Telecoms Package quick FAQ

Quick questions and answers

Quick questions and answers about the Telecoms Package.

All the reasoning and references behind the answers are in ”Landmarks in the Telecoms text”.

– Was this a victory?
Yes. The text is not perfect, but it’s a good step in the right direction.

– Does it contain ”prior”?
Yes.

– Will it stop Hadopi in France?
Catherine Trautmann says so, and she negotiated the package and is a French Socialist. Their results in the 2010 elections depend on her being right. So she’d better be.

– Will it stop the proposed law in the UK?
Yes, that law will clearly not be allowed, since it breaches a lot of the restrictions.

– But it doesn’t mention ”court”?
Instead it describes how a proper court functions. Innocent until proven guilty, right to be heard, due process. A proper court, in other words.

Maybe it is better to describe how a court functions than to use the word, considering how popular it seems to be among governments to take a judge with a rubber stamp and call it a court. It seems to be necessary to spell it out to some governments.

You already had these rights! This adds nothing!
That’s absolutely right. We already have the right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law, through Article 6 in the European Convention on Human Rights.

But unfortunately, some governments need to be reminded that our civil liberties are something they have to actually respect, and not just talk about.

This was just a first step. What we need is a proper Internet Bill of Rights. It’s not very difficult to write one. It’s mostly a question of pointing out to goverments who need it , that our traditional civil liberties apply to the internet and the information age as well.

Is this enough?
No. One can debate endlessly exactly how strong (or not) the safeguards are for due process if users are to be shut off the internet, but no matter how strong they may be, this is not enough.

Myself, I wouldn’t a approve any law that allows cutting off internet users at all, period. The Internet is an important part of society, and all our fundamental rights must apply there without limitation, as they do in the rest of our lives.

But we won’t get everything we want in a single battle, at least not right now. This is a first step in the right direction. But there’s a long way to go.

– Are we ready now?
This was just one battle, we have many more fights to win. But now we have shown we can do it.

– Whats next?
We will take an initiative for a proper Bill of Rights for the Internet. We want the Internet to continue to be free, open and exciting. Like it has been until now.

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