Battle for Net Neutrality
Internet society of Serbia, in cooperation with Nova Iskra, is announcing a Battle for Net Neutrality panel on the state of affairs with online neutraility in Serbia, as well as relevant EU experiences.
11 Dec
Date
Monday, 11. dec
Lecturer
/
Time
18h
Program Language
Serbian
Location
Entrance
FREE!
About the panel
Internet society of Serbia, in cooperation with Nova Iskra, is announcing a Battle for Net Neutrality panel on the state of affairs with online neutraility in Serbia, as well as relevant EU experiences.
Panel participants will try to answer some of the following questions:
What is net neutrality and why is it important to maintain it? Who, with their politics, is changing the architecture, approach, price and availability of Internet content, and at the same time the nature of open Internet? How do the interests of some of the leading IT actors distort the nature of the Internet as a public good?
What was Internet like at the very beginning, supported by the state, universities, public funds, open for innovations and acting as a catalyst for the development of culture? Who threatens to dismantle it today and completely privatize it by abolishing its basic value, which is neutrality? Why are the regulations in this field different in Europe, America, India and Serbia, and what do we need to do?
The panel will feature foreign and domestic experts in the fields of Internet technologies and regulation:
- Thomas Lohninger (SaveTheInternet.eu)
- Desiree Željka Milošević (Internet Society)
- Vladimir Radunović (DiPLO Foundation)
- Maja Mitić (Republička agencija za elektronske komunikacije – RATEL)
- Representative of the Internet service provider
- Moderator: Aranđel Bojanović (Internet društvo Srbije)
The question of net neutrality can also be posed as follows: Do internet service providers, mobile and other teleoperators have the right to slow down, speed up or block certain content that is a part of Internet traffic, regardless of the fact that they have made a special business agreement with the providers of that content or not?
There is a justified fear that the internet service providers, with the right to discriminate Internet traffic, would be in a position to have an unacceptably strong impact on culture through economic and, consequently, political censorship of numerous content. Namely, some services would have a quick line to users, and some websites would slow down, while removing these obstacles would be additionally charged.
Zero rating, as a way of charging the service of providing access to certain content on the Internet by mobile operators under the “two free applications of choice!”, provide a clear picture of how the future of the Internet might look. Then we would no longer talk about a unique Internet, but it would rather split into a variety of programs and resemble television packages. This development of the situation would have negative effects on the future generations, who would remain deprived of a resource that strongly influenced the development of independent culture and innovation with unlimited and unobtrusive choice of content by the users.
One of the successful answers to this threat was given by the extensive campaign SaveTheInternet.eu conducted in the number of EU countries, which has ensured the respect of net neutrality in the EU legislations, despite the joint pressures of the teleoperaters to do exactly the opposite. We will present the results of this campaign, and the methodology of work that relied on one part on the use of the “civic tech” tools. We will also talk about how the nature and the architecture of internet has changed and is still changing. We will also talk about the net neutrality situation in Serbia, but will use this opportunity to also reflect the situation in the USA, where this topic is on the agenda.
The panel Battle for Net neutrality will be held at Nova Iskra on Monday, December 11th at 6 PM. Entrance is free!