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The telecom package and the need for participation3. July 2008 – 11:48 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH) |
The so called telecom package is a collection of amendments to existing European laws which will drastically change the organization of telecommunication in Europe and especially of the internet. The package will be the framework for the national laws concerning telecommunication. The purposed law has produced a lot of harsh criticism among members of the online community. This uproar is nothing less than the self-organized participation of the effected stakeholders of this law.
To better understand why the telecom package is criticised in such a fierce manner here are some statements form digital citizens of Europe. Laquadrature.net posted a document containing the most important regulations which will be put into place by the law. It also points out the problematic issues that laquadrature.net think could result from the law. For example it may be that the law would allow the Commission to “impose technical standards on content filtering and monitoring computing so called ‘trusted computing’. The Commission would be able to give the concerned by these regulation recommendations following a quick and undemocratic procedure, at the request of any national regulation authority (ARCEP, CSA, HADOPI in France, OFCOM in the UK, PTS in Sweden).” Another example is that the implementation of “technical measures” to prevent infringement of intellectual property can only be achieved by deep packet inspection or by using spyware on consumers’ computers. Slashdot thinks that the whole Peer-to-Peer infrastructure in Europe may be endangered by this. P2P is used for many legitimate purposes like Skype, the distribution of free and open source software and media content. Following the argumentation of laquarture.net and many others (as for example Members of the European Parliament) the different amendments may be a threat to privacy and freedom of internet users. It may also damage the European economy by hindering innovation.
