Join Internet Companies in Asking the EU Not to Wreck the Internet

Late last year, we told you about a worrisome effort by the European Commission to saddle the internet with unnecessary regulations. They had released an online “consultation” which was ostensibly part of the effort to create a “Digital Single Market” (a good idea in the world of a borderless internet), but which appears to have been hijacked by some bureaucrats who saw it as an opportunity to attack big, successful internet companies and saddle them with extra regulations. It’s pretty clear from the statements and the questions that the Commission is very much focused on somehow attacking Google and Facebook (and we won’t even get into the fact that the people who are looking to regulate the internet couldn’t even program a working online survey form properly). However, as we noted, Google and Facebook are big enough that they can handle the hurdles the EU seems intent on putting on them: it’s the startups and smaller tech firms that cannot. The end result, then, would actually be to entrench the more dominant players.

We helped created a “survival guide” for those who wished to fill out the (long, arduous) survey, and many of you did. As a follow up to that, via our think tank, the Copia Institute, we’ve now spearheaded a followup effort, which we’ve put up on the Don’t Wreck The Net site — and you can read it below as well. It’s a letter to the EU Commission, signed by a number of internet companies and investors who care deeply about keeping the internet open and competitive. You can see the letter on that site, and it has already been signed by investors such as Union Square Ventures and Homebrew and a bunch of great internet companies, including Medium, Reddit, DuckDuckGo, Patreon, Automattic (Wordpress), Yelp, CloudFlare, Shapeways and more.

Before sending it on to the EU, however, we’d love to get more companies, entrepreneurs, technologists, investors and more signed on. So if you go to the Don’t Wreck The Net site, not only can you see the letter we’re sending, but also the ability to sign on. If you’re signing on as yourself, that’s easy. If you’re signing on on behalf of your organization, then we’ll need to reach back out to you to obtain proof that you have the ability to sign on behalf of that organization. No matter what, please look it over and consider signing on, as it’s important for the EU to recognize the consequences of what regulations they may place on the internet for the wider tech and startup ecosystem.

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To the EU Commission:

We, the undersigned, are entrepreneurs, innovators and technologists who have built many of today’s leading internet services — which have been embraced around the globe. These services have helped grow the European economy, providing useful offerings to Europeans, while also serving as a growth platform for many small businesses.

The Digital Single Market strategy gives startups many reasons to hope, as it aims to lower regulatory barriers within the EU, which currently make cross border trade difficult, particularly for new players. However, the strategy also gives startups cause for concern as there is a risk it may be misdirected to regulate the Internet in harmful ways. Online platforms are already subject to regulations, covering consumer rights, data protection, and intellectual property to name a few. The issues identified by the European Commission in the Digital Single Market strategy can be addressed under existing consumer protection and privacy legislation.

We urge caution before deviating from a legal framework that has proven successful in encouraging tremendous innovation, massive consumer value and ongoing competition. Specifically, our concern is fourfold:

1. Increasing regulatory burdens on internet platforms will lead to decreased competition and innovation in the internet community. The largest companies have the resources and staff to deal with increased regulations and burdens. Startups do not. While some have suggested that any regulations are being designed to restrict the big American internet platforms, please recognize that while they have the resources to deal with such regulation, many of the undersigned do not. Thus, we and many future startups would be unable to enter these markets and compete. The end result may be locking in markets as they are today with the current big players. This would seem to go against the stated goals of the Digital Single Market effort.
2. Putting additional liability on internet platforms, such as a “duty of care” for actions of their users, will decrease privacy protections for millions of people. While there are legitimate concerns about how people make use of internet platforms, moving the blame from those individuals to the platforms themselves will only serve to increase monitoring and data collection by those platforms in an effort to avoid liability. At a time when there is tremendous concern for privacy, such policies may harm those goals. We recognize and respect existing laws for protecting privacy within the EU, but we worry that new liability rules will serve to undermine those very principles.
3. Greater liability for online platforms over content created by their users will lead to greater censorship and diminished free expression. Historically, whenever there have been legal mechanisms for taking down content, they have been regularly abused to take down perfectly legal content with potentially harmful results. While there are legitimate concerns about illegal or infringing content, the historical risk to free expression by those abusing takedown procedures for all sorts of other content needs to be considered. Related to this, it is not at all obvious to third parties when content is illegal, and asking corporations to be the arbiter of the appropriateness of certain content will almost certainly lead to unfortunate results.
4. Regulating online platforms with additional requirements and requiring government approval will greatly diminish innovation in Europe. Online innovation happens rapidly, and it benefits from an environment where the barriers between having an idea and making it a reality are minimized. Complex regulations and increased threats of liability mire every new service in bureaucratic obstacles before it can get off the ground, and create dangerous and discouraging uncertainty for new ideas that don’t fit an existing mold.

Given those four points above, we are concerned that the Digital Single Market strategy may result in unintended consequences in conflict with its beneficial objectives. That is, greater regulation will likely lead to less competition, less innovation, less privacy and less free expression.

We urge the Commission to recognize the rapidly changing nature of startup ecosystems and to move with extreme caution before regulating this constantly evolving marketplace in a way that may lock in certain players, possibly undermining the key objectives of this effort.

Sincerely,

Automattic (Wordpress)

Beacon

CloudFlare

Copia

DuckDuckGo

Homebrew

IndieGoGo

Medium

Patreon

Reddit

Shapeways

Topix

Union Square Ventures

Yelp

If you’d like to sign on as well — either as a company or an individual, please go here and fill out the form.