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Remembering Ville Oksanen
Ville Oksanen, Vice President and a founding member of Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi), passed away on Sunday 23 November 2014 in Helsinki from a sudden illness. He was 37 years old. Ville was one of the founders of EDRi’s Finnish member organisation Effi, and a key contributor throughout the existence of the association. He acted […]
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Danish court orders a UK company to block Danish IP addresses
In Denmark, and in most other EU member states, furniture design is protected by copyright for 70 years from the death of the designer. However, a few member states have shorter protections for furniture. In the United Kingdom, for example, Article 52 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 limited the protection for […]
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Council of Europe Recommendation on Net Neutrality
The Council of Europe is Europe’s leading human rights organisation, with 47 member states, including all of the 28 members of the European Union. It campaigns to defend freedom of speech, privacy and the rule of law. The Council is now ten days away from adopting adraft Recommendation that whose provisions on the rule of […]
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Italian presidency abandons its net neutrality draft
The Italian Presidency of the European Council has decisively distanced itself from the leaked proposals on net neutrality. In a post on its website, it explained that previously proposed texts (including the leaks) were “significantly different” from the position of individual Member States, “including Italy” and that it proposed them “to act as a neutral […]
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European Parliament fights back hard on net neutrality
After EDRi published a leaked draft by the Italian EU Presidency to weaken proposals on net neutrality, the European Parliament has hit back with a strongly-worded resolution (see paragraphs 8 and 14). The final version will be linked here when available). The resolution was adopted with 458 in favour and 173 against. The resolution re-asserts […]
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Press Release: Civil society urges the Council to adopt real Net Neutrality
The SaveTheInternet.eu campaign is mobilising EU citizens to contact their Council representative and tell them not to turn their backs on the Telecoms Single Market legislation. The SaveTheInternet.eu coalition is sending a letter to the Council of the European Union urging support for strong and enforceable net neutrality provisions in the Telecoms Single Market regulation. […]
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Draft Commission Work Programme 2015: huge challenges for digital rights
EDRi has obtained a copy of the draft Commission Work Programme 2015. For those who have followed the nomination hearings of the Commissioners, this draft programme does not contain any major surprises. However, it does show the huge number of proposals and initiatives that will have a direct impact on our fundamental rights and freedoms […]
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Price discrimination – the Commission’s plan B to undermine net neutrality?
The European Commission is energetically defending the “right” of telecoms operators to use price discrimination, arguing that this is not a breach of net neutrality. In price discrimination, the telecoms company establishes itself as a monopoly “gatekeeper” of access to its own customers. In other words, big online companies like Google and Facebook can pay […]
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Leaked documents show net neutrality may be in danger!
On 14 November 2014, the Italian Presidency presented amendments to the Telecommunications package for comment by the Member State delegations. We are hereby making the document and its annexes publicly available (Note and addendum). These documents show that the Italian Presidency is now back-pedalling on meaningful net neutrality protections – having previously made some much […]
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Obama urges the FCC to adopt rules to ensure net neutrality
In a speech on 10 November, US President Barack Obama made a strong statement calling for net neutrality. He urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt rules to prevent Internet access providers from blocking or slowing down content, and from charging service providers to let them use a “fast lane” to reach their clients. […]
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UN calls for balance between privacy and security
In a special discussion at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Flavia Pansieri, the United Nations (UN) Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed her concern about increasing mass surveillance programs conducted by states and private corporations. Ms. Pansieri highlighted the importance of demonstrating that interferences with an individual’s right to privacy are both necessary […]
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PNR: Losing rights and paying for it
Passenger Name Records (PNR) are files containing information provided by the passengers and collected by air carriers for commercial purposes. PNR can contain information ranging from itineraries, to credit card numbers and meal preferences. The fact that this type of data is obtained by flight companies is not new; similar data may be obtained internally […]
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