The EU is about to drop its policy on net neutrality, Deutsche Welle (DW) reports on Wednesday, citing information from the German business paper Handelsblatt.
(Photo: Lourdes Muñoz Santamaria/cc/flickr)As the U.S.-based organization Free Press describes it,
Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers [ISPs] may not discriminate between different kinds of online content and apps. It guarantees a level playing field for all websites and Internet technologies.
Net Neutrality is the reason the Internet has driven online economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech. It protects our right to use any equipment, content, application or service without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data – not choose which data to privilege with higher-quality service and which to demote to a slower lane.
According to the reporting by the German papers, the EU had a policy that prevented ISPs from such data privileging, but the EU Commission appears to be about to backtrack on that with a new policy that would leave ISPs and content providers “free to negotiate agreements on volume tariffs and different qualities of data transmission for Internet users.”
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Republished with permission from: Common Dreams