MuniWireless

The European Commission and deputies of the European Parliament have been discussing amendments to the Telecom Package recently and one of the amendments to the original text is Amendment 138 on the right of end users charged with content piracy to a full and fair judicial review: “No restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end users without a prior ruling of the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, except when public security is threatened, in which case a judicial ruling may be rendered subsequently.”

Opponents of content filtering and the law of “gradual retaliation” (a controversial law being considered in France which prohibits the delivery of pirated content on the Internet) considered this to be a victory for end users. The amendment prohibits an EU member from calling an administrative authority instead of a judicial authority to solve problems of piracy.

During a press conference after the vote, Guy Bono, a French European Deputy who was among the three authors of the amendment 138 said, focusing on the French government: “You cannot fool around with individual freedoms. The French government will have to rewrite the ‘gradual retaliation’ law.”

In a separate press conference, Catherine Trautmann, French deputy at the European Parliament said: “The idea of turning the ISP in a kind of cop filtering all downloads and punishing repeated offenders and pirates has been put away under the intense lobbying of the telcos, in favor of the free download and peer to peer sites.”

Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture in France, who is in charge of preparing the ‘gradual retaliation law’ said: “This amendment doesn’t add anything to the existing state of the rights, and by having to resort to a judge to solve a piracy problem, it prevents us from sending administrative notices to the pirates, asking them to cease their activities.”

This week, in the French daily newspaper “Liberation” published the copy of a letter supposedly sent by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Jose Manuel Baroso, President of the European Commission, approving of the work of the Commission in a project called “Online Creative Content”, to be presented to the European Parliament next year. Sarkozy adds: “It is crucial for the Commission to be vigilant to threats coming the European Parliament during the first vote of the third “Telecom Package”. It is especially fundamental that the amendment 138 be rejected by the Commission. This amendment tries to prevent States from applying an intelligent strategy against piracy.”

In a conference in Nice, where Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information society was speaking about the internet of things, she said that: “The Telecom Package has nothing to do with the content. It is only about infrastructure.”

Regarding the “online creative content” project, she added:  “We have a vision of freedom on the Internet, freedom of access for Internet users and protecting the author rights.” She reminded people that the role of the Commission is only to prepare legislative proposals. “It is to the Parliament and to the Council of Ministers to make the law.”

The French Presidency of the EU will be marked by a number of controversial issues that need to be resolved by the end of the year (since the Council of Ministers will make a common declaration on November 27 on its action to develop the Internet Economy in Europe).