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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Net neutrality, transparency and politicians in Europe

I have been doing some digging on private meetings between businesspeople and politicians in Europe - as have Monica Horten and Daithi MacSithigh (get blogging again!). It's not that we don't trust our politicians - Heaven forfend! - so much as expect a degree of transparency on a matter of censorship and freedom of expression. Today, #AskNeelie Kroes held a Q&A on Twitter which produced her stock holding answer, and Jeremy Hunt did the same at #Bigtentuk - that's Google's Big Tent, you understand...Jeremy compared superfast broadband (i.e. FTTH) to building London's sewers in the 1860s - not an unreasonable comparison, though FTTH is cheaper...
I am pleased that the UK Department of Culture has been very quick in providing a list of attendees at their private "Open Internet roundtable" (sic) from March, and a note of the meeting. The latter reveals little except that there is furious disagreement on the issue, with ISPs point blank refusing to offer proper transparency or any commitment not to block protocols they dislike - but then Tim Berners Lee had already alluded to that. I find it amusing that the only participants who refused to allow their names to be used were: "Representatives for the BBC, Google and Channel 4 did not provide their consent for their names to be released, so these have been withheld under Section 40 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information Act." Shot in own foot...Here's the list - and Heather Batchelor at Culture will supply the meeting note on request:

Name
Company
Alisdair McGowan
Ebay
Andrew Cecil
Amazon
Andrew Heaney
Talk Talk
Andrew Kernahan
ISPA
Antony Walker
Broadband Stakeholder Group
Baroness Rennie Fritchie
Nominet
Daniel Singer
Ofcom
David Frank
Everything, Everywhere
Diane Coyle
BBC Trust
Dominique Lazanski
Tax Payers Alliance
Dr Robert Reid
Which?
Ed Richards
Ofcom
Ed Vaizey
DCMS
Emma Ascroft
Yahoo!
Gareth Reakes
WE7
Grant Forsyth
BSkyB
Hamish MacLeod
Mobile Broadband Group
Jacqui Brookes OBE
Federation of Communications Services (FCS)
Jean-Jacques Sahel
Skype
Jim Killock
Open Rights Group
BBC
Jon James
Virgin Media
Justine Campbell
Vodafone
Kevin Russell
Three
Lord Richard Allan
Facebook
Magnus Brooke
ITV
Martin Stott
Channel 5
Marzena Lipman
Consumer Focus
Google
Matthew Fell
CBI
Mike O'Connor
Consumer Focus
Channel 4
Nigel Hickson
DCMS
Philip Milton
DCMS
Rachel Clark
DCMS
Robin Durie
Everything, Everywhere
Simon Milner
BT
Sir Tim Berners Lee
W3C
Steve Unger
Ofcom
Tania Baumann
Nominet
Vicky Stephens
DCMS

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