FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, AND THE NET UNIVERSALITY AND NEUTRALITY

Digital Age is already here, and it is generating a radical redefinition of the societies running, fundamentally based on the ability to directly sharing and on the free contents and knolewdge contribution.

Internet has got, not only that papers are late, that TV shares has come to a standstill -as it also happens with the radio- and that all of them lose the power to silence the things that are not of interest for somebody. It has also generated a global and shared information system, where manipulation is increasingly more difficult and where the citizen gain more prominence, stop being part of an indiferentiated mass to turn into cybercitizenship.

The new technological scene makes possible a dialog among the citizens and with the public powers too, where the role of the middleman or proxy loses its very reason for being, and that happens in the economic field as well as in the political one. That is why we believe that representative democracy must adapt to the new era and to become more participative, more direct, more informational, more supportive and mmore global, in keeping with the emerging society.

From this perspective, regulation of information and communication technologies is the new battlefield where the fight for civil rights takes place, so we would like to raise awareness on the following issues:

1. THE TELECOM PACKAGE

At the present time, so close to the elections to the European Parliament, is compulsory to refer to the debate initiated in July, 2008 on the Telecom Package, that is turning out to be everything excepting peaceful.

The basic object of the package is the new european radioelectric spectrum and the new broad band network that will be released from now on, and up to 2012, which will allow ISPs to use it, thus accessing to an even faster and cheaper information transmission. Something that should not pose any problem.

However, via last minute amendments that had nothing to do with the goal of the measures, they tried to torpedo the civil rights accross the Net, since they planned that National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) could impose ISPs the obligation to jointly work with the "private police" of the content producers and the copyright holders in order to monitor users when they would access to "unsafe" places, emptying the competence of judges and Courts of Justice, in favour of private actors and surveillance and filtering "technical measures", or the so-called "trusted computing".

Civil rights defence organizations all over Europe have crashed head on to these measures and we have got to frustrate the freedom-killer project by now, although they keep insisting. We need your help!

2. ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION PROTECTION AND SECURITY

Lately, under the excuse of security, childhood defense, copyright, etc, -the specific excuse does not matter- a philosophy of surveillance is gaining prominence, whose goal is the control of the citizen; and to succeed at it, this philosophy has at its disposal a whole technological arsenal as well as an instruction manual written by G. Orwell..."1984

Only a few will disagree that the State uses technology to fight delinquency. But a democratic state demands that the Power is transparent itself. Hence the measures to take, besides observing a regime of guarantees, must be public and well known, since this is the only way that citizens have to demand the law enforcement and the respect to their rights. Security of course, but not at the expenses of the rights that have taken so much to conquer. Thus, we warn of the need to reconsider the Directive 2006/24/CE and the Law 25/2007, Oct.18th, regarding data retention on electronic communications and public communication networks.

3. BROAD BAND

Universal public health system and education were the two major social achievements in the 20th. century. Now, adding technology is essential for this universality to be effective. The book is not the support of knowledge anymore, nor Universities and Colleges are its cathedrals. Knowledge is flowing towards the Net.

For the first time in the History of Mankind, information and communication technologies are making feasible the equality of opportunities in the access to knowledge. But for this equality to be real, the guarantee of the "broad band universality" is a must, for every people can enjoy a broad band access.

Not only for this, but also certain healthcare and welfare services, in a larger and larger extent, are rendered through telematic channels and this is also the way that citizens are starting to relate to the Administration. In short, broad band is the technological assumption without which, the full enjoy of the basic social rights like healthcare and education is not possible. To make this possible is essential to establish the minimum requirements to impose to ISPs on broad band,no matter the type of access chosen.

That is why we ask to guarantee the broad band access as an Universal Service, implemented through an European Directive, as well as through a National Law.

4. NET NEUTRALITY

Net Neutrality is one of the big principles of the foundation of the Internet. And it is basically expressed in the concept that, everything transmitted through the Net is transmitted the same way, without neither discriminating nor distinguishing the content of the packets. Neutrality supposes applying the same treatment to all data flowing through the Net, without neither priority nor hierarchy, as well as not preventing some of them to flow, for the Net being the same for everyone.

From the perspective of fundamental rights, Net Neutrality is the same as the principle of egality and no discrimination of the net users and its defense is essential in order to avoid that the future Internet ends up under the control of a few people.

Hence, we intend the Law to guarantee this principle.

5. COPYRIGHT AND THE DIGITAL TAX

The undersigned, although we understand that in the 21st. century copyright needs a rethinking and that the copyright term cannot keep extending constantly, also defend the unavoidableness to restore the balance between the individual author's right and the collective right to culture, and we remind that the Directive 2000/31/CE recommends negotiating codes of ethics.

However we must make an effort in harmonising the "old" individual author's right with everyone's right to access culture, and not only working on codes of ethics but also exploring new bussiness models. On its part, the content industry must come to terms that bussiness models unable to compete in the new technological scene, where cultural creation is developed, must disappear and cannot be artificially uphold at the expenses of the civil liberties, to turn the Exchequer in an open bar with access for a few to finance projects with no economic viability or founding privileges like the digital tax which, in crisis times like this one, is not only unsupportive but also deeply inmoral.