[Edri-gram] Net Neutrality threatened by the Commission’s draft regulation

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For the past years, EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who started by advocating for net neutrality, has constantly given in to the pressure of large telecom companies, changing her direction from protecting net neutrality to threatening it. The current draft Regulation made public on 11 September 2013 just confirms this direction.

La Quadrature du Net and several advocacy groups have accused Kroes of killing net neutrality through the Commission’s draft proposal on the reform of the EU telecom market, under the disguise of defending it. […]

“The Commission would be giving telecoms freedom to enter into business deals with big content providers such as Google or Facebook to prioritize their data flows over the Internet. Such a corporate power-grab would relegate the rest of citizens and new-entrant innovators to a slower Internet with disastrous effects for freedom and innovation online,” said Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesman for La Quadrature du Net. […]

« Mrs Kroes’ draft is flawed by design to allow commercial breaches of Net neutrality, through forms of discrimination which undermine our freedom of communication and are anti-competitive by nature. Rushing such measures, a few months before upcoming elections, is outrageous and shows the profoundly disturbing disconnection between the Commission and citizens. » explains Jérémie Zimmermann. […]

http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number11.17/net-neutrality-ec-regulation