Sir, Regarding ‘European Parliament paving way for tougher anti-piracy rules‘: Last week’s European Parliament vote in favour of a tough approach to fighting online theft signalled much-needed support for thousands of creative artists across the EU. Effective protection of online property is fundamental to ensuring that innovation and creativity are able to flourish in the [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘EU unveils five-year digital economy plan‘: ESOA (the European Satellite Operators Association) welcomes the European Commission’s Digital Agenda. We support the ambitious targets of the Commission, but reiterate the need to decouple the immediate ‘Broadband for All’ objective from any bandwidth/speed requirement and therefore from the long-term Next Generation Access objective. In that [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘EU unveils five-year digital economy plan‘: Telecoms ministers from across the EU 27 should consider how some of the key policies in the recently-released European ‘Digital Agenda’ can be realised. Of particular interest to music publishers is the European Commission’s initiative to put forward measures on IP enforcement, and in particular against IPR [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Google faces new EU antitrust probe‘: I would contend that this is a subject on which the EU should not be trying to make a ruling. As an Internet marketer and occasional search engine optimisation consultant (SEO), I can say from experience that all websites have an equal chance of high natural search [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘The Spanish EU Presidency‘: As the Spanish premier meets with Europe’s wise men to discuss priorities and direction for its EU presidency, I would also urge him to push ahead with the commitments made by the Tripartite of Presidencies to take action in the area of IPR, data protection and piracy. As a [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Lower phone tariffs kick in across EU‘: Congratulations to the European Commission for forcing mobile phone companies to reduce roaming charges within the EU, but what about the rest of the world? Last week I was in India, where local mobile companies charge Indian consumers about 1 paise per second = ~1.5 rupees/minute [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Barroso unveils five-year plan with 2020 horizon‘: Your article on European Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s political guidelines correctly highlights his intention to develop a European Digital Agenda under the new EU executive. As the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) we welcome the plan, which correctly identifies the importance of the telecoms industry [...]

Sir, Ich beobachte die Aktivitäten der EU-Kommission schon seit einigen Jahren mit einiger Genugtuung. In letzter Zeit fällt mir aber auf, dass die Kommission im wesentlichen an Symptomen herumdoktert, statt sich der Wurzel zu nähern. Die liegt, meiner Ansicht nach, in der teilweise geradezu axiomatischen Bündelung von PC und Windows bei fast allen Anbietern. HP [...]

Sir, Regarding ‘Google’s carbon footprint exposed‘: It was literally a tempest in a teapot. When a critic recently suggested that two searches on Google consumed as much energy as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, even many of us within the company were startled. Could this really be the case? Rather than consulting [...]

Sir, We all know that the European Commission’s raison d’etre is to rule, regulate, issue directives and otherwise interfere and meddle with everyone’s lives, but surely is it not a bit presumptious even for Viviane Reding to think that it can “govern” the internet? What about the rest of mankind outside of the 27 borders? [...]