 15. A European regulation claimed to guarantee net neutrality and the right for users to choose their own routers. But is the battle for net neutrality over yet? No, it is not. In this next talk, Lukas Lasotta, who works for the FSSE, will explain how these new national implementations of the regulation will put these rights at risk. I am looking forward to its overview over recent successes for router freedom in it in the EU and what challenges are coming in the future. Lukas, we're really happy to have you. Okay. Thank you very much. Hello, Victor, and hello, everybody. I'm very pleased to be here today. And I would like to thank the organizers very much for the opportunity to talk about a very interesting topic, not just a legal board topic, but certainly something that concerns all of us. So thanks, Victor, for the nice introduction. Today, my talk will be about net neutrality in Europe and the continuation of the struggle, continuation of the debates that we are having right now. My name is Lukas Lasotta. I'm deputy legal coordinator of the Free Software Foundation Europe, and also I'm a fellow researcher at the Humboldt University, where I'm working also in the field of IT law. Feel free to reach out. There is my link about me. And so let's get started. Today, I want to talk about router freedom, an activity that we conducted in the Free Software Foundation Europe for already several years. This talk has gained more traction and become very important in the last years. And we'll talk about what is router freedom, what is open net internet and device neutrality, and of course, why router freedom today is in danger in Europe and what you can do to help. So how you can join our advocate, how you can join us in our activity. So everybody in Europe, every citizen has his or her right, guaranteed to use their own equipment to connect to the internet. First, I would like to say that, well, internet access is a human right. So we do everything today in the internet. And this year has shown that not only our normal interactions, but our personal interactions, but also our work interactions, everything that we do are connected to the internet. So we must guarantee or empower users to have access to the internet through their own means, through their own equipment. So I guarantee that their right to use their own equipment in order to connect to the internet is a must. And since 2015, this right is guaranteed by European regulation. So through the net neutrality regulation, although the official name is called open internet regulation, guarantees end users, consumer citizens for the fort freedoms of net neutrality, the freedom of content, freedom of application, they want to use freedom of services and freedom of devices. Well, we use different devices to connect to the internet. When we are at home, we use home routers. When we are in the street, we use our own smartphone for an example. And although it's quite intuitive that nobody today tells that the ISP owns your own telephone and you can use your own telephone, your own smartphone to connect to the internet, it's not like that when it comes to the router, the home router that you use. So in fact, we have seen that users are, although it is guaranteed by law, users have a lot of problems to use their own router to connect to the internet. And of course, if you have your own router, if you have the free choice of your own equipment, not only is compliant with the law, but there is a lot of benefits. And here I would just like to say some of them. If we protect router freedom, so the type of equipment that we use to connect to the internet, of course, then we are protecting freedom of choice. We are protecting privacy, that's protection of the users, competition in compatibility in the equipment market, and of course, security because users can update their own software to make their equipment more secure. Yes, but therefore, the legislation protects that, but as we're going to say, it's not so straightforward to comprehend. But net neutrality and this for freedoms is just the beginning of a broader debate that is going on right now in Europe. Net neutrality guarantees that every user can access any online content or service using the device of their choice. The focus of net neutrality debate is concerned with the various network management practices that internet service providers, the network operators, should be allowed to pursue being the central gatekeepers between consumers and content providers. There is a difference between however, between open internet and net neutrality. The European net neutrality regulation from 2015, we're going to talk about that in a minute, and trying user rights to access and distribute information and content online. But it applies only to the internet service providers, which are only one link to the internet access chain. The ability to access the internet and provide content relies on a much larger chain in which other stakeholders also play an important role. Well, open internet is a broader concept. It involves regulation against discriminatory practices involving software and hardware which could impact end users' reads of choice. For an example, operating system neutrality, device manufacturers would select an operating system and a small number of popular apps that cannot be uninstalled. The same is true for app stores in the mobile market. Search and neutrality, search engineers like Google or Bing may have no neutral conduct by ranking search results that relate to its own or affiliated services high in the organic unpaid search results. And of course browser, web browser neutrality. Because web browsers can also be a vehicle that allows vertical integrated companies in favor of their own services at the expense of consumers freedom of choice. Well, so we think that the debate of net neutrality is much broader when we consider disorder kind of neutrality in this other elements in the chain. And in this picture, we can see that the router stands in the end of the network between the end users' domain and the public network ISP domain. And that's exactly the point where router freedom is in danger. And why router freedom, a concept, a very clear concept in law is being danger right now. Well, we're going to see that there are very rules on the European level. National authorities are responsible for monitoring the activities of the internet service providers. They are doing the bad monitoring. And the network operators, they are imposing barriers on users. So let's see the first one. So as I said, the net neutrality regulation from 2015, they provide users the right to choose and to use the routers and equipment they want to connect to the internet. But in 2020, there is a new set of rules, technical rules regarding the network termination point, a definition that determines if the router and the modem should pertain to the user or to internet service providers. And Berek has put some criteria to determine who should have the property over the router, the user or the ISP. And the most controversial topic in that is that they say if there is a technological necessity, if the ISP can determine a technological necessity, the router can go directly to the infrastructure of the ISP. And right now, the EU member states, they will implement these rules, the net neutrality regulation doesn't need to be implemented because of regulation. But the guidelines on NTP will have to be implemented on EU member states. And here lies the problems, because it will be easier for ISP to prove technological necessity and they can keep our routers in their own infrastructure. So besides that, these national regulatory authorities who, okay, so right now, the national regulatory authorities, they are responsible for monitoring the activity of ISP they are doing very bad. And they are not imposing any type of fines or penalties on those who do not comply with the regulation, allowing users to use their own routers. And of course, ISP, they are imposing different kind of barriers for consumers to use their own routers. And we at the FSFE, we divide these barriers in two types, the software barriers and the hard barriers. Of course, the hard ones are much serious, because for an example, customers are forbidden to use another router by contract. ISP do not provide users the login data to the public network. They use non-standard plugs or proprietary protocols. And of course, they don't offer technical support for internet access. But there are other types of barriers, software barriers, for an example, when they don't inform the users that they have the right to use their own routers or they manipulate users through customer support in favor of their own routers. And of course, there are other types of barriers that ISP are very creative in order to impose their own equipment on users. So what you can do to help, as we said, there is very clear rules defending our rights, but right now we are suffering. A lot of people are suffering with their network operators, the internet service providers, because they cannot use their routers. And we want to change this scenario. We want to demonstrate that, in fact, our rights should be respected, and we can do that because there are very clear rules. So what you can do to help, three steps. Contact your ISP, ask if you can use your router, and send me an email. Tell me the results. Lucas.Lasota at fsfe.org. And let me know what are the kind of problems you are having. And we are working there to raise awareness in Europe around router freedom and fighting for our rights. So I think we are done. My presentation is quite short, and I would be very happy to hear if there are some questions. Thank you very much. Thanks. And what people can do, I really like the strong call for action, ask your ISP. So far there have been no questions from the internet. But I thought that maybe when I was thinking about what you just told us, I was really interested if you could tell us, so imagine a legal situation where the router freedom in the EU is absolutely guaranteed. What beautiful, nice things would happen for the user. So what is the vision we are working towards here? What are the really good things that would happen for users if we won this fight? Yes, absolutely. Again, just I wanted to show the benefits for that, because first, freedom of choice. Users will be completely free to choose the equipment they want. Today, an ISP for an ISP is very easy to impose their own router. And if we are obliged to use their router, we have problems with security because we don't know which kind of software, if it's proprietary software running in their equipment. We don't know if this software has some bugs, and therefore we don't know which kind of software is running on the equipment. So our privacy and that protection is all compromised. And of course, when we have the possibility to choose our own equipment, it's very nice for the market because we can then provide free competition and compatibility. So we are fighting this kind of fight for router freedom, so users can enjoy this kind of benefits. Okay, thank you. There just a question came in. So the question is asking about the possible examples of these technological measures. I think the rest is missing. Do you already understand what the question means? So I think there's technical measures the ISPs are implementing or the requirements. And I think the question is asking for examples for that. Do you have any, maybe? Yes. For an example, well, a very, very true example because it happened to me and to other staffers in the FSFE, the ISP, they don't want to provide use the local data to the public network. So we tell them, look, I have my router here and I need the local data to access your network. So I can have access to the internet here at my home. And they say, I'm sorry, the local data is provided only inside our own equipment. So we cannot provide you that. You must use our own equipment. So this is one of types of barriers, one type of technical measures that ISP impose on users. And we talk like here, but it's happening all over Europe. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for the talk. Thanks a lot for answering the questions. As always, we have the after talk discussion board where you guys can discuss something with Lucas and ask him additional questions. It's as always on discussion.rca3.ou.social. And there's nothing more to say for me. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Lucas, for being here today. And the program will continue shortly. Thanks a lot. And thank you again, the organizers for this beautiful, very nice opportunity to meet you again. Thanks a lot.