Spanish debate on net neutrality resembles recent Dutch discussions

The Internet has no borders, how can it be governed by national law? This was one of the key questions that keeps several experts occupied, at the 'Congreso Internet, Derecho y Política', held this week in Barcelona.

Christopher T. Marsden, author of books on net neutrality, opened the meeting with criticism about the lack of regulation in the digital domain. He called Chile, Finland and the Netherlands examples of places where successful and meaningful Internet legislation has been developed.

Antoni Elias, professor at the School of Telecommunications Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), agreed with Marsden and, in addition, called for setting up transnational and global regulations on netneutrality. "The Internet has plenty of social relevance for International institutions like the IMF or the World Health Organization (WHO) to be seriously concerned with regulating the digital world."

Internet users and producers of creative work were represented by the Asociación de Internautas y la editorial online (Bubok). According to them, the importance of net neutrality is to prevent abuse - such as blocking services like Skype, criminal activities and copyright infringement.

Currently, the network infrastructure is being paid for and maintained by service providers (telecom operators). The telco's where present at the meeting and made clear that the producers of creative content and services should take part in this investment, because if they do not, the end users have to pay the price. Maite Arcos, director of Redtel (a collaboration of the Spanish telecommunications companies Telefonica, Vodafone Spain, Orange and Ono) stated that the current model is not sustainable. "Either we invest together, we manipulate the -exponentially increasing- Internet traffic to maintain a high quality service level, or we let the price of subscriptions increase," said Arcos. He said there is no alternative to discriminating against rival services if internet services and entertainment industries do not want to talk about the costs associated with the major Internet traffic they generate.

Obviously, the proponents of net neutrality must have seriously considered drinking the blood of Mr. Arcos after the conference. However, the Dutch debate about net neutrality - and the practice that emerged after the Parliament in The Hague adopted the provisions regarding net neutrality - shows that the arguments of Mr. Arcos actually make sense. This debate will undoubtedly be continued.

Reference: El Pais  (in Spanish only)