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Deutsch: Frankreich: Update zur Sperre von Webseiten ohne Gerichtsbeschluss

Fleur Pellerin, the French State Secretary for Digital Economy announced on 24 July 2012 the intention of the French Government to give up the Decree on the application of a very controversial Article of LOPPSI 2 law which allowed online filtering of websites with child pornographic content without a court decision.

Article 4 was stipulating that when “the necessities of the fight against broadcasting of images representing minors as per article 227-23 of the Criminal Code justify it, the administra

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: „Kinderschutz“-Maßnahmen ohne gesetzliche Grundlage �...

In the EDRi-gram 10.12, we reported on projects of the European Commission to coerce industry into the introduction of “voluntary” upload filters.

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Deutsch: Russland: Gesetz zur Einführung von Internet-Sperrlisten

At the beginning of July 2012, Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, approved in third reading a draft law titled “On the Protection of Children From Information Harmful to Their Health and Development”, allowing the Russian authorities to create a blacklist with websites deemed to contain “pornography or extremist ideas, or promoting suicide or use of drugs.”

The draft law that is meant to amend the present Law of Information raises concerns of filtering and censorship.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Microsofts Vision einer Kommunikationsregulierung durch pr...

Microsoft is in charge of the “notice and takedown” workstream of the European Commission-funded and inspired “CEO coalition”. It is therefore interesting to take a look at what the world will look like if Microsoft and similar companies are allowed to decide what we are allowed to do on the Internet and what we are not allowed to do. An article published on Norwegian news site Dinside gives a valuable insight.

Morten Tobiassen used Microsoft Skydrive to store back-up copies of his family photos.

For the past few months, the European Commission and industry lobbyists have tried to pressure the European Parliament into abdicating responsibility for ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Instead, the Parliament has given the proposal an inordinate amount of attention, with five different committees devoting huge amounts of time and resources to the proposal. Five different committees looked at the proposal from a development, industry, civil liberties, legal and international trade perspective.

One by one, each of the Committees analysed ACTA, with an ever-dwindling degree of support for the proposal.

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Deutsch: Google Transparenzbericht: Staatliche Zensur nimmt zu

According to Google’s latest bi-annual transparency report covering the July-December 2011 period, the number of governmental requests for users’ private data and content taking down has continued to grow.

The report shows the situation for each country separately and refers to the requests received from judiciary and executive power authorities, the request for content removal related to copyright infringements being dealt with separately.

Thus, the total number of requests has reached 11 936 in the second half of 2011

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Deutsch: Vom Aufstieg der Upload-Filter in Europa

In 2011, the European Union decided against the introduction of mandatory filtering in Europe, because a democratic analysis of the evidence showed that this was not necessary. In 2012, the European Union is working on a variety of projects to introduce “voluntary” upload filters and, because they would be introduced on a so-called “voluntary” basis, there will be no democratic analysis.

There are at least three different initiatives currently underway with this target. Firstly, Commissioner Kroes' “CEO Coalition”.

Swedish text below

Dear Mr Fjellner,

I am writing to you with regard to your recent blog post on ACTA.

First of all thank you for providing a clarification after you tabled an amendment for the International Trade Committee vote next week calling for ACTA to be ratified. We are heartened to read that you believe that it would be irresponsible to take a definitive position on ACTA in the absence of assurances from the Commission. You further explain that clarifications are needed on “one or two” paragraphs.