Telecoms package: crucial obligations on "co-operation"
- Author: Monica Horten
- Published: 13 November 2008
A legal analysis of the Telecoms Package, released today by the UK's Open Rights Group, says that the Package provides for a set of "crucial obligations' on Europe's telecoms companies and ISPs to "co-operate" with the copyright industries.
The analysis considers whether the Telecoms Package could provide a legal platform for either 3 strikes (graduated response) or filtering. It provides a breakdown, from a legal perspective, of the amendments in the Telecoms Package which relate to these types of measures.
In the summary, the authors say: "This is a crucial set of obligations, about to be imposed on all of Europe’s ISPs and telcos, which should be debated in the open, not passed under cover of stealth in the context of a vast and incomprehensible package of telecoms regulation. It seems, on careful legal examination by independent experts, more than possible that such a deliberate stealth exercise is indeed going on. When passed, these obligations will provide Europe level authority for France’s current “3 strikes” legislation, even though this has already been denounced as against fundamental rights by the European Parliament, when it was made clear to them what they were voting for or against."
On network filtering, they comment: "What seemed therefore to be a provision requiring
CSPs to act in the public good to protect networks from threats like viruses and hackers, could in actual fact potentially be interpreted in a way where it might also require CSPs to implement damaging technical sanctions against alleged (but not proven) filesharers."
On user safeguards, they say:
"Importantly, two amendments originally inserted by the EUP did provide protection against nonjudicial imposition of disconnection and other sanctions against alleged filesharers, in particular Art.32a of the Universal Service Directive (see para 35 of brief) and Art.8(4)(ga) of the Framework Directive (see para 28 ). However, both of these provisions were deleted by the CoM, and did not appear in the CoM’s proposed final text"
- Article Views: 9691
IPtegrity politics
- Online Safety and the Westminster honey trap
- Shadow bans: EU and UK diverge on user redress
- EU at loggerheads over chat control
- Why the Online Safety Act is not fit for purpose
- Fixing the human rights failings in the Online Safety Act
- Whatever happened to the AI Bill?
- Hidden effects of the UK Online Safety Act
- EU puts chat control on back burner
- Why did X lock my account for not providing my birthday?
- Creation of deep fakes to be criminal offence under new law
- AI and tech: Asks for the new government
- How WhatsApp holds structural power
- Meta rolls out encryption as political headwinds ease
- EU law set for new course on child online safety
- Online Safety Act: Ofcom’s 1700-pages of tech platform rules
- MEPs reach political agreement to protect children and privacy
- Online Safety - a non-consensual Act
About Iptegrity
Iptegrity.com is the website of Dr Monica Horten, independent policy advisor: online safety, technology and human rights. Advocating to protect the rights of the majority of law abiding citizens online. Independent expert on the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on online safety and empowerment of content creators and users. Published author, and post-doctoral scholar, with a PhD from the University of Westminster, and a DipM from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Former telecoms journalist, experienced panelist and Chair, cited in the media eg BBC, iNews, Times, Guardian and Politico.
Online Safety
- Online Safety and the Westminster honey trap
- Shadow bans: EU and UK diverge on user redress
- Why the Online Safety Act is not fit for purpose
- Fixing the human rights failings in the Online Safety Act
- Hidden effects of the UK Online Safety Act
- Why did X lock my account for not providing my birthday?
- Online Safety Act: Ofcom’s 1700-pages of tech platform rules
- Online Safety - a non-consensual Act
- Online Safety Bill passes as US court blocks age-checks law
- Online Safety Bill: ray of hope for free speech
- National Crime Agency to run new small boats social media centre
- Online Safety Bill: does government want to snoop on your WhatsApps?
- What is content of democratic importance?
- Online Safety Bill: One rule for them and another for us
- Online Safety Bill - Freedom to interfere?