Blogs
Filter by...
-
Net neutrality in the European Parliament – what is happening?
After seven months of discussions, negotiations, lobbying and general confusion, the European Parliament’s Industry Committee was due to have a vote on Monday of this week on net neutrality. So… what happened? Well, nothing happened. Not exactly nothing… quite a long discussion in fact. There were just two items on the agenda, a vote on […]
Read more
-
How the Commission is out-manoeuvring the European Parliament to undermine net neutrality
The European Commission wants to bring an end to the open and competitive internet in Europe, for reasons that are not completely clear. Neither multiple consultations that showed the dangers of the approach, nor internal advice about the illegality of the proposals nor the needs of European citizens and businesses have been able to hold […]
Read more
-
Booklet: Human rights and privatised law enforcement
Our latest booklet is now online! The document looks at the extent to which “voluntary” law enforcement measures by online companies are serving to undermine long-established fundamental rights principles and much of the democratic value of the internet. Unquestionably, the successful campaigns against SOPA and ACTA demonstrate the democratic potential of the internet. Sharing of […]
Read more
-
Remember: Giancarlo Livraghi
Giancarlo Livraghi, the first president and founding member of EDRi member ALCEI Italy, passed away last Saturday. An active advocate of net freedom and culture, Giancarlo was also contributor to EDRi-gram on various ENDitorials trying to explain for our readership the Italian intricacies of Internet politics. His texts and thoughts are accurate even today, several […]
Read more
-
Linking content does not infringe copyright says ECJ
On 21 February 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that a website could not be found to have infringed copyright for merely linking to content hosted elsewhere. The advice was given for the Svea hovrätt (Svea Court of Appeal, Sweden), in a case involving local journalists and aggregation Swedish company Retriever Sverige, a […]
Read more
-
Private copying levies – the choice between incoherence and a fair and balanced approach
After being delayed from December to January and from January to February, the incoherent, inaccurate, incomprehensible, contradictory “Castex Report” (PDF) on private copying levies was finally adopted by the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament last week. Next week**, the European Parliament has the choice to accept the deeply flawed text adopted by the […]
Read more
-
European Commission on global internet governance – do as we say, please don’t do as we do
On 12 February, the European Commission produced a broadly solid Communication (pdf) on global internet governance. Some of the policies promoted on a global level by the European Commission are really excellent – defend and promote fundamental rights and democratic values, multi-stakeholder governance structures, clear rules that respect rights and values and a single unfragmented […]
Read more
-
Russia wants to ban Bitcoin?
Russia’s General Prosecutor has recently published a press release announcing that the official currency of Russia is the ruble and that, according to Article 27 of the Federal Law “On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (Bank of Russia)”, the release on the territory of the Russian Federation of surrogates is prohibited. This includes […]
Read more
-
Success or failure of the W3C’s DNT working group?
On 21 January 2014 MEPs Amelia Andersdottir (Greens/EFA) and Françoise Castex (S+D) organised a panel with the title “Do Not Track – Is Self-Regulation Enough?” with among others Robert Madelin (DG-CONNECT) and François Dubois (DG-JUST) on the panel. The discussion concentrated mainly on the perceived success or failure of the W3C’s DNT working group on […]
Read more
-
European Parliament vote on Collective Rights Management Directive
On 3 February 2014, the European Parliament adopted new rules for collective management organisations and for cross-border licences for online music services. The Directive was adopted by 640 votes in favour, 18 against and 22 abstentions – which is an impressive majority. On one hand, the text improves the management of collective management organisations (CMOs), […]
Read more
-
Google France published CNIL’s fine on its homepage
On 7 February 2014, the French State Council rejected Google’s request made on 14 January 2014 to partially suspend the penalty received for privacy infringement from CNIL – the French Data Protection Authority. On 3 January 2014, CNIL fined Google 150 000 euro over its privacy policies and was required to post a message regarding […]
Read more
-
Italian Supreme Court: Google’s Youtube is just a hosting provider
(title corrected from the newsletter version when the title was wrongfuly posted as “Italian Supreme Court: search engines are just hosting providers”) The Italian Supreme Court (Court of Cassation) finally comes to put an end to a long-term case brought in 2008 by Vividown association against three Google executives considered responsible for a post uploaded […]
Read more