Glyn sez, "The EU's Telecoms Package is back for its second reading. The French are attempting to push through their 'three strikes and you're out' approach again, the UK are attempting to get rid of net neutrality and get rid of peoples right to privacy. The ITRE/IMCO committee are meeting on the 31 March 2009 to dicuss these and other alarming amendments. The Open Rights Group have more details:"

One of the most controversial issues is that of the three-strikes strongly and continuously pushed by France in the EU Council. Although most of the dispositions introducing the graduate response system were rejected in first reading of the Telecom Package, there are still some alarming ones persisting. France is trying hard to get rid of Amendment 138 which seeks to protect users' rights against the three-strikes sanctions and which, until now, has stopped the EU from applying the three-strikes policy. Also, some new amendments reintroduce the notion of lawful content, which will impose the obligation on ISPs to monitor content going through their networks.

The UK government is pushing for the "wikipedia amendments" (so-called because one of them has been created by cutting and pasting a text out of the wikipedia) in order to allow ISPs to make limited content offers. The UK amendments eliminate the text that gives users rights to access and distribute content, services and applications, replacing it with a text that says "there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions to and/or use of applications and services, and of any traffic management policies ."…

Also a very dangerous amendment to the ePrivacy directive is introduced by the UK, allowing the telecommunications industry to collect a potentially unlimited amount of users' sensitive and confidential communications data including telephone and e-mail contacts, geographic position of mobile phones and websites visited on the Internet.