Internet has been built as a decentralized network, in which no party can unilaterally decide to block the information flowing through the communications architecture. However, this founding principle of Net neutrality is now put into question by several legislative projects that seek to impose administrative filtering and blocking of websites. Whether it is online gambling, violent or pedopornographic content, but also defamation or copyright infringement, a growing number of democratic government are considering this mode of regulation of the Internet both ineffective and extremely dangerous for civil liberties.Indeed, the architectural principles that underlie the Internet we have today, namely the principles of openness, inter-operability and neutrality do not only create an environment that enables innovation in services and applications, more importantly they allow for an environment where users can express themselves freely without discrimination by their service provider. Therefore, those basic design principles need to be preserved.
Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and the Media - February 3rd 2009
