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From:
Dewayne Hendricks <
dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Date: Sunday, December 7, 2014
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Merkel speaks out against net neutrality
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <
dewayne-net@warpspeed.com>
Merkel speaks out against net neutrality
Chancellor Angela Merkel is calling for preferential services for
certain providers on the web at her keynote speech at a conference
in Berlin on Thursday.
Dec 4 2014
<
http://www.thelocal.de/20141204/merkel-speaks-out-against-net-neutrality>
Merkel said that some key services for the digital economy would
require reliable transmission quality and should therefore be
treated differently than other data.
At the Vodafone-hosted Digitising Europe conference in Berlin, she
called for a splitting of services, "one for free internet, and
the other for special services", adding that it was up to Brussels
to negotiate how it would work.
"An innovation-friendly internet means that there is a guaranteed
reliability for special services," she said. "These can only
develop when predictable quality standards are available".
Merkel added that these special services would run over existing
internet infrastructure.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) MEP Petra Kammerevert told The Local
that this would make it more difficult to find a common European
position on net neutrality.
"If Merkel goes into negotiations with the position she's outlined
today, it will be very difficult for the European Council to find
a common position," she said.
The Council, composed of the heads of state and government of all
the EU member countries, must find a common negotiating position
to deal with the European Parliament, which voted against a
European Commission plan for regulations that would allow a
two-tier internet in April.
"There is a clear position on this with a big majority in the
European Parliament," Kammerevert said. "There should only be
special services for closed groups of users under very strict
conditions when capacity is sufficient.
"Merkel's comments are catastrophic, she's calling for a two-tier
internet."
'No longer democratic'
Net neutrality campaigners in Germany say that this is another
example of Merkel's party, the conservative Christian Democratic
Union (CDU), working with the telecommunication lobbyists.
"This statement is taking the position of telecommunications
firms. This is not the net neutrality we want, but a move towards
the creation of a two-tier network where content becomes preferred
based on who pays for it to make it so," said Markus Beckedahl,
Berlin-based founder of netzpolitik.
His colleague, Professor Leonhard Dobusch of the Free University
(Freie Universität) in Berlin, agrees.
"The revolutionary thing about the web is that the content can be
decided on by anyone and, the principle of it, is that anyone can
access it. But if you poke holes into net neutrality the way
Chancellor Merkel suggests, then it's no longer democratic," he
said.
Merkel's suggestions create a dangerous starting point for net
neutrality laws in Germany, Dobusch said.
[snip]
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