Author: Glyn Moody

In a fact sheet on the agreement, the European Commission tries to hide the reality that net neutrality is being destroyed by defining something called the open Internet : “Under today’s agreement, paid prioritisation in the open Internet will be banned. Based on this new legislation, all content and application providers will have guaranteed access to end-users in the open Internet. This access should not be dependent on the will or particular commercial interest of Internet service providers.”

But running alongside this “open Internet,” on the same network, there will be “specialised services,” which are not open and where paid prioritisation is permitted: “The new EU net neutrality rules guarantee the open Internet and enable the provision of specialised or innovative services on condition that they do not harm the open Internet access.” The caveat is vague, and in practice will not prevent “specialised services” competing with those offered on the “open Internet”—the Commission mentions “internet TV” as an example of a specialised service—so large companies will be able to offer premium services at attractive prices, which startups with limited resources will find hard to match.

WikiLeaks has released 17 secret documents from the negotiations of the global Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), which have been taking place behind closed doors, largely unnoticed, since 2013. The main participants are the United States, the European Union, and 23 other countries including Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan and Israel, which together comprise two-thirds of global GDP.

The European Commission is planning to send a “statement of objection”—the first step towards a formal antitrust investigation—to top Hollywood studios and European pay-TV companies over their licensing deals, according to a report on Bloomberg. The concern is a familiar one: that film studios are making deals with distribution companies that carve up the EU into smaller local markets, which prevents people in some European countries from viewing films and TV programmes as soon as they are released, and which goes against the idea of the Single Market.

An international group of digital rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the US, has launched the “Manila Principles on Internet Liability,” what it calls “a roadmap for the global community to protect online freedom of expression and innovation around the world.”

The principles concern Internet intermediaries—telecom companies, ISPs, search engines, social networks, etc.—that run key parts of the online world’s infrastructure. As EFF’s Senior Global Policy Analyst Jeremy Malcolm, one of the people behind the Manila Principles, explains: “These services are all routinely asked to take down content, and their policies for responding are often muddled, heavy-handed, or inconsistent. That results in censorship and the limiting of people’s rights.” The Principles are designed to provide a framework of safeguards and best practice when responding to such requests to remove content.

In an e-mail, Malcolm told Ars about the Principles’ background and motivation. The original partners were the EFF, the Centre for Internet and Society in India, and free speech organization Article 19. Other groups were added to give a more global balance. Malcolm says: “The motivation for this work was that intermediaries have been drifting back into the view of regulators and private interests who want to restrict content online. Whereas a decade ago the idea of immunizing intermediaries from liability was well accepted, it is now being questioned again.”