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Network-wide ad-blocking in the EU ?
Net neutrality is a hot topic, apparently.
When BEREC, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, launched a six week public consultation on the issue this June, they sure as heck didn't expect 481,547 responses. Somewhat miraculously, they managed to sift, analyze and classify through all of them in another 6 weeks. That's 16,051 requests, and a couple of paragraphs, for the mathematically challenged amongst you, per day. Which makes for a first observation: European holidays aren't what they're presumed to be, anymore.
Second observation: the turd of an end product is a whopping mere 45 pages, which you will no doubt be delighted to read [europa.eu] in a jiffy.
And third, final observation: something funny on page 20 [para 78]:
By way of example, ISPs should not block, slow down, alter, restrict, interfere with, degrade or discriminate advertising when providing an IAS, unless the conditions of the exceptions a), b) or c) are met in a specific case.
To give some context: at least one telecom provider [ihs.com] in the EU is toying with the idea of attracting customers by doing the ad-blocking for them. This little para does block this as a general business practice. There is, however, a small opening though, in exception (b) mentioned (grey area, Article 3(3) (b), page 21):
(b) preserve the integrity and security of the network, of services provided via that network, and of the terminal equipment of end-users;
. If malware can be associated with a particular ad provider, the published guidelines allow blocking of all its ads from the telecom provider's network.
