Paris, March 2nd − Rapporteurs for the European Parliament on the directives of the Telecoms Package, have just released their draft reports for the second reading. Some improvements were made, like the reintroduction of amendments 138 & 166. About “Net discrimination”, the worst was avoided, but there is still a blatant lack for clarification and concrete guarantees that Telecom operators won't be allowed full control over the Internet. La Quadrature du Net calls IMCO and ITRE members to vigilance in order to “patch” the last loopholes left open in this text.

Paris, Feb.16th - Amendments in the European Parliament to the "Telecoms Package" 1 may allow operators to take control of their customer's usage of the Net. According to amendments pushed by AT&T, "network management practices" could be used to discriminate what content, services and applications users could access and use.

• 1. Revision of five directives regulating electronic communication networks in Europe. More infos : http://www.laquadrature.net/Telecoms_Package

Paris, Jan 26th - The European Parliament's committee for legal affairs (JURI) voted the Medina report on Copyright last week. This report goes against its initial objective of responding to the Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Econnomy. This Green Paper implicitly acknowledged the failure of the 2001 copyright directive.

Paris, November 20th 2008 − Essential rights and freedoms for Internet users are at stake. On November 27th, The Council of EU may open the door to an pan-european "graduated response" by removing Amendment 138, voted by 88% of the European Parliament from the “Telecoms Package”. Academic studies confirm that the fundamental principles of proportionality and privacy may also be threatened by the ministers of the Member States, along with this blatant denial of everyone's right to a due trial.

Everybody agrees that European Union suffers from a democratic deficit which deepens the gap between European institutions and their citizens. What is more unknown is that one of main reasons for this is that Member States often use European Union to achieve what can be spelled as “political laundering”. The “Telecoms Package” gives a perfect example of such a deceptive maneuver, aimed at legalizing an european-wide "graduated response" against citizens, and stretching it even deeper as usual. How does it work?

A few weeks ago, the French law installing “graduated response” against Internet users was accepted by the French Senate1

• 1. Translation of the french law.

Brussels, Sept. 19th

On Monday, July 7th, the IMCO and ITRE committees of the European Parliament passed the review of European telecommunications law known as "Telecoms Package". All of the amendments damaging to the Internet, that were condemmed by la Quadrature du Net and numerous organizations, have been voted through.

Brussels, July 1st, 2008 - updated : July 2nd, 2008

One week before a key vote in the reform of European law on electronic communications ("Telecoms Package"), La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) denounces a series of amendments aimed at closing the open architecture of the Internet for more control and surveillance of users.

1984: The amendments on the Telecoms Package are killing fundamental freedoms

Brussels – Guy Bono is indignant about the freedom-killing amendments that have been submitted in the framework of the “Telecoms Package”, that is currently being discussed in the European Parliament.