La Quadrature du Net and Net Neutrality

la quadrature du net - squaring the internet

In today's Jus de Pomme I talked about the civil rights organisation "La Quadrature du Net". As promised, I've put up the links to all the sites I mentioned.

In order to understand the problems of copyright in the context of modern technology, I recommend Lawrence Lessig's talk on the "Intellectual Property in the Digital Economy" at Stanford University. Particularly the mid part is quite important to understand why copyright legislation

To learn more about La Quadrature, you can watch their talk at the 25C3 (roughly 500MB, see the 25C3 website for alternative formats and other talks).

La quadrature's Website is at http://www.laquadrature.net/. Its Wiki will give you the voting record ("Political Memory") of all MEPS on the issues La Quadrature is fighting for. Thus, I have looked up all MEPs for the Scotland Region and compiled a list of their voting records:

• David Martin (Labour)
• Ian Hudghton (SNP)
• Struan Stevenson (Conservatives)
• Alyn Smith (SNP)
• John Purvis CBE (Conservatives)
• Elspeth Attwooll (Lib Dems)
• Catherine Stihler (Labour)

It is not easy to compare the overall scores, but it seems that SNP MEPs were most supportive of La Quadrature's cause. This is probably explained by the SNPs membership in the "Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance (Verts/ALE)", who are generally sympathetic to La Quadrature's aims. The Conservative's relatively low performance is not surprising, but I was expecting more from the Liberal Democrats, whose record is only mediocre. The same is true for Labour MEPs. Particularly Catherine Stihler has an exceptionally poor voting record regarding Internet legislation, supporting industry's demands over citizen's. Her colleague David Martin (Labour) as well as Elspeth Attwooll (Lib Dems) at least supported the rejection of graduated response ("three-strikes approach"). Even the conservative MEP John Purvis voted largely against the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, so-called "software patents", which pose a major threat for small business and open source developers who do not have the resources to fight off lawsuits by patent trolls or build up an own arsenal of patents to protect themselves against competitor's patents.

Feel free to browse La quadrature's website, to make up your own mind. Unfortunately it contains a lot of complicated legal language, which is probably unavoidable. But we, as citizens of the European Union, have to understand it. For otherwise we will not be able to lobby for our own rights. Mind you, European Parliament Elections are coming up and your MEPs will happily talk to you. Send them E-Mails or call them up in their offices. La Quadrature has all their contact details. Tell them about your thoughts and concerns, and if they don't have time or try to appease you, by telling you that "everything's fine" then call again until they are willing to listen. This not only applies to legislation regarding the freedom of the Internet but many other things too: Agriculture, culture, security, money, employment, your phone bills, etc...

Mind you, it's our democracy. It's far from being perfect, particularly when it comes to the EU. But we have to use at least those few pathways that we already have before we will hopefully get more.

Posted at 19:05, 22nd February 2009