Hello Mozillians!
Here a couple of updates from the Mozilla public policy side of things:
News from the UK on the Investigatory Powers Bill
This month, the main committee in charge of scrutinising the Investigatory Powers Bill - to so-called Snoopers Charter - voted on their report. They, like the other 3 committees, were critical of the bill from a number of fronts. Mostly, they found the definitions lacking and the scope of the powers far too broad.
They are now deliberating on what to do with the bill - will it be chopped up? will it go straight to the Parliament for amendments? I’ll keep you updated on the next steps. Right now, this is good news.
Mozilla’s concerns are cited throughout both reports below - a great testament to our engagement on this issue:
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Report by the Committee on the Investigatory Powers Bill: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201516/jtselect/jtinvpowers/93/93.pdf
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Report by Science and Technology Committee:http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmsctech/573/573.pdf
India and the Netherlands ban zero-rating
As anticipated, the Indian government (through its regulatory body TRAI) has issued a ruling declaring Facebook’s Free Basics service, and other content-driven zero-rating practices, illegal. We have been deeply engaged in this process as has our community.
The TRAI ruling explicitly cites the concept of equal-rating and indicates that such practices are permissible, which is interesting and indicative of our impact on the conversation. We’re reaching out to our community and others on the ground to learn more about the ramifications and the path forward with this, and to learn how we can best engage.
Here are some relevant links if you’re interested:
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Statement from Save the Internet India coalition (with link to the Regulation): http://blog.savetheinternet.in/statement-on-trai-order-on-diff-pricing/
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Article from EDRi on the Dutch and Indian cases: https://edri.org/holland-india-prohibit-zero-rating-first-many/
Week of Feb 17-19: policy meetings in Brussels
Chris Riley, Mozilla’s Head of Public Policy, was in Brussels with me from Wednesday - Friday last week. We did meetings with key policy-makers in the European Commission, European Parliament as well as folks in civil society (EDRi and Access Now), and industry (Facebook, CCIA and others).
We talked about some key issues under the Commission’s Digital Single Market Strategy including:
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Copyright reform and in particular, the review of the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) – there is a public consultation open until April 1 that we’ll submit comment to.
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The future of Platforms regulation in the EU – this is off the heels of a public consultation run by the European Commission which contains all sorts of policy issues from privacy, transparency, data protection, data portability, to cloud computing. We submitted a filing, and are now looking to find out more information on the next steps.
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The upcoming review of the E-Privacy Directive – so-called “cookie” directive – the Commission will launch a public consultation on this in June of this year. We’re looking to find out more on what they intend to do and forge a Mozilla way of thinking on this important privacy reform.
20/21 Feb - Mozilla Policy Weekend
Gerv Markham and I were in Berlin for a Mozilla Policy Weekend (#MPW16) this Saturday. We discussed with the German community and civil society how to advance the agenda of policy activities in Germany and Europe. We’ll circulate notes about the two day event soon.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Have a lovely week everyone!
All the best,
-Raegan