There are several elements in the package which are hostile to innovation and will turn the Internet into a kind of global cable television controlled by network operators, Jeremie Zimmerman, co-founder of civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net told EurActiv in an interview.
"It will be cable 2.0," says Zimmerman, who argues that the telecoms package as it stands will give operators a foothold in the media content market and allow them to control the entire Internet infrastructure.
Zimmerman points to articles contained in the package's Universal Services Directive which allow operators to limit access to content services. Applications providing these restrictions are in the fine print of the user's contract.
According to this logic, argues Zimmerman, it would be acceptable if users were to one day receive an email saying their access to eBay had been cut, and then the next receive a message about the operator's new auction site.
Zimmerman points to his native France as the main proponent of anti-competitive telecoms policies. "In France on your mobile phone, you cannot use Skype because it would not be profitable for the operators."
These articles could be severely damaging to innovation in the media market, says Zimmerman, pointing out that the future inventors of the next Skype would have to go through every operator in Europe to get authorisation to use the whole network. "So if you are a start-up, two guys in a garage, you just cannot do it."
La Quadrature was in Brussels in June when the second reading of the package came to a standstill because MEPs and ministers could not agree whether a person accused of illegal downloading or file-sharing should have the right to a trial or not (EurActiv 12/06/09).
On Tuesday (15 September) France approved a bill allowing a government agency to sanction offenders in the first two instances and award them the right to a trial only in the third instance of illegal downloading, hence its being dubbed the three-strike approach.
"If you remove the right to a trial in the first instance, you base your ability to convict somebody on wholly unreliable evidence, like IP addresses, which may or may not belong to the accused," Zimmerman claims.
