With 4 Days Left, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Larry Lessig, And Barbara Van Schewick Beg Europe To Close Net Neutrality Loopholes

from the loopholes-and-hula-hoops dept

"Like fast lanes, zero-rating lets carriers pick winners and losers by making certain apps more attractive than others. And like fast lanes, zero-rating hurts users, innovation, competition, and creative expression. In advanced economies like those in the European Union, there is no argument for zero-rating as a potential onramp to the Internet for first-time users.



The draft guidelines acknowledge that zero-rating can be harmful, but they leave it to national regulators to evaluate zero-rating plans on a case-by-case basis. Letting national regulators address zero-rating case-by-case disadvantages Internet users, start-ups, and small businesses that do not have the time or resources to defend themselves against discriminatory zero-rating before 28 different regulators."

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Europe only has a few days left to ensure that its member countries are actually protected bynet neutrality rules. As we've been discussing , back in October the European Union passed net neutrality rules, but they were so packed with loopholes to not only be useful, butin that they effectivelyby large telecom operators. The rules carve out tractor-trailer-sized loopholes for "specialized services" and "class-based discrimination," as well as giving the green light for zero rating, letting European ISPs trample net neutrality -- just so long as they'reIn short, the EU's net neutrality rules are in many ways worse than no rules at all.there's still a change to make things right.While the rules technically took effect April 30 (after much self-congratulatory back patting), the European Union's Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) has been cooking up new guidelines to help European countries interpret and adopt the new rules, potentially providing them with significantly more teeth than they have now. With four days left for the public to comment (as of the writing of this post), Europe's net neutrality advocates have banded together to urge EU citizens to contact their representatives and demand they close these ISP-lobbyist crafted loopholes.Hoping to galvanize public support, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Barbara van Schewick, and Larry Lessig have penned a collective letter to European citizens urging them to pressure their constituents. The letter mirrors previous concerns that the rules won't be worth much unless they're changed to prohibit exceptions allowing "fast lanes," discrimination against specific classes of traffic (like BitTorrent), and the potential paid prioritization of select “specialized” services. These loopholes let ISPs give preferential treatment to select types of content or services, providing they offer a rotating crop of faux-technical justifications thatThe letter also urges the EU to follow India, Chile, The Netherlands, and Japan in banning "zero rating," or the exemption of select content from usage caps:Here in the States the FCC decided to not ban zero rating and follow this "case by case" enforcement, which so far has simply resulted in no serious enforcement whatsoever , opening the door ever wider to the kind of pay-to-play lopsided business arrangements net neutrality rules are supposed to prevet. Of course European ISPs have been busy too, last week falling back on the old, bunk industry argument that if regulators actually do their job and protect consumers and small businesses from entrenched telecom monopolies, wireless carriers won't be able to invest in next-generation networks.Those that care about net neutrality have just four days left to make their voices heard

Filed Under: barbara van schewick, eu, europe, larry lessig, net neutrality, tim berners-lee