SaveTheInternet
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re:publica 201665 / 188
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:19
Can everybody hear me?
00:22
Hands up for anybody who can't hear me. OK, good. So welcome, everybody, to this talk. This is a very interesting talk, especially because I'm very interested in this topic. It concerns us all. So we're going to be talking about how citizens can
00:42
participate and have a say in the upcoming BEREC consultation. And this talk will highlight the dangers and the hopes we have for the internet of tomorrow. And we have very special guests here today. Thomas Löninger, he's the executive director of the
01:02
Working Group on Data Retention in Austria. And we have Kathleen Berger. She is the program lead at GDP. And Barbara van Shevek, who is a professor at law at Stanford Law School. So please give it up for them. Thank you.
01:23
Thank you. Just before we get started, quick poll of the audience. Give me a hand sign if you've already been active in the Save the Internet campaign so far, like any phone calls, emails, faxes. OK, that's not too bad. By the end of the session, I want to see all your hands up for getting active in the future.
01:42
So that's our goal for today. Before we start about BEREC, because I hear BEREC consultations, and I'm like, OK, do people actually know what we're talking about? So let's break it down a little and start with what is net neutrality, actually. Net neutrality sometimes sounds very complicated, but
02:01
it's actually a really simple concept. Basically, the idea is that the companies that connect us to the internet should not be interfering with what we do on the line. That has three components. They should not be able to block or discriminate against applications, and they shouldn't be charging fees to application content providers to put them in a
02:22
fast lane. And the general idea is that that will save or protect the environment for innovation and speech that the internet has originally created. If we were to politicise that a little, why is that so fundamental for the internet? Just bring it to a point as in give me one sentence of
02:42
why is this crucial? I think it is important, because net neutrality allows us to have this diversity and this openness and freedom that we all like so much about the internet, both in terms of our fundamental rights, which we enjoy in this medium of more than in the analogue physical world, and at the
03:01
same time also its economic freedom. It is freedom of competition. It is the freedom of ideas. Yeah, I would say basically the things that people like about the internet, the revolutionary potential, that's all stuff that's tied to net neutrality. This idea that before, if you wanted to speak, you needed to be a journalist or be able to report it by television
03:25
or newspapers, and that now you can basically just go online and reach people around the world at low cost, and that's pretty cool. And that's what net neutrality wants to preserve. Interestingly enough, because what we're going to talk about in the process is a very economic-driven process,
03:42
and everything that you've said is very, very political, which kind of, I guess, is linked to why you got active in this, so what's your personal motivation if you were to briefly say what got you excited about this, and why are you fighting for the future of the internet? Well, actually, I came through it through the economic
04:00
implications of net neutrality. I wrote my PhD about internet architecture and innovation, and the general idea was that Larry Lessig, one of the big internet gurus, had always said, oh, internet, the architecture of the internet was originally neutral, so they couldn't distinguish between the applications and content that were traveling over the network,
04:22
and we think that was good for innovation, but we don't really know, and so until we know, we should act on the assumption that that was really important, and I felt that was a pretty weak basis to engage in regulation, and so in my dissertation, I set out to say, well,
04:40
how does the internet architecture really influence innovation, and so 500 pages, so deep into network engineering, network architecture, economics of innovation, and then interestingly, the result was, wow, this has actually been really central for innovation, and so that's how I came to the problem, and then once people started to say,
05:04
well, the architecture of the internet is changing, and now internet service providers actually have the power to identify the applications on the network, how should we regulate that, it turned out that wasn't so simple, it's really easy to say,
05:20
I'm for net neutrality, but it's really hard to come up with good rules, and so then I thought it was just a really fascinating question, to how to find a good balance between all the different interests of the ISPs and users and innovators and speakers online, and so, I mean, to be fair, I think my role as an academic today
05:40
is to help people understand this really complicated topic. And I would say you just clarified for everyone in the room why exactly you're such an amazing expert to have on a panel, so in case anyone doubted that there's no expertise on that panel, I don't think we can get more than that, but your focus also with innovation, and you did your PhD in the US, right?
06:02
So your motivation, I guess, is more from the European contacts, so how did you get active in the savetheinternet.edu campaign? I mean, before the savetheinternet.edu campaign, there was this weird issue of net neutrality, when I, I was always like a civil society person, when I was really young, I started LGBT work,
06:22
and then I did a lot of work in anti-racism, and then when I had my first really boring job, I started to listen to podcasts, and so I came into the hacker scene, and then I found out that there are digital rights, and there is a really interesting debate about that with very interesting people, and for some reason,
06:42
I did not get bored, like normally I get bored after half a year, but in this field, I could just dig deeper and deeper, and then, yeah, net neutrality after data protection was kind of solved, and we had a lot of wins around data retention in Austria, I thought, okay, it's time for a new subject,
07:01
and net neutrality sounded really interesting, and I just read a lot about it, talked with many people about it, and particularly also read all the laws that at this time there were very few laws in the world around net neutrality, and that was a really good basis when the European Commission then started their net neutrality proposal, the law,
07:23
which is the reason why we are having this discussion here, I was in a poor position to do something about it, and so we were actually the first to start writing amendments about that law, and then in the discussion with the Brussels office of European Digital Rights, we had this idea of why not do a campaign, how should it be called,
07:42
let's call it Save the Internet, and that's basically the history of the first iteration of this campaign. Okay, great prompt, before we go into the process of explaining what's happened so far, how many people exactly are currently engaged in Save the Internet, when you say we, we did that, like how many people are behind such a campaign?
08:02
That's a good question, I mean, we had many new NGOs joining in recent months, so I think we are actually around 20, 25, something like that, all over Europe in a few global ones, and actually in the core team, I would say it's around 30 people all over Europe that work on this campaign, and those issues in general.
08:24
Before we go into the You process, do you know how many were active in the net neutrality public consultation process, and how many people advocated for that in the US? Do you have a number? I mean, we had four million people who filed comments in the public consultation with the US, in the US.
08:41
I think in general, we have a much broader community of people who care about net neutrality, and in the last iteration of the debate, none of the big companies was involved, and so that really made it a life or death question for startups and libraries and all those people who really depend on net neutrality,
09:02
and as a result, we didn't necessarily have a lot of money or people were doing this in their free time, or at night, and I had volunteers working with me who would just go home after work and then do research on the weekends. So, I mean, I do think in general that the public interest seen in internet policy
09:22
is a lot broader in the US than over here, and also it's not spread as much across the European member states, but still the general problem that we are totally outgunned by ISPs with lots of money, many lobbyists, and many lawyers is the same problem
09:41
over here and over there. Right, and I guess that kinda like, since we're looking for a new hope in Europe on net neutrality, we wanna have at least four million comments in the public consultation process, I would say, that's my goal, so you guys all gotta get active, but let's talk about the process so far. Do you wanna give a quick snapshot of how the EU process has worked so far
10:00
and why we have that regulation before we go into BEREC? Yeah, so basically, the history about net neutrality in Europe, it's actually not really complicated because most of the time, nothing happened. People started talking about net neutrality in 2007 after the American debate got really loud, and everybody was expecting that the European Commission
10:20
at some point would start proposing a law on net neutrality because it's just a very reasonable thing to do. It would profit the European economy as well as the fundamental rights, so everybody was just waiting on what the European Commission would do, but then nothing happened, and so actually two countries in Europe started adopting their own laws,
10:41
first the Netherlands and then Slovenia, and we had four reports of the European Parliament, which are like a statement of will. In all of these four reports, European Parliament said, we are for net neutrality, we want a law on this, we want to protect internet freedom, and so we thought, okay, it's just a question of time,
11:03
and the Commission thought so as well. Neely Cruz, the predecessor to the former Commission before Ginter Ettinger, waited a really long time, almost to the end of her mandate till September, 2013, and then she proposed this huge law, which was also incorporating a little bit
11:22
about net neutrality, but it was also talking a lot about roaming, about frequencies, about all those loosely related telecom issues, and September, 2013 actually was really late, because if you remember, in May, 2014, we had elections on the European Parliament,
11:42
which means half a year before election, everybody stops working, everybody is basically going back to their home country and trying to win a seat for the next Parliament, and so that was quite complicated to get this dossier through, but there was roaming. Roaming was a really populist issue, which is essential to understand how this dossier came about,
12:05
because roaming is like the carrot in front of the European Parliament. Every politician wants to go home with a huge victory, and killing roaming charges, the things which makes using our phones outside of our home country so expensive,
12:20
is some really populist argument, something where European politicians can get a lot of plus points in their home countries, and so this dossier, this part of the dossier was the reason why we actually got this through before the election, and in April, 2014,
12:40
we had a huge win in the European Parliament, and the law that the Commission proposed had net neutrality written on top of it, but it was actually the opposite. It was basically legalizing all forms of network discrimination, and the Parliament turned this around. They gave it real net neutrality law, which repaired all of these problems,
13:04
but it's not only the Parliament that makes laws. We also had the Council, which is basically the 28 member states. They then reversed the clock back to anti-net neutrality, and so we had two versus one when all those free institutions
13:21
entered into a really, really weird thing called trial law, so free institutions talk and negotiate about the final law, and this is the most secretive negotiation process in all of Europe, where you basically have no information. You don't know who is talking at which meeting
13:40
about which topic, but at the end, you have a final law, and it's really undemocratic and really transparent, and yeah, they came to an agreement at the summer of 2015, and in October 2015, the European Parliament adopted a law which is a mixed bag.
14:01
We tried to get amendments through. We tried to clarify a lot of the ambiguous language, but yeah, we did not succeed with amendments, and now we have a law which you can read either as net neutrality or no net neutrality. It's a little bit like Schrodinger's ket. Just picking up on, because I think if you're not part of the European process,
14:21
identifying those actors and understanding their roles is not actually easy, so just recently, I've been, because you said data protection were all solved, I wouldn't necessarily agree, so I was at a talk with Jan Philipp Albrecht, who's the rapporteur on the dossier on data protection in the EU, and he compared when asked about how to portray those three main actors which were the same
14:44
in a really short sentence. He basically said, so the European Parliament is Middle Earth. These are little hobbits fighting for freedom. Then the Commission, which used to be good, but kind of fell over, is Isengard, and then the Council just is Mordor, which basically tries to destroy everything else
15:02
that the little hobbits are fighting for. Do you feel that if you, like the process that you've just described, I heard, like I was trying to follow this from the Lord of the Rings perspective, and I kind of feel this fits. I'm not sure you agree, but like maybe to make it a little more plastic. Kind of. I mean, the analogy almost fits. I would change it a little bit and say the European Parliament was Gondor.
15:21
It was like this human kingdom, which also used to be good, but then they had a really corrupt king that sold the whole region out. And in the data protection regulation, we had a really good rapporteur, Dan Philipp Alberst. He's a green politician, and he actually cared about data protection,
15:41
which was the main reason why Trilog was so successful. They actually got a lot of the good stuff in the final law, because they had a good negotiator there. And sadly, in this dossier, on net neutrality, we had a really bad rapporteur. Pilar El Castillo, she's a Spanish conservative.
16:01
People say she was always in the pocket of the telecom industry, and so she never really cared about fundamental rights, about neutrality, about the freedom of the internet. She just wanted to do something which is positive for the telecom industry. And she was negotiating on behalf of the European Parliament with the other two institutions.
16:22
And although formally she would have been bound to the first reading agreement that the whole Parliament agreed in plenary, she still sold us out on many of those points and did not really negotiate for net neutrality, but opened up many of the loopholes and ambiguities that we now have in this law.
16:42
It's kind of a little gloomy, so rather than Middle Earth, we now have Gondor. But maybe if we look into what have we learned from that process so far, that also means that individuals matter. It's not just the process, but it actually matters who's in charge of the dossier, which might also be something that other regions come up with.
17:01
As in, yeah, you can make a difference, which is why we're also here, because with that rapporteur thing that had such an effect on the trilogue. So I guess, is that one of the takeaways that you would have from that campaign so far? Yes, the rapporteur matters enormously, and you have to get a good rapporteur for a dossier to be a win.
17:23
And what we always know, we are good in Parliament, but we are bad in Council, and we are really bad in trilogue. And what we need to learn is pan-European campaigning. We need to be able to fight for digital rights issues in all of those countries in Europe, and not just Germany, not just France. We need to actually be able to have
17:41
one common European debate, which is hard in 28 countries and 24 languages. Yeah, and I think part of the problem is that many journalists only report on stuff that happens in Europe until after it has been adopted. And that's a real problem if you wanna get people to pay attention and understand what's going on.
18:01
And so I do think the thing to learn from that is that we need to learn earlier so that people can actually do something. I mean, so far, the process, okay, lessons learned. We need to come early. We're trying to come early with a second stage because right now, as you already mentioned,
18:20
we are left with a regulation that leaves quite a few gray areas that leave room for interpretation. And the question of how to interpret them and how to move forward and develop guidelines for implementation, we need to know what the problems are. So talking about the core problems with the regulation that we're going to consult on, we're going through them bit by bit. So maybe we're all starting with the specialized,
18:41
services, what does that mean? And what's the problem? So specialized services isn't necessarily that thing. The general idea there is that the open internet may not be able to support all of the applications that we can envision. And so there might be some applications who really need very special treatment from the network.
19:03
People have a hard time coming up with concrete examples, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. So let's just imagine this hypothetical unicorn that we are not getting because the open internet can't support it. And so to provide a vehicle for those kinds of services,
19:21
the regulation allows so-called specialized services that are also provided over the internet infrastructure, but run separately from the open internet. So far, that's not a problem. The problem is that the definition of specialized service of when it's allowed to be offered is so loosely formulated that you could use it
19:42
to circumvent the rules prohibition on fast lanes. So the normal internet rules say internet service providers are not allowed to offer fast lanes to a fee to application and content providers. So Google or Facebook can't pay to be put in a fast lane.
20:00
So that's good. But the problem is the ISPs now say that they think by labeling something as a specialized service, they can now start offering fast lanes to totally normal internet applications that function over the normal internet so that you can basically buy yourself a competitive advantage.
20:21
And so the problem is not the existence of fast lanes as such. It's where to draw the line between the legitimate specialized services that we want because they encourage innovation and the ones that would just be a circumvention of the general internet rules. I still kind of actually struggle with what a concrete example is.
20:42
If I remember correctly, then we've just been at the session of Commissioner Ertinger, who was here earlier. He's always talking about those self-driving cars. Is that really the kind of thing that we're looking into as that's valid? Is that really, how do we deal with arguments like that? I think that's a side battle
21:02
because nobody disagrees that there might be services, even though we can't define them or sort of put our finger on them, that might benefit from that treatment. For me personally, maybe the one that comes closest is remote surgery. Yeah, absolutely. If someone is doing remote surgery,
21:22
then we want those packets to have very, very stringent requirements in terms of reliability and delay. Of course, that's not really what we are talking about because a lot of what we worry about is sort of fast lanes on the last mile to the consumer, and I probably wouldn't be doing remote surgery
21:41
from my home. But I really don't think that's the problem. Let's concede that. That's a sensible idea. The problem is where to draw the line. And as we all know, so Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges said, we think this regulation allows us
22:01
to offer fast lanes to normal internet applications like online gaming and video conferencing for a fee. And that's a real problem because it would fundamentally change how the internet has operated. So far, everybody gets to use this on the same terms. I pay my ISP and the application providers
22:21
pays their ISP and then the networks in the middle figure out how to move the money around so that everybody gets compensated. And that has kept the cost of starting new businesses incredibly low. If you don't do internet businesses, then you might not really understand how low, but it's sort of in the tens of dollars
22:42
or thousands of dollars, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars. When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, it costs him $50. When Reddit was started, they had $12,000. They were recent graduates. And in the US open internet proceeding, that was one of the big questions
23:00
that our regulatory agency, the Federal Communications Commission had to grapple with. Is it really such a problem if you can start paying for fast lanes? And so it was actually pretty tricky because the path to the good rule was viewed as the nuclear option, something that had high political cost.
23:22
And so the politicians really needed to be convinced that this is important. And the regulatory agency originally said, we think it's not a problem. We think the internet can change. We think we can save innovation by making sure that the slow lane isn't too bad. If you have a fast lane and a faster lane,
23:43
then startups can start with the normal lane and then graduate to the fast lane once they get successful. And that created a big outcry where more than four million people filed comments and all the startups said, no, it's not just Google, Facebook, Yahoo, which were founded under these conditions.
24:00
This is not sort of the good old days, but today things are different. We today build our companies with very little money. We don't get in venture capital unless we have about a million users. And so if you forced us to pay just in order to be competitive with established companies,
24:20
then we just wouldn't have a chance. And I think that's the key thing that regulators and politicians are grappling with. That if you come from a world where you don't deal with internet startup, that doesn't make any sense. Because if you want to start a bakery, of course you have lots of costs. And then you go to the bank and you get a loan, and that's it.
24:41
And so understanding that that's not how the internet economy has operated and what we would lose by changing that, that's huge. Right. And there's actually a really important point to note here because in the US you had a debate about paid fast lanes. And you just gave us the argument why these don't make sense,
25:01
at least not from an innovator's perspective. But in Europe we had a debate about specialized services. Those magical unicorns that nobody has ever seen, that nobody can give you an example. They are for sure not remote surgeries because they almost never exist. I think also not self-driving cars because we have tunnels, we have rural areas.
25:21
So there is just no coverage in any cell phone network. And we spent so much of the negotiation time too deciding about specialized services. And when we look around at the other net neutrality laws around the world, actually no other legislator tried to define specialized services. I think in the US it was just a footnote
25:41
that solved the whole problem. And it took enormous energy in Europe to just discuss something. And now we have this law and we'll talk about the regulatory implementation. But one of the real funny things is that there is actually a regulatory problem that our telecom regulators are faced with
26:01
because we have this great new definition which should allow for future innovation as specialized services. And existing specialized services like weather stations are actually not covered in this definition. So they really spent a lot of effort to write a law which fails on almost all categories.
26:22
I mean, to kind of bring this a little together, my background is working in government. So why we ended up with this is also because the difference with the US is we have 28 member states trying to find a compromise. And compromise language often ends up being very fake
26:42
and leaves room for interpretation. So that's yet another challenge that we're actually dealing with that the regulation is also incredibly fake because compromise and translation issues made this whole regulatory process very, very difficult. And another issue that came up and that we need to focus on in the now public consultation process
27:00
is the traffic management aspect. Do you wanna just briefly explain what that entails? Yeah, basically traffic management is what an ISP does day by day to just get its normal network operational. So you do this, for example, because you have congestion because it's 8 p.m., everybody comes home, uses the internet, and the capacity
27:21
that you have available in your network is just not sufficient for the demand that the users produce. And so this is a case where an ISP can legitimately start managing the network, but there are various forms how an ISP can actually do does that. And one way of doing it, which is also the way which worked really well in the US
27:42
is to do it application agnostic so that the ISP is actually not differentiating between the applications, but uses some other criteria. For example, consumption-based congestion management where I just say, okay, the users that have used the most of their network capacity
28:00
in the last hour, they're a little bit throttled, but actually it's just a pipe that's getting a little bit smaller. I'm not prioritizing individuals' applications in that pipe. There are other forms to say, like I have user-controlled quality of service flags where it's actually, for example, my Skype that says,
28:22
this is now a real-time voice connection and the application says, this is important, but not the ISP. Because whenever an ISP is given the power to discriminate, to distinguish between applications, there is an inherent problem with that because you have an almost infinite amount of applications
28:40
that are often also encrypted in a way so you cannot really see what's inside if you don't use deep packet inspection. And there are many problems that arise and traffic management is a quite complicated issue and the regulation actually gives us quite a solid legal basis to cover that
29:01
and we're just saying there's a threefold hierarchy. So whenever you can solve a problem, you should do it as application agnostic as possible. I think the general idea is pretty simple. The general idea is that even if there is congestion, we still want the internet to remain a level playing field where users decide how they want to use the network
29:22
and every application has an equal chance of getting to use it. And it's not this idea of an ISP picking and choosing who gets which treatment. And that would be totally irrelevant if there wasn't another way. But as we have now seen in the US and in Canada
29:40
for almost 10 years, if we have had this kind of network management prescribed by the regulator since 2008, networks work really well with that. And so this has pretty important implications for how we experience the internet. Apart from experience the internet,
30:01
that deep packet inspection for a human rights perspective also has huge privacy concerns. Another issue that is currently in the gray zone is also zero rating, which I would say is quite a big issue for freedom of speech. How do you feel about that? And what does the regulation say? Yeah, so zero rating is the exemption
30:20
of applications from users' data caps. Right now most of us have data caps, at least on our mobile networks, often also on fixed internet service. And so usually if you use an application, it counts against the cap. And if an ISP zero rates an application in Germany, for example, Deutsche Telekom zero rates Spotify,
30:41
then using Spotify doesn't count against the cap. And some people think, well, the data packets are still being treated in the same way. So if I use Spotify on Deutsche Telekom's network, the Spotify packet comes to me at the same speed as any other packet, whether it's Pandora or SoundCloud.
31:03
And so they say, so see, that means it's not a net neutrality problem. And what this view neglects is that users strongly prefer zero rated content. There are now a lot of studies that show that experiments, they did one in the US where they had the same podcast for,
31:21
where they offered the same podcast to some users on a zero rated basis, and for others, they counted against the cap. And users who were offered the zero rated podcast were 61% more likely to click on it. So a huge impact on user behavior. What does that mean? Well, zero rating is just another tool
31:41
to favor some applications over others. And as a result, it creates exactly the same problems as technical forms of discrimination. And that means if we have a regulatory regime that has great rules for technical discrimination, but allows all forms of zero rating, then we have effectively made the law meaningless.
32:01
And the interesting feature with the European situation right now is that it's not clear what the regulation says. You know, the public interest groups say, well, actually the rule bans all forms of zero rating. And then the ISP say, no, the rules allow all forms of zero rating. And I would probably say, well, the rules prohibit the bad forms of the zero rating,
32:24
but allow the good ones. That shows you sort of the range. And now the regulators have to figure out what to do. And again, there isn't a lot at stake. You know, you mentioned democracy. Part of what we are worried with paid fast lanes is that it's not just an economic problem for startups
32:42
or small businesses who can't pay to be in the fast lane. Part of what was so exciting about the internet was that you didn't need a lot of money to speak to people on the same terms as others. No matter how rich you are, you can get to people. So now the law says in general,
33:01
you cannot charge people to be in the fast lane, but then you can turn around and say, well, now just pay us to be zero rated, but a startup that doesn't, can't pay to be in the fast lane, can't pay to be zero rated. And all these groups, you know, net activists,
33:20
independent artists, bloggers, new media, they can't pay to be zero rated either. And as a result, you get the same distortion of two classes, the kind of content this user prefer that's zero rated. That's what the rich people get and all the rich speakers get. And then the other stuff that counts against your cap
33:41
where everybody's really wary because you don't really want to get to your cap. And so that's part of the problem that we are worried about. Do you wanna add to that? Or otherwise I would ask about like the global context, because we've just had this major win in India, for instance, and their zero rating is clearly banned. So like, is that something that you wanna like
34:02
little elaborate so that we have an idea of what we can tap into for our argumentation? Yeah, part of what's interesting in India is that they did a public consultation just about zero rating. And there is this prejudice that people don't really care about zero rating because it's free and who doesn't like free stuff? And so a lot of politicians are actually worried
34:23
to touch zero rating because they say, oh, people will be really mad at us because we are taking free Spotify away from them. And what they don't really see is sort of how limiting it is. You know, if Deutsche Telekom gives you all this bandwidth for Spotify,
34:40
why not give you the same bandwidth for a streaming service of your choice? Or they don't really see sort of the negative incentives that creates for the ISPs. You know, you only wanna pay for zero rating if bandwidth caps are really low. And we now have a lot of data that shows that in Europe when ISPs started to zero rate content,
35:03
they afterwards either reduced bandwidth caps or increased the price of unrestricted bandwidth. And so basically that means as users we suffer because zero rating creates an incentive to lower bandwidth caps. And so we have less bandwidth available that allows us to choose the network
35:21
in the way that we want. So, but politicians, as they say, think, oh, no, my God, we can't touch it because people will be mad because we're taking away free stuff. And so India is interesting because they had in the second part of the consultation alone where they were just asking questions about zero rating,
35:40
they had 2.4 million people commenting on zero rating. And that was particularly remarkable because people always say, well, maybe zero rating is a problem in developed countries, but in developing countries that's different. And Facebook was pushing this product called internet.org
36:02
that where they enter into contracts with ISPs and then the ISP gives people access to a zero rated set of applications that is part of internet.org and that's sort of low bandwidth. And so people said, of course, people in developed countries will be happy.
36:21
Some internet is better than no internet. And the Indians said, no, our startups will suffer. The Americans, large companies, Google, Facebook, Netflix, they can pay to be zero rated, but our startups can't. And we want Indian startups. We want to hear from Indian voices.
36:41
We don't just wanna hear from the largest established media who can pay to be zero rated. And so it was really interesting because there was this huge mobilization in India and in the end, the Indian regulator adopted really nuanced rules for zero rating where they basically prohibit the bad kinds of zero rating,
37:03
zero rating against a fee and zero rating an individual application in a class of similar applications, but no fee or zero rating a whole class of applications, but they still allow other sort of beneficial forms of zero rating. And so in that way, it's basically a model for what we could do here.
37:22
Absolutely. And actually, you already mentioned the Netherlands and Slovenia. I know that in the Netherlands, there's also just in February been a judgment which also banned zero rating in the Netherlands. How is that, like the regulation, like the law legislation in the Netherlands affected now from the regulation?
37:40
Do you wanna explain that very quickly? The Netherlands adopted the neutrality law, which is actually quite good and also has a clear ban on zero rating. And then of course, the European regulation is above that because it is a European law and it's also a regulation. So it does not have to be transposed to national law. And you would have thought that, okay, good.
38:01
Now the Dutch law is just dead. But the Dutch parliament is now in the last stages of adopting a law, which will replace the previous one, but implement the regulation and just oblige the national legislation with the new European standard. And the law they will adopt is actually a complete ban
38:23
on all forms of zero rating. So they are exactly following our argumentation in interpreting these new European rules. So we cannot be that off. And again, it is good because the Netherlands are really sensitive about this issue. And I've been traveling a lot
38:40
to speak with telecom regulators all over Europe. And we have a very different set of debates. There are in every country, a few experts that follow the international debates, but from a public opinion perspective, we are just at really different stages, I would say. In Germany, in France, in the Netherlands, and maybe also in Austria, the debate is quite advanced.
39:03
But there are other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe and in Sweden, where the debate is just never happened. And so people just have to learn about what net neutrality actually is and how it will impact them. Before we go to the call to action of what everyone can do, just saying it already, like think about what questions you have.
39:21
We're gonna open the floor basically after this one call where both Barbara and Tom are gonna tell you why we need to get active, when exactly, and what we can do. So you wanna start as in, you wanna start? Okay, you start. So what's the process, what can we do, when exactly, and who helps us? Good, so you can go now to safetyinternet.eu
39:44
and there is really easy, simple tool that you can use to make your voice heard. You've seen in the US and in India how important it is, how huge effect it can have if people make their voices heard,
40:00
if they actually participate in such consultations. And if you tell your own story, maybe how the internet influenced your education, your business life, your private life, all those things matter if you think about it in terms of freedom of speech of net neutrality. And our tool makes it really simple for people to participate in this consultation.
40:22
Formally, the official consultation of BEREC will only start at early June this year and go till the 18th of July, which is actually a little bit of a flaw in the system because it is in summer, I know, that's not really the best time for political campaigns. Also, BEREC only has a few weeks
40:42
to analyze all those comments because the law sets a hard deadline at the end of August at which the guidelines that BEREC will create, it will govern how we have net neutrality in Europe. They have to come at the end of August. This deadline is just theoretical. I mean, they could break it if they really want to.
41:02
Again, if we are successful in the consultation that there is a chance that BEREC just says, okay, we need more time, and nobody would object to that. But going to save the internet, inform yourself, we spend a lot of time in the FAQs and you'll find a lot of background information about the issue itself,
41:21
about the other debates in India and in the US. And then just make your voice heard and tell other people about it because especially the context in which you are made, be it your company or your student association or your digital rights NGO, there are many things where you can connect to
41:41
and where people can actually engage institutions to participate in this consultation. It was not just private individuals that managed to achieve such high numbers of comments in the US. It was also that people went to their company, went to their boss and convinced him to say something about net neutrality
42:01
or go to your university and speak with the people there. And getting those other actors involved helps us a lot in making obvious and making clear how diverse this topic actually is. Yeah, the one thing I would say, I think sometimes if you're not an expert,
42:20
there is this tendency to say, well, what do I have to offer? And I think it helps to think about the problem in two ways. There are two separate question. One is the legal interpretation. And if I'm a normal user, then you don't need to engage in legal interpretation. But then there is also the policy issue. With a law like this,
42:41
it supports two different interpretations so lawyers won't be able to solve it. So in the end, it's a policy judgment call. And for that policy judgment, that's where people come in, where if you can explain I'm a startup and when I got started, we had that kind of investment
43:00
and here's why we wouldn't be able to pay for Fastlane. Or I'm a student, I have a website, whatever. Basically, those experiences that are relevant to the question of how would allowing Fastlanes, how would allowing zero rating change your experience, that is a real contribution
43:21
that is helpful for the regulators. And so the tools that they put up at safetyinternet.eu, they actually help you sort of structure your input at the right points. And then when the draft guidelines come out, I would expect that you guys ago, people will publish sort of analyses relatively early.
43:44
And then I think the one thing to keep in mind is some stuff might be really bad and some stuff might be not too bad. And that might make you think, oh, it's not too bad so maybe I don't need to pay attention anymore. And there, of course, the things that are looking good
44:03
are the ones that will trigger an enormous lobbying push by the internet service providers. And so no matter what the draft guidelines say, we will need widespread public support for the good solution. So apart from generating diverse audiences
44:22
to bring that topic really to everyone, to explain it and to make sure that we also have the media coverage, et cetera, I think the easy step that everyone can do, a really, really cool tool that's on there is you basically go on, answer a few questions and that generates an email for you which you can automatically send to your regulator.
44:40
So it basically interacts for you and makes that possible already like in advance to the actual consultation because the time is so limited that being active over summer when you're actually supposed to be on holiday, and I know everyone's busy with everything else but you wanna save the internet, you can do that already. So that's actually really easy. So apart from doing all that, trying to amplify voices,
45:03
this is something you can do right now. So I would really encourage everyone to do that. And apart from that, are there any questions? We do have a microphone in the audience so please just give us a hand sign if there's anything that we haven't covered, if you need more examples, if you wanna know how else you can get active,
45:20
like translating, helping sort out the code, all these kind of things, it's all possible. It's a tech conference so be creative, ask questions. I'm here. Just put up your hand. Don't be shy. We don't bite because there's actually space between you and us.
45:42
There's a hand right over there. My question is what can we do to get this topic a bit out of the expert field and into the broader public?
46:06
That's like the big question. And when we learn from the successes from other regions, which is really something that we should do, we need funny people. We need funny people to explain this complex technical legal issue in a way
46:22
which connects with people. In the U.S. we had John Oliver. In India also before the big spike in comments happened because before journalists started writing about it, you had a group of comedians that made a really funny video. And so it is not us as the guys that read the law,
46:42
that write the analysis, that make the website. It is actually you need an intermediary that sums it up. Because in my experience, the deeper you get into the legal debate and into the technicalities of the debate, you're losing this ability to actually make it sound easy,
47:01
which is yeah, a bad trade off. Any podcasters in the room who might wanna like volunteer for doing some comedic like European white show or something now? Yeah, but even just talking to your friends about it, I know I have a lot of students and I teach classes on net neutrality
47:21
and they usually start with the students thinking, oh, the internet is the way it always was. And then suddenly they think, oh, this might all change so I might want to do something about it. And then they say, oh, it's so cool. At parties I can talk about net neutrality, which maybe tells you about how different the U.S. debate is, where people actually think this is a sexy party topic.
47:43
But as a result, it's really interesting that everybody and their grandmother knows about net neutrality. When I buy coffee on the train, the person who sells me the coffee knows about net neutrality. When I'm waiting at the White House to get in,
48:00
and you know, as a foreigner, you're not allowed to walk through the White House without someone who is accompanying you. And so then I usually talk with the security people. They know about net neutrality. And so you only get there because it's in the media, people blog about it, but also people share this on Facebook,
48:21
they talk to their friends, they tell their parents about it, and those are pretty simple things that people can do. And I think it's easy over here because it seems so remote. You know, Barrick, 28 regulatory agencies doing stuff behind closed doors, that it doesn't feel as if it affects you directly.
48:41
But I think this can really fundamentally change how the internet works. Absolutely. There's another question. Yeah, does it work? Okay, maybe I wasn't paying attention enough or maybe I don't just understand European law. I'm from Denmark. We don't discuss net neutrality much in Denmark, actually.
49:01
But I was wondering, you're talking about the Netherlands imposing a very strict law, which is stricter than the EU law. Is it possible for the local, for the national parliaments to actually impose a law that is stricter, more positive towards net neutrality than just sort of imposing the EU law?
49:23
That's the beauty of it, because it's just interpreting, you know, you have to amend your national legislation if there comes newer European legislation that's above it, particularly if it is a regulation, because your national law has always to be in line with what the European law says.
49:40
But you can be more specific. You can just not contradict what the European law says. And what the Dutch government is doing is basically following their reading of the European law and just making it more concrete. And they are using the mandate which they have in amending their previous legislation. But yeah, it is a little bit of a weird thing to do.
50:02
And also Beric is talking about implementation guidelines. So they're discussing of how can it be implemented, which already tells you there's different ways to do this and different readings into this. So of course, there's certain leverage, which also means if certain governments are already active in this and certain routes are already put into national context,
50:21
that actually helps our argument if these are strong, because then you can say like, hey, it's already been practiced and it's working really well. So that just feeds into making sure that these are very clear, because ultimately you don't want different interpretations because the goal was to harmonize the digital market. So that of course should be the main goal. But yes, there is ways to interpret the law.
50:44
It's also maybe sort of one additional aspect. In general, the idea was, and that's different from the net neutrality rules Europe had before. Before it was the member states could go further than what was happening at the European level. And this law was designed to prevent that
51:02
and basically exclusively regulate net neutrality at the European level. But with respect to zero rating, there is a lot of debate. Some people, so basically people say in the negotiation, they agree to not cover zero rating as part of the regulation. That apparently is not how people view it anymore,
51:23
but the law can be interpreted that with respect to zero rating, it basically allows, it potentially allows national member states to go further and then prescribe some minimum moments when regulators need to intervene.
51:42
But that is relatively special to zero rating. And we really had confusion about this from the beginning. I mean, in the press conference, when the law was adopted, the rapporteur said on a question from a journalist, no, zero rating is not covered in this regulation. Commissioner Ertinger sat beside her at that moment
52:04
and did not object. And then afterwards the European Commission said, yeah, it's kind of covered, but also okay and not prohibited. And now a few hours ago, Commissioner Ertinger was answered this question if zero rating is allowed or not.
52:21
And he also said, no, we'll have to see, we have to make a practical test before we know the law that we worked two years on, what it actually says on that issue. So I also think that there is intentional confusion in some parts and this ambiguity at the end is helping nobody.
52:41
Not even the telecom industry is happy with legal uncertainty. And especially so we as consumers, as human rights activists, and also not the people that would invest in European startups, because I cannot invest if I'm not sure that this business model will even work in the European network in a few years time.
53:02
Are there more questions from the audience? Oh yeah, there's one more. Oh yeah, hi, I'm from India. And you're right. I mean, most of us started talking about net neutrality only after seeing the funny video, but then, and it had a link to it. So all you have to do is click the link. There was a template. You just put your name, email ID, and you send it. It's not really a debate.
53:22
It was just sort of enough to see that and yeah, it does sound wrong and you send it. So is it something like that you're trying here? And secondly, in India, Facebook became the face of zero rating and it's quite easy to hate Facebook in India. I mean, it is an American corporation trying to kill our companies. So is there a similar sentiment here?
53:42
I would say it is similar but different. I mean, this issue of digital colonialism was maybe the prime motivator in India. In the US, I think it was mostly freedom of speech and this also came out of an analysis that being American means being able to connect to different opinions.
54:02
The framing in Europe is mostly as industry policy, as a digital single market issue. And so we have very abstract debate in some parts here. And the point where we were strong in first reading, when we send 40,000 faxes to European Parliament,
54:20
it was also just a one click campaign, which made it easy for people to make their voices heard. The current tool that we have on safety internet is a little bit more complex, but it tries to strike a balance between creating really unique and individual comments in the consultation, but at the same time, making it easy for people to just write one or two
54:41
sentences about what they think. And so kind of doing both at the same time. And to answer your question, as in whether Facebook can be like the enemy, I think for like, at least from a German perspective, Facebook is more an enemy to privacy. So like that link is very, very much on that note, rather than net neutrality also because free basics
55:02
is not as such offered. The zero rating services that are often offered are on top of data caps that you already have. So it's not like the start to get to the internet. So that's why it's really hard to politicise that in that way, so we don't have that momentum, which is why we need other ways to make things more tangible, I would say, from my perspective.
55:22
More questions there? Does anyone feel you're now prepped to go on the savetheinternet.eu page, click and send your emails? I want to see all your hands up as getting active. Awesome, there's still another question. There wasn't just a hand sign of getting active. Sorry, I'm sitting here in the back. I can't see you, yes.
55:42
Okay, I have to get up. Okay, that's me, my name is Wolf. Thank you for your enthusiasm. I followed today Barbara's speech, and before that we had Mr. Erting on stage.
56:01
And I think it should have been the other way around. I think it should be her to give the major speak and have Mr. Ertinger listen to her and ask him to answer her statements. I think we are playing something wrong. We are already playing the potential role of being losers
56:25
and I think we have to find for means where we actually have the power to be successful. You gave some good examples, to be witty, to be tricky, to be all kind of things. In all German ways we had a word which is out of space now
56:43
saying, in der Stacke arm es will stehen alle Rieder stil. You know? We need something in this now in our debate. And I would like, what are our tools which we really have in power
57:01
to compete in this struggle for equality? Thank you. If I just made one thing about being enthusiastic, that picture which is like, if you're strong enough you make things stop. We don't want to stop things, we want to keep things moving, which is why we want the internet to be free. That would be my enthusiastic statement to that but I'm sure the others have something else to say to that.
57:23
You want to comment? I don't know. I mean that's an old workers union song that you were quoting. Certainly we have no union of internet users but in principle something like this is needed and I'm really happy to say
57:41
that more consumer protection organizations are joining safety internet. Particularly in Eastern European countries where there is no strong digital rights NGO seen. But they all recognize that neutrality is a core issue for them and that they have to work on it. And so I think that a lot of the sensitivity is there.
58:01
You know it's interesting, of course there is a lot of education behind the scenes. I'm talking with a lot of policy makers around the world and in the US. And these debates are ultimately successful through doing two things at the same time. You need the right arguments and you need public pressure behind them.
58:22
And if one of both is missing, you lose. You can have the best arguments but if policy makers feel it's just minority, nobody cares, they will not act because it's painful. And so I mean one thing I think happens in Germany that a lot of politicians don't really know about this
58:41
and even if they do, they think people don't care. And so even just calling your member of parliament and say what do you do for zero rating, what do you do for net neutrality actually makes a difference because it shifts the debate in a way that shows people that people care.
59:00
Of course that doesn't necessarily help with what Günter Ertigner thinks or doesn't think but of course he isn't the only person engaged in the decision. So from our side we would say thanks. We'll definitely keep fighting. We hope you join us. If there's no more questions then thanks for your attention.