 Right. Hello. Welcome to the Lightning Talks for today. Your first talk is on regaining the sovereignty of your router from Lucas Lissotta. Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for being here today on Sunday morning. I really appreciate that you took your time and your efforts to be here. Have a long day yesterday. But yeah. So today we're going to talk about a very interesting topic that it's not just a legal, boring topic for lawyers, but it concerns all of us. Yeah. So I'm Lucas Lissotta. I work for FSFE. I am a Deputy Legal Coordinator and I'm directly involved with this campaign. Well, in order to talk a little bit what is router freedom, I divided my presentation in three parts. So first of all, we're going to see how it affects each one of us, why it's important. And then we will see also some basic legal aspects in order to understand what is going on in Europe concerning router freedom. And then the third part and the most important one, how each one of you can take part on this activity and have your own free router at home. Because we think that it's very important for us to enforce our rights and to have control and sovereignty over our own equipment. So what is basically router freedom? Well, router freedom is the right that every customer has to use their own equipment at home or at work. So ISP internet service providers, they usually they force their own routers to their customers and they don't allow we customers to use our own router. So router freedom is the right that each one of us has to use our own equipment when we are connecting to the internet. If you want to use a router that has installed free software inside of it, we can. And there's a lot of arguments. I listed the four of the most important one, and we're going to see that effect. These four arguments is already enough to see how that is important for each one of us. The first one is, well, freedom of choice. We have this right to use the equipment that we want. This is a right that has been confirmed and has been protected by European law. So the second argument is that when we have a free router or a router that we have free software in it, a router that we can choose to use, it's privacy friendly. So we use that in order to protect our own data. Well, from this qualified audience, we all know that all our data, our communication, our encryption, our backups, everything that is connected to the internet go through our router. And if we have some problems with that, of course, our digital sovereignty is under danger. Well, the third argument, free competition and compatibility right there. Well, ISP has created an entire market around the lack of router freedom. So if you want to connect to the internet, they can provide you a very simple router without Wi-Fi. Do you want Wi-Fi? Then you have to pay more for that. Oh, you want to use more computers to access the internet. You have to pay more for that. So this is very bad for the user. And besides, when we have just a few routers manufacturers in the market, we start to have a monopoly and they have control over technology. And FSFE is completely different about that. We as users, we must control our technology, not other people imposing their control over our own equipment. And of course, the security argument, the security argument maybe for a few of us is the most important one because if there is some problems with the ISP router or if they are slowly providing updates, critical updates, we, having our own equipment, we can install by ourselves a program of software that is more secure, that is based on community aspect and not just what ISP thinks. So basically, these are the arguments that we are trying to push on and try to educate people and to say, yes, let's do, let's use our own router because this is very important. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the legal issues. I promise you that it's not going to be boring. It's very straightforward to understand. So since 2015, there is this net neutrality directive and in the article 3 it says that every citizen, every European citizen has the right to use and to choose their own equipment. They call it the term of their choice. And then in 2018, there is a very important piece of legislation called European Electronic Communications Code saying that all the definitions that public authorities and private actors, all the definitions that applies to equipment and to applies to routers must be, must be adjusted to ensure net neutrality. Well, but there is a small problem and let's see what is this small legal problem. Some ISPs are telling that, okay, users have the right to choose their own router, but in fact, router is part of the public network. So if a router is not, it's not property from users. They are ISP property and we think that is very bad. This discussion has reached the European level and has reached the BEREC. A little bit, BEREC is the Board of European Regulators of Economic Communications and they say, yeah, well, router is part of the public network and then users have no right to choose it because it's our property, right? But we at FSFE, we have been fighting this war for years and in Germany, we manage in 2016 to pass the router law that says that in fact, the network termination point that where the network, the public network ends, it ends in the wall. So in the plug where you can plug your modern or your router and everything that's inside your home, it's your property and you have the right to choose your own equipment. Yes. However, this is not like this in all Europe. So we have conducted a research at FSFE and we have seen that it's not like this. They're in other countries. People, although these rules are already present in European legislation in those countries who have already implemented these European rules, international legislation, there are still lack of awareness. So as we can see here, a lot of countries users cannot use their own routers. So ISP by contract regulations, they impose their own routers to users and they cannot choose their own equipment. Well, and how here where things started to get interesting because we can do something about it and you can do something about it. So we divided into things. If you wanted to organize an activity in your own country here in Belgium, well, in every European country, if you wanted to start an activity in a campaign for router freedom, we have prepared a wiki with a lot of information beginning from zero. How to speak with ISP, how to speak with national authorities and public authorities and how to organize yourself, which arguments you can use, which counter arguments you can use. So everything is written on our wiki. And our work in FSFE, it's all about community. So we cannot and we don't do anything by ourselves. It's our commitment. It's everybody working together and raising our voice and showing to public authorities showing to ISP that we have the right to use our own equipment. So we have prepared it. Please use it, go there, check it, try to communicate with your public, with your political representatives in order to spread this board and in order to have your own router in your one house. So since we are in the university here today, I have prepared a small homework for you. So tomorrow, Monday or this week, we will try to check router freedom by ourselves. This is very easy. This is an experiment. I think it's very good for you and for us in order to have a more precise panorama about router freedom in Europe. So what is the homework? What is the task? First, contact your or a random ISP in your region. So I think everybody has a connection to the internet. You have an ISP in your home, in your city, in your region. Call them, send a short email or if you are not pleasant with your ISP, you are planning to change your ISP. Okay, just contact your future ISP, send them an email and say, Number two, I want to use my own router. I have bought my router in eBay. I have bought my own router on internet. I want to use it. I am allowed to do that. And maybe they will say yes, you are, maybe you are not. And then you ask for the login data to public network. This is very important because in order to have your own router working at home, you need your own login data, login data to public network. So send them a message and say, I want to use my own router. Please provide the public network login data. And then let's see what's happened. And then if they say, yeah, fine, cool. Cool. If they say no, you are not allowed to do that, please share your experience at community.fse.org and we are most pleased to help you to get your own router or to tell them that in fact you have the right to use your own router. So if you want to try that, it will be excellent to see what is the router freedom panorama in your region. Well, yeah, I think that's all that I really want to talk to you today. I really appreciate it for you to come in today. And if you have questions, please let's discuss it. Yeah, so in fact, the Barrack, the board of European regulators, they are analyzing the technical aspects and they have provided the guidelines in order to how to do that in order to not harm the public network. However, we do think that with some regulations we can do that but not restricting the right to users to use their own equipment. It's perfectly fine to use our own equipment in order to not harm the public network. Yes. Yeah, that's a good question because then involves another type of legal considerations. Here we would like to at least enforce the equipment to have access to internet. Yeah, because TV, it's a little bit different. But when we are wanted to have access to the internet, usually they do this combo thing and they put everything in the same box. But I would like, yeah, OK, so for TV, it's fine, but I would like to have my own private connection to the internet and then things started to get a little bit messy. So this example here is would be to have the router for the internet. I think we're out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much again.