UK Government Wants to Kill Net Neutrality in EU

The UK government is fast turning into the digital villain of Europe as far as the Internet is concerned. Not content with monitoring everything we look at online, it now wants to break Net Neutrality so that it can block out chunks of the Internet is disapproves of - killing Net Neutrality in the process.

That, at least, is the effect of a proposed amendment EU's Telecoms Package, currently being circulated according to Monica Horten's IPtegrity site:

The UK government wants to cut out users rights to access Internet content, applications and services. Some of the information used to justify the change has been cut and pasted from the Wikipedia.

Amendments to the Telecoms Package circulated in Brussels by the UK government, seek to cross out users' rights to access and distribute Internet content and services. And they want to replace it with a ‘principle' that users can be told not only the conditions for access, but also the conditions for the use of applications and services.

As Horten explains:

The proposed amendments cut out completely any users' rights to do with content - whether accessing or distributing - which would appear to be in breach of the European Charter of Fundamental rights, Article 10. The Charter states that everyone has the right "to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers." In the digital age, the Internet, and the associated applications and services provided by the World Wide Web, is the means by which people exercise that right.

...

The amendments, if carried, would reverse the principle of end-to-end connectivity which has underpinned not only the Internet, but also European telecommunications policy, to date.

The proposal is not just against the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, but will also bring the European Council in conflict with the European Commission and the European Parliament. Unfortunately much of the real power in Europe still lies with the Council, so if this proposal is accepted there, it might still be imposed against the wishes of everyone else.

Nutting Net Neutrality

If you thought all that anti-net neutrality stuff was just for Yanks, think again: they're trying to sneak it over here, too:

Telcos are lobbying hard for discriminatory practices in network management to be permited, which threaten the neutrality of the Internet. They are opposed by citizens groups who are calling on MEPs to close the loopholes in the Telecoms Package Second Reading.

Liberty Global is the latest telco to throw its hat in the anti-net neutrality ring, with a statement in support of its colleagues at AT&T and Verizon. In a statement to run with its European Parliament seminar today, Liberty Global calls for limitations on regulatory intervention in respect of ‘network management practices'. The AT&T amendments are about trying to stop European regulators taking the kind of action that the FCC was able to take in the Comcast case, where a netwwork operator was restricting lawful services on the Internet and the FCC told it to stop.

Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty (Global)...

EU Puts "Three Strikes" on Ice

Here's a turn-up for the books:

The European Commission is set to put proposals to tackle online piracy on ice until the end of its current mandate, following heavy pressure from telecoms companies and consumer organisations alike, EurActiv has learned.

The EU executive had been expected to bring forward two initiatives in the first half of 2009, both of which could have forced a more restrictive EU-wide approach to free and illegal downloading.

The most ancipated measure was a follow-up to a Communicationexternal on online content, presented at the beginning of 2008, which hinted at restrictive measures to curb online piracy. Proposals included a mandate for Internet service providers (ISPs) "to suspend or cut access to the web for those who illegally file-share," the so-called three-step model proposed by France (EurActiv 10/12/07).

That's surprising, but what's really striking is the reason for this pause:

Brussels had planned to present actual proposals in the form of a recommendation in April. But now the plan has been frozen "after a radicalisation of the debate which has left no space for manoeuvre," a Commission official told EurActiv, referring to strong lobbying by the content industry (in particular music), supported mainly by France, in negotiations over the telecoms package.

"There will be no recommendation. The Commission will only later present issue papers," which may be used by the next Commission after it is sworn in at the end of 2009 or in 2010, explained Martin Selmayr, spokesman for Viviane Reding, the EU's information society commissioner.
This suggests the increasingly outrageous demans from the content industries have been their own undoing. Perhaps the era in which lobbyists can dictate legislation at will is finally coming to a close.

But we're not in the clear yet:

Consumers can rejoice too, although restrictive measures at national level are planned in many EU countries. Meanwhile, a new EU-wide attempt to regulate may be made during the current negotiations over the telecoms package, where the Council and the Parliament have the final say.

The fight goes on.

Latvia Spreads a Little Light on Openness

Ever wondered what those Latvians are up to with free software? Wonder no more:

Latvia's Minister for Electronic Government Affairs Signe Bāliņa says open standards are key to improving efficiency and transparency in government.

Open technology and open standards are fundamental to efficient communication with the government, the minister argued in her opening address at the Latvian Open Technology Conference in Riga on 12 November. She said the government needs to use open IT systems to allow citizens and businesses to communicate easily with the government. "We think it is very important these systems are open and based on open technologies and open standards."

The conference in Riga, organised by the Latvian Open Technology Association (LATA), drew more than 250 participants from the central government, municipalities, IT firms and universities. LATA wanted to update the attendants on open source developments in the country and the region.

Several Latvian businesses and institutions described their use of open source software. The telecoms company Lattelecom for example presented on the use of open source in their data centres and the Latvian University showed how it uses the open source e-learning system Moodle to offer on-line education. The university also employs open source for its data storage and to create grid computing services.

There's also interesting stuff about Russia - somewhere I've long believed is set to emerge as an open source leader:

Marat Guriev, a representative of IBM in Eastern Europe and Asia, gave an overview of developments on open source software and open standards in Russia. He described how the Russian military has been working on its own version of GNU/Linux, parts of which have recently been declassified by the All-Russian Scientific and Research Institute of Control Automation in the Non-Industrial Sphere (Vniins). According to Guriev, many specialised version of GNU/Linux distributions are produced, often in response to requests by local governments. In three Russian regions, most of the PCs in use in about a thousand schools have been switched over to GNU/Linux. Moreover, Russian science institutes are publishing their work on open source systems, he said, for example on the web site Linux Testing.

I've written about the activity in Russian schools before. If you read Russian, you can read Guriev's presentation here - it has plenty of useful detail about free software in his country.

Amendment 138 Goes "Poof!"

But that's not too bad an outcome, because it seems to have taken most of the "three strikes" nonsense with it, as this full explanation makes clear:

Looking at the final versions of the five amended EU Directives that form the Telecoms Package, it seems that yes, Amendment 138 (which made sanctions against 'unlawful content' subject to due process of law) has indeed disappeared. But so have some elements of another part of the Package that said that national telecoms regulators should regulate lawful and unlawful content. What was particularly worrying about those provisions was that they referred to another part of the Package that mandated co-operation between national regulators and telecoms industry providers - i.e. ISPs and the big telecoms carriers.

Of course, it ain't over until it's over....

Save Our Amendment 138

As I wrote below, the Telecoms Package is still with us, and there is still the threat that the crucial Amendment 138, which ensures that there is due judicial oversight, will be deleted. Now, then, is the time to start writing some emails to the ministers concerned, whose addresses in the UK are:

mpst.carter@berr.gsi.gov.uk, mpst.vadera@berr.gsi.gov.uk

Here's what I've just sent:

I writing to in connection with the EU Telecoms Package. In particular, I would like to urge you to ensure that Amendment 138 is not deleted or altered substantively. I believe this is important for four reasons.

First, there is a fundamental issue of law here: that punishments should not be imposed “without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information” as the Amendment puts it. To remove or nullify this Amendment would be to signal that the commercial interests of a group of lobbyists supersedes a citizen's basic right to justice.

Secondly, as you know, the Amendment was introduced and passed after a full debate in the European Parliament. For the Amendment to be dropped or rendered void now would be a clear signal that democratic processes are irrelevant within the inner circle of European ministers. At a time when the European Union is struggling to establish its legitimacy with citizens in Europe, this would again send an appallingly negative signal to ordinary people that could have serious repercussions.

Thirdly, at a time when the British Government is rightly promoting the idea of e-government, and the ability of British citizens to access critically important parts of the democratic system via the Internet, it is self-defeating to introduce the disproportionate punishment of being banned from that same Internet. The Internet is becoming as necessary to modern life as electricity or running water, and nobody would suggest withdrawing these from a criminal, however heinous the crime.

Finally, it is worth noting that introducing such Internet bans would, in any case, have almost no effect on the exchange of copyright materials. An external hard disc with a storage capacity of 1 terabyte – 1000 gigabytes – now costs about £100. On this can be stored around 100,000 Mp3 files. Already, it is becoming common for young people to take such hard discs to parties where they swap music amongst themselves. If the “three strikes” law is introduced, it will simply encourage more people to buy such drives, and to swap not hundreds of files but hundreds of thousands of files at a time: it will actually make the problem worse.

For all these reasons, I urge you to ensure that Amendment 138 remains in the Telecoms Package unaltered.

"Three Strikes and You're Out" Struck Down

Wow. I was convinced that the meeting of EU culture ministers yesterday was going to end badly; I was wrong - and I take my virtual hat off to them:

EU culture ministers yesterday (20 November) rejected French proposals to curb online piracy through compulsory measures against free downloading, instead agreeing to promote legal offers of music or films on the Internet.

The EU Culture Council pushed yesterday (20 November) for "a fair balance between the various fundamental rights" while fighting online piracy, first listing "the right to personal data protection," then "the freedom of information" and only lastly "the protection of intellectual property".

The Council conclusions also stressed the importance of "consumers' expectations in terms of access […] and diversity of the content offered online". No mention was made of a gradual response to serial downloaders of illegal cultural material, as foreseen by the French authorities.

I think this is very significant, because it indicates that the culture ministers and their advisers are beginning to understand the dynamics of the Net, that throttling its use through crude instruments like the "three strikes and you're out" is exactly the wrong thing to do, and that there are serious issues to do with freedom of information at stake here that cannot simply be brushed aside as Sarkozy and his media chums wish to do.

Judging by the generally sensible tone of the meeting's conclusions, the optimist in me starts to hope that the tide is finally turning. However, I do wonder whether this saga is finished yet, or whether the Telecoms Package still has some teeth that it can bare....

Update: Following up that thought, here's a letter I've sent to the relevant UK ministers who will be involved in a crucial meeting on the Telecoms Package this week (24/11/08).

More Feedback from Number 10

Those e-petition replies just keep on coming.

In response to the following:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to not force internet service providers to act as legal representatives for the RIAA and be treated like a common courier.”

That nice Mr Brown says:

The Government recently published a consultation document on unlawful Peer-to-Peer (P2P) filesharing, which intends to gather views on proposals for a co-operative approach between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and rights holders to address the issue of P2P file-sharing technology, used for the illegal exchange of copyright material.

Unfortunately, much of the media reports around this issue have been incorrect. There are no proposals to make ISPs liable for the content that travels across their networks. Nor are there proposals for ISPs to monitor customer activity for illegal downloading, or to enforce a “3 strikes” policy.

Instead, we are focusing on an approach that:

· educates consumers and citizens about the importance of recognising and rewarding content and the dangers of unlawful downloading;
· encourages the content and telecoms industries to concentrate on ensuring that content is made available to consumers in a variety of attractive packages; and
· takes action to ensure that where file sharing still happens people are made aware of the unlawful nature of their actions and effective mechanisms for dealing with repeat offenders are identified.

The consultation closes on 30th October 2008 and anyone with an interest in these issues is welcome to respond. The consultation can be found at: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page47141.html

I'll be writing more about the consultation in due course.

Urgent: Telecoms Package Vote *Again*

Back in July I urged you to write to your MEPs about the Telecoms Package. Well, I'm at it again: the main vote was postponed, and will now take place on Wednesday 24 September, so there’s still time to write to your MEPs and ask them to support some amendments that should help (more details from Open Rights Group.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

The UK Super-Snoop DB: DOA

The government is pressing ahead with plans to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a massive central silo for all UK communications data, The Register has learned.

Home Office civil servants are working on plans for the database under the banner of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP). The team has recently been expanded and a director-level official appointed to run the project, which is not yet official policy in public.

Sources said secret briefings revealed the cost of the database would run to nine figures and has already been factored into government spending plans. The IMP budget was part of the intelligence agencies' undisclosed allocation in the Comprehensive Spending Review last year. In an answer to a parliamentary question on 8 July, the Home Office refused to provide any budgetary details, citing national security concerns.

The sum will dwarf the £19m we recently reported the government has given telecoms companies to service authorities' data requirements since 2004. The überdatabase will render existing arrangements for sharing communications data with government agencies obsolete.

It's a times like these that I fall on my virtual knees and bless the cyber-gods that ensure every single major UK government project is a complete and utter failure, so this doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever working properly. Phew.

O Tell Me the Truth about... the Telecoms Package

On Open Enterprise blog.

There is no War on...Botnets

After the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, now, it seems, we are to have a War on Botnets:

Mr Toure said that whatever the solution, the fight against botnets was a "war" that could only be won if all parties - regulators, governments, telecoms firms, computer users and hardware and software makers - worked together.

But it is a truth universally acknowledged, that as soon as you declare "war" on some amorphous entity like "drugs" or "terror" or "botnets", you've already lost, because you shift from the practical to the rhetorical.

This is all about security theatre: talking tough instead of acting intelligently. Sorting out botnets does not require a "war": it's simply a matter of telling Windows users the truth about their bug-infested system, getting them to use a firewall and anti-virus software and - maybe, one day - getting them to understand that downloading or opening unknown software is hugely risky.

Knight is Right

Nothing new here, but Sir Tim's wise words on Net neutrality have a weight that few others can match. Pass them on to your favourite telecoms company.

A Study in Stupidity

I am constantly amazed at how many people do not get what net neutrality is about. Cunningly, the telecoms companies frame this in terms of providing "superior" services for certain classes of data traffic - conveniently skating over the fact that creating a first class inevitably demotes everyone else to second class or worse.

The key point about network neutrality is that it ensures a level playing-field - a commons, no less, open to all - and does not attempt to second-guess the intentions of those who will exploit that commons. Those who fight against it forget all the history of the Internet - how none of the services that run across it was planned, but was simply able to take the basic infrastructure for granted.

This is not rocket science; and yet we can still have nominally insightful people writing stuff like this:

there's a huge analytical leap between preventing patently anticompetitive conduct and having the government tell operators how to manage their networks in the name of network neutrality. Unfortunately, as election politics loom large, many in Congress are ignoring this important distinction. They instead are seeking to rush through legislation that would essentially commoditize the Internet into a "stupid" network, without understanding the potential adverse consequences.

A commoditised, stupid network that gets out of the way is precisely what we want, for reasons that this excellent essay explains:

This ability to "just do it" liberates huge amounts of innovative energy. If I have a Stupid Network and I get an idea for a communications application, I just write it. Then I send it to my buddy, and my buddy can install it, too. If we both like it, we can send it to more people. If people really like it, then maybe we can charge for it - or even start our own company. Yahoo!

Or Google, or Amazon or eBay.

There are no "adverse consequences" if that stupidity is implemented in a technical sense. Equally, this is not a question of "having the government tell operators how to manage their networks": all they know - and all they need to know - is that every IP packet must be treated the same. It's a simple engineering-based condition. To say - or indeed ask for - anything else is just, well, stupid.

And Now - Open Telecoms

I'm not quite sure what all this means, but it sounds interesting - and has the magic "O"-word.... The details seem to suggest we're talking an open source platform for the telecoms industry - not end-users. More about OpenClovis, the company behind it all, here.