European High Court Hands Down Landmark Net Neutrality Ruling

LOS ANGELES—Net neutrality rules in the U.S. were repealed in 2018 by the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission, but the situation is very different in Europe where just last week, the European Union’s highest court handed down a ruling strongly affirming EU net neutrality regulations. Under net neutrality, telecom companies may not give preferential treatment to data from any particular provider, nor may they discriminate against any provider’s online traffic by blocking or slowing data for any reason. For online porn, which is frequently subject to censorship or blocking of online sites, net neutrality is critical to protect the industry from attempts to shut it down. While the U.S. currently has no net neutrality standards in place on a national level, the EU passed a net neutrality law in 2016. But the Court of Justice of the European Union had not been called upon to rule on its legality until last week. The ruling handed down by the CJEU zeroed in on “zero rating,” affirming that the practice is properly banned under EU net neutrality laws. Under “zero rating,” telecom companies allow users to exceed their data caps for specific services — usually those owned by the provider itself. In the U.S., the telecom giant AT&T currently engages in zero rating with its HBO Max streaming service. AT&T owns HBO and HBO Max, and now allows users to go past their data limits at no additional charge, but only for streaming via HBO Max. The EU net neutrality rules do not mention the “zero rating” practice, and as a result, some online carriers have been permitted to “zero rate” certain apps. But in its ruling last week, the Luxembourg-based court declared that zero rating violates net neutrality principles, even though it is not specifically referenced in the wording of the laws.  Allowing customers to exceed data limits for some services but not others unfairly favors the “zero rated” services, the court ruled, by effectively blocking any data traffic that does not fall under the zero rating — creating unfair competition in violation of the net neutrality rules. Though the ruling was widely hailed as a landmark in Europe, some experts say the court’s decision may not be as relevant as it would have been even a few years ago. Many European internet providers now offer unlimited data plans, which eliminate the advantage in “zero rating” any particular service. Photo By Cédric Puisney / Wikimedia Commons