The EU ‘open Internet access’ regulation and its impact on the digital press

Abstract

The long-awaited European Union ‘open Internet access’ regulation only hesitantly embraces the fiercely contested principle of net neutrality (equal treatment of Internet traffic). The debate has so far focused on the providers of audiovisual content as the most data-intensive form of service, while overlooking other providers similarly dependent on the Internet as their channel of distribution. This article focuses on one such provider, the digital press, and assesses the impact of the regulation on its essential public watchdog function.