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Patriot Act à la française: France to legalise unlawful surveillance
In recent years, France has increasingly tightened its laws on crimes committed on the Internet. From the LOPPSI law voted in 2012 to the latest anti-terror law voted in November 2014, the bill on Intelligence announced on 19 March by the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, is fully consistent with a history of repressive Internet […]
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In Germany, Data Retention refuses to die
The debate is intensifying in Germany on whether telecommunications data retention should be reintroduced. At the centre of the controversy is Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD, the smaller party in Germany’s “grand coalition” government since 2013), and consequently a government minister for the economy and chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy. Gabriel’s role […]
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The evolution of the concept of privacy
In 1776, John Adams wrote that it had been the British right to search houses without justification that sparked the fight for independence. In other words, John Adams thought that it had been an unjustified violation of privacy that had kindled one of history’s most noteworthy revolutions. More than two centuries later, those unruly colonies […]
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EDRi joins the Document Freedom Day
Today, we are celebrating the Document Freedom Day to raise awareness for Open Standards. Open Standards allow us to share all kinds of data freely. They ensure availability, transparency and interoperability of software and document formats – and prevent us from being locked in to using a particular software or service. We believe that the […]
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Copyright exceptions and limitations – back to the future
The noise around the non-legislative report of the European Parliament on the Copyright in the Information Society Directive (also known as the InfoSoc Directive and Directive 2001/29/EC) in Brussels is deafening. With one Committee still to table its amendments, the total number of amendment has already reached 759. Part of the reason for this is […]
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Parliament’s work on copyright enforcement – not worth copying
The European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) adopted an Opinion on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement, in response to the European Commission’s Communication entitled “Towards a renewed consensus on the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights: an EU Action Plan”. It starts by offering support for “the” “follow the money” approach. The only problem […]
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Bad analogies and the threat to “cybersecurity”
In policy discussions about the online world a general pattern repeats: The online sphere is differentiated from its offline equivalent by adding the prefix “cyber”, giving it both immediacy and generating a fear of the unknown “cyberworld”. Then, in order to explain “cyberspace”, practitioners draw analogies between cyber and non-cyber, often being blissfully unaware of, […]
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Denmark plans to preserve illegally collected medical data
In Denmark, a controversial plan to prevent illegally collected medical data from being deleted has become a hot topic for the government. The plan involves transferring the data to the National Archives, which has an exemption in the Danish data protection act. Under the Danish health care act, general practitioners can transfer medical data to […]
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EU trade secrets Directive: threat to free speech, health, environment and worker mobility
STATEMENT (pdf) 23 March 2015 (updated from 17 December 2014) Multi-sectoral civil society coalition calls for greater protections for consumers, journalists, whistleblowers, researchers and workers We strongly oppose the hasty push by the European Commission and Council for a new European Union (EU) directive on trade secrets because it contains: – An unreasonably broad definition […]
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Civil society calls for inclusion in the EP Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Reform
Ensuring a Balanced Representation of Views in the EP Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Reform
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Dutch data retention law struck down – for now
Published originally by EDRi-member Bits of Freedom And then everything went BANG: from our Twitter-timeline to the champagne bottle at our office. This morning the court annulled the data retention law. Effective immediately. But what exactly did the judge say and what will happen now? The data-retention law requires telecom providers to save communication- and […]
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Austrian Internet users to pay for intransparent web blocking scheme
On 27 March 2014, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled that national jurisdiction can order an injunction against an Internet Service Provider (ISP) requiring it to restrict its customers from accessing a website that is placing protected content online without the consent of the rights holder. Since last year, Austrian ISPs have thus started […]
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