Brussels, 08/09/2009 (Agence Europe) - The summer break may have given some respite on the Telecoms Package, but a busy schedule lies ahead for returning MEPs with the resumption of debates and the third reading in prospect after the Council of Ministers rejected the European Parliament position. The Greens/EFA Group set the ball rolling on Tuesday 7 September, with a seminar attended by representatives of the industry and civil society. The discussions showed clearly the desire of the Parliament, and the Greens in particular, for free access to the internet with no filtering by access providers. The first panel at the seminar was chaired by Christian Engström, Deputy Leader of the Pirate's Party, a Swedish party founded in 2006 which won sufficient votes in the recent European elections (7.1%) to send one representative to the Parliament and whose political agenda is simple: reforming copyright law, authorising peer-to-peer exchanges (free downloads from the internet), protecting privacy (and so abolishing all monitoring of the Web) and getting rid of patents. The second panel was chaired by Austrian Eva Lichtenberger.
Parliament had to ensure the third reading of the Telecoms Package not only protected users and preserved fundamental freedoms, but also encouraged innovation and growth in Europe, said the Greens/EFA Group. It noted that the bone of contention on the Package between the Parliament and the Council was amendment 138, which states that no restriction may be imposed on final users of the internet without the prior ruling of judicial authorities. This amendment has been adopted by the Parliament, but the Council will hear none of it (see inter alia EUROPE 9933). Jeffrey Lawrence, a director with the Intel Corporation, said that new technologies were extremely important for the development of a modern society and extreme care had to be exercised when seeking to restrict access. He said that it was possible to find solutions that protect content, while leaving users full freedom of access to the technologies. Innocenzo Genna, a specialist in telecoms regulation and a member of EuroISPA, a pan-European organisation of the biggest service providers, said the real problem lay in the lack of legal content. Piracy was merely the symptom of the lack of legal supply of content online, and that it was on this matter that work should be focused. Sanctions against repeated piracy could only come through administrative or judicial bodies, and everyone should have the opportunity to be heard before a sanction is applied, with the possibility of appeal, said Francisco Mingorance, of Business Software Alliance (BSA), a federation of companies set up to promote the objectives of the software industry and computer equipment producer partners. Pointing out that online video games are more difficult to pirate and that that particular industry was less affected by illegal downloads than the audiovisual industry, Malte Behrmann, General Secretary of the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF), is a firm supporter of an open internet. He said that allowing access providers to filter content and decide which cultural property should be available was not to be countenanced.
A balance must and could be found between internet users who want free internet access and copyright holders, said Caroline De Cock, Executive Director of VON Europe, a coalition of seven of the biggest specialists in the internet and new technologies, in the second session. The Telecoms Package was not, she opined, the correct place to be deciding on this issue. She said the matter should be resolved in a separate debate. Any measure regulating the flow of data could dramatically affect the development of new technologies, she said. The principle of non-discriminatory internet access had been one of the key factors in the development of an information society in the European Union. The new framework proposed in the Telecoms Package would now give private companies and national governments the right to intervene, something that was unacceptable and ran counter to the e-commerce directive, said Paolo Brini, the spokesman for the Movimento ScambioEtico. Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesman for La Quadrature du Net, a French civil liberties organisation for the digital environment and implacable opponent of the French Hadopi Lawn said that internet freedom had to be maintained at all costs and amendment 138 retained. (I.L./transl.rt)