"Amendment 46 Article 1 – point 8 – point fb amending Directive 2002/21/EC Article 8 – paragraph 4 – point fb ... This amendment restores AM 138 adopted in 1st reading, which provides useful safeguards against other provisions laying grounds to "three-strikes approach" (graduated response). "
and inserts
(fb) applying the principle that no
restriction may be imposed on the
fundamental rights and freedoms of end-
users, without a prior ruling by 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, save when public security is
threatened in which case the ruling may
be subsequent.
(or Amendment 135, described as "Restores Amendment 138 of first reading, repeats Trautmann's 46" - I can't tell why there's a second amendment repeating an earlier one)
as opposed to Amendment 138 in the Harbour report, described as (in conjunction with Amendment 136 and 137 - again, there seem to be 3 amendments saying the exact same thing):
"AT&T amendment. Who determines what is justified or not? For operators, discrimination could be justified by profit (ie. forbidding VoIP on a mobile operator internet access). This is open door for net discrimination."
and text:
In order to address unjustified degradation of
service and hindering or slowing of traffic over
networks, Member States shall ensure that national
regulatory authorities are able to set minimum
quality of service requirements on an undertaking
or undertakings providing public communications networks.
Your concern in reply #10, about the creation of tiered services, seems more related to this:
One of the key groups campaigning for continued open access to the internet is French campaigning group La Quadrature du Net. According to La Quadrature, amendments (pdf) have been circulated recently by the British Government that would have the dual effect of introducing conditions of access to the internet – the subscription TV approach – and secondly, overriding the end-to-end principle of the internet.
Instead of users having virtually free access to the entire net, internet providers would be allowed to limit the number of websites that users can access, in exchange for a lower fee.
...
The UK has put forward amended text for article 8(4)(g) of one of the key directives in the Telecoms Package - the Framework Directive. Previously, it set out the duties of national regulators as, inter alia, applying the principle that end-users should be able to access and distribute information or run applications and services of their choice.
However, if the amendment is accepted, the directive will instead state that “there should be transparency of conditions under which services are provided, including information on the conditions of access to and/or use of applications and services, and of any traffic management policies".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/subscription_only_internet/While I can see that the UK government amendment, described in The Register article from March (which points to another Quadrature page), would allow a tiered system, there appears to be no sign of it in the Quadrature wiki page you linked to (or in the EU PDFs that links to). The wording about "fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users", which would go in the same section (8.4.fb, rather than 8.4.g) doesn't seem, to me, to be about a tiered system; and the one about "unjustified degradation of service and hindering or slowing of traffic over networks" is opposed by Quadrature because they don't like the idea of unspecified 'justification'.
All in all, it's confusing, and I don't think you should be surprised that people aren't up in arms about the amendments, for or against.
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