Alternatives to dominant digital services
Today, the internet is dominanted by a small handful of huge centralised online platforms that provide social networking, communications and other services to billions of people globally. Their business is harvesting our most intimte moments and monetise them by selling our attention to advertising companies, politicians, or anybody willing to pay for targeting us with their content. But another internet is possible: We advocate for the redecentralisation of the internet and fight for an public online space that is serving the people rather than big data business.
Filter resources
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The impact of competition law on your digital rights
This is the first article in a series dealing with competition law and Big Tech. The aim of the series is to look at what competition law has achieved when it comes to protecting our digital rights, where it has failed to deliver on its promises, and how to remedy this. This series will first […]
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Booklet: #EthicalWebDev – guide for ethical website development and maintenance
We’ve finally published our new guide for ethical website development and maintenance, Ethical Web Dev! Explore the guide here
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Regulating online communications: Fix the system, not the symptoms
Our digital information ecosystem fails to deliver the communications landscape needed to sustain our democracies. In a problem analysis, EDRi member Bits of Freedom introduces and disentangles some of the key concepts and issues surrounding the dominant role of platforms and the resulting harms to our freedom of expression.
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Open letter demands interoperability of the big online platforms
On 21 May 2019, EDRi observer La Quadrature du Net, along with 70 other organisations, including some EDRi members, sent a letter asking the French government and members of the Parliament to force web giants (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter…) to be interoperable with other online services. The purpose is to allow users of these platforms to […]
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Fighting online hatespeech: An alternative to mandatory real names
The internet facilitates debates: People around the globe can connect at almost zero cost, and information and opinions that would otherwise hardly be noticed can go viral through social media. However, services like Twitter and Facebook can also be used for targeted defamation. Especially people who belong to minorities or endorse views outside the mainstream […]
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BEREC workshop: Regulatory action by NRAs and consumer empowerment
On 29 May 2019, EDRi was invited to participate in a workshop of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) on the planned update of its Net Neutrality Guidelines. Thomas Lohninger from Austrian EDRi member Epicenter.works and Jesper Lund from Danish EDRi member IT-Pol represented our network. Lund provided the following input to […]
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Google-Huawei case highlights the importance of free software
Google denies the Chinese IT giant Huawei access to Google’s proprietary components of the Android mobile operating system, which threatens IT security. This highlights the importance of free software for technology users, public bodies, and businesses.
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Closed-doors discussions to filter the internet continue
On 12 September 2018, the European Parliament (EP) adopted the worst imaginable amendments to the copyright Directive proposal.
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ENDitorial: YouTube puts uploaders, viewers & itself in a tough position
A pattern is emerging. After blocking a controversial video, YouTube nonpologises for doing so, and reinstates the video... just to block it again a few months later. The procedures around content moderation need to improve, but that's not all: more needs to change.
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What’s next for Europe’s internet censorship plan?
Existing copyright filters (like YouTube's ContentID system) are set up to block people who attract too many copyright complaints, but what about people who make false copyright claims? The platforms must be allowed to terminate access to the copyright filter system for those who repeatedly make false or inaccurate claims about which copyright works are theirs.
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EU Member States agree on monitoring & filtering of internet uploads
On 25 May, the European Council agreed to a negotiating position on the draft copyright directive. This will allow the presidency of the Council to start negotiations with the European Parliament on mass monitoring and filtering of internet uploads and a chaotic new “ancillary copyright” measure that will make it harder to link to and quote news sources.
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Internet protocols and human rights
Recently, a lot of thought has been devoted to the issue of human rights and internet protocols.
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