Blogs
Filter by...
-
The Turkish Government is trying to justify Internet censorship
A large and aggressive campaign has been deployed by the Turkish ruling party AKP (Justice and Development Party) over the last few weeks in an attempt to justify Internet censorship. Paid-for advertising, press statements, op-eds in pro-government newspapers or tweets were meant to press the idea that censorship is a mean to protect Internet users […]
Read more
-
German ministers and Wikileaks on the NSA surveillance list
As if what has been revealed until now were not enough, after being ordered by President Barack Obama to stop spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel, it appears that NSA has decided to extend its spying activities to other German government officials. “We have had the order not to miss out on any information now that […]
Read more
-
Merkel wants “Safe Communication Networks” for the EU
In the light of the NSA spying scandal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced plans to set up a European communications network meant to curb the US and GCHQ mass surveillance. “We will speak to France about this and about all things regarding what kind of European providers we have who can offer security for […]
Read more
-
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
-
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
-
German govt and intelligence agencies face penal charges for spying
Penal charges against the German government and US and UK secret services have been filed on 3 February 2014 by three German NGOs – the International League for Human Rights, Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and Digitalcourage. (Digitalcourage and CCC are EDRi members) The criminal complaint is about mass surveillance, illegal covert intelligence activities, violations of […]
Read more