshrine net neutrality in law, the principle has come under attack by the European Commission.

A package of reforms put together by former Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes was voted through parliament in March 2014. It included strong safeguards for net neutrality, banning service providers from blocking or slowing internet services provided by competitors.

But a majority of the 28 EU member states in the European council have now voted in favour of changing the rules to bar discrimination in internet access but allow the prioritisation of some "specialised" services that required high quality internet access to function.

Tags: Internet, European Parliament, European Commission, Europe, net neutrality

FCC chairman says broadband should be treated as utility for net neutrality

Wed 4 Feb 2015, 21:00

The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed net neutrality rules based on reclassifying broadband as a regulated public utility and will ask fellow commissioners to approve that approach later this month.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, as expected, will offer net neutrality rules that reverse a long-standing agency practice of treating broadband as a lightly regulated information service, instead reclassifying it as a regulated common carrier under Title II of the Telecommunications Act.

“I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” Wheeler wrote in a Wired.com opinion piece published Wednesday. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.”

Tags: net neutrality, public utility, Internet, broadband

Broadband reclassification is essential, bur the devil is always in the details, EFF says

Wed 4 Feb 2015, 21:00

According to an op-ed published today in Wired, in a few weeks the FCC will vote on new rules that start with one crucial step: reversing the FCC’s 2002 decision to treat broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” This is what’s known as Title II reclassification. According to the highest court to review the question, the rules that we need to preserve the open internet — such as forbidding discrimination against certain applications — require the FCC to treat access providers like “common carriers, ” treatment that can only be applied to telecommunications services. Having chosen to define broadband as an “information service,” the FCC can impose regulations that “promote competition” (good) but it cannot stop providers from giving their friends special access to Internet users (bad). INt

Tags: net neutrality, telecommunications service, information service, Internet, reclassification

New leaked document on the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) exposes threats to privacy, data protection, and net neutrality.

Fri 9 Jan 2015, 22:40

TiSA, or the Trade in Services Agreement, is a trade accord currently being negotiated by 23 member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), including the EU, the U.S., Japan, Costa Rica, and Israel. TiSA aims to further open these markets up for trade in services, such as e-commerce, cross-border data flows, and technology transfer. The negotiations of this agreement were launched in 2013 and are taking place behind closed doors. They are not subject to public to the same pressure for transparency, as other infamous trade agreements have been in the past, including ACTA, the current TPP, and the TTIP. However, this trade deal could have a similar, if not bigger, impact on digital rights and particularly the rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression.

Tags: Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), leaked document, trade agreements, net neutrality, freedom of speech, digital rights, privacy, negociations

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