European Parliament votes against net neutrality
ISPs allowed to discriminate in favour of 'specialised services' under new EU law
The Parliament of the European Union has voted in favour of a new set of regulations that, critics argue, will leave a big hole in the concept of "net neutrality" across the EU.
The vote was part of a broader series of legislation that will also mean the end for roaming charges for mobile telecoms across the EU, although critics have also argued that it will, in practice, put up the cost of domestic mobile phone bills.
The new net neutrality legislation will allow ISPs to establish "specialised services" and to discriminate in favour of (or against) particular traffic by zero-rating it in monthly data allowances.
Critics fear that it will enable big companies, such as Google, Facebook and Apple, to purchase an advantage against rivals and, especially, against start-ups that don't have the resources to buy similar network privileges. It also raises questions over ISPs that are also producers of content, such as Sky and BT.
Supporters of the legislation claimed that it was necessary to ensure that specialised online services, such as self-driving cars and medical applications, would be guaranteed priority. Critics, however, claim that the terms of the legislation were too vague and will be widely exploited.
Julia Reda, the pro-internet Pirate Party's one remaining MEP, argued that the vote would deliver "neither net neutrality, nor an end to roaming".
She blamed a carve-up behind closed doors for completely changing the terms of the legislation when it was first put before European Parliament in 2014.
"In the end, not even the words ‘net neutrality' survived the closed-door negotiations with the [European] Commission and the Council. The text leaves open critical loopholes. Today, Parliament decided not to adopt opposition amendments that could have fixed these shortcomings," Reda wrote in a statement.
"The permission of ‘zero-rating' allows certain services to be be vastly privileged. This practice is considered legally questionable and problematic for journalistic competitiveness by, among others, the German regulation authority Landesmedienanstalt Nordrhein-Westfalen. Legislation against zero-rating such as it exists in the Netherlands and Slovenia is rendered invalid by today's vote," she continued.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML, warned yesterday that the EU vote risked undermining Europe's internet economy.
In a statement, he said: "When I designed the World Wide Web, I built it as an open platform to foster collaboration and innovation. The Web evolved into a powerful and ubiquitous platform because I was able to build it on an open network that treated all packets of information equally. This principle of net neutrality has kept the Internet a free and open space since its inception."
Without the principle of net neutrality, he added, high bandwidth will inevitably be reserved for organisations that pay for it, marginalising start-ups and non-profit activities.
He continued: "If adopted as currently written, these rules will threaten innovation, free speech and privacy, and compromise Europe's ability to lead in the digital economy. To underpin continued economic growth and social progress, Europeans deserve the same strong net neutrality protections similar to those recently secured in the US."
Now that the European Parliament has approved the laws, the Body of European Regulators (BEREC) will have nine months to create guidelines for individual nations.