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January 28, 2004 · Blogs

EDRI-gram – Number 2.2, 28 January 2004

January 28, 2004

European Commission communication on spam

The European Commission has finally published a Communication on spam, just in time for the OECD conference on spam, hosted by the Commission on 2 and 3 February. The Communication focusses on actions to be taken by the EU member states in order to make the ban on spam more effective. Clearly, implementing the EU […]

January 28, 2004

German DP Commissioner criticizes draft IPR Enforcement

Peter Schaar, appointed 2 months ago as Germany’s chief Data Protection Commissioner, has severely criticized the draft Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, currently under discussion in the European Parliament and the Council. Interviewed by the online news service Heise, Schaar said the Directive brought along many risks, including deep cuts into the […]

January 28, 2004

PNR: Bolkestein's diplomacy and anger Belgian DPA

MEP Marco Cappato has revealed a letter EU Commissioner Bolkestein sent to Tom Ridge, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. The letter was sent on 18 December, only two days after Bolkestein had given his presentation in which he tried to mislead the European Parliament on the true nature of the agreement on the transfer […]

January 28, 2004

Italy: five years data retention

On 28 January 2004, the Italian Lower House approved of a governmental decree-law on mandatory data retention by telephone and internet companies. Government issued the decree on 24 December 2003, without any prior parliamentary debate. All data about electronic communications must now be stored for a period of 5 years. According to the privacy-group ALCEI, […]

January 28, 2004

EP in favour of collecting societies and levies

On 15 January 2004 the European Parliament accepted an own-initiative report about the importance and future of collecting societies, the organisations that collect the rights on copyright and neighbouring rights. The report states that Digital Rights Management is insufficiently developed to replace the work of collecting societies. According to the report, reasonable levies (for example […]

January 28, 2004

Polish government allowed to send SMS-spam

According to a recent decision from the Polish Data Protection Authority (Generalny Inspektor Ochrony Danych Osobowych – GIODO) a massive SMS-spamrun from the Polish government was perfectly legal. A governmental agency committed this run in June 2003 as a last-minute reminder to citizens of the upcoming referendum about the European Union. Of the 30 million […]

January 28, 2004

Russian plans to introduce new ID-system

The Russian government is considering a new system of personal registration for all citizens. In 2006 all Russians will be assigned a unique universal identifier. On 15 January 2004 the deputy minister of economical development Andrei Sharonov told journalists that the original proposal had been prepared by his ministry and the government supported this idea. […]

January 28, 2004

Danish company fined EUR 54.000 for fax-spamming

The Danish Maritime and Commercial court last week convicted the Danish mobile phone company Aircom for spamming. The company has to pay a fine of EUR 54.000 (400.000 DKK) for sending out unsolicited commercial faxes. In Denmark, this is the largest fine issued up till now for spamming. In court, Aircom admitted to have sent […]

January 15, 2004

Launch of Irish Free Software Organisation

On 5 January 2004 the Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO) was launched. Since June 2003, members of a European free software mailing list have been collaborating on issues such as software patents, and the European Copyright Directive. One of the founders, Ciaran O’Riordan, comments: “With Ireland holding the presidency of the EU for the next […]

January 15, 2004

Romanian journalist fired for internet posting

Ms Brindusa Armanca, a journalist from the Public Romanian Television, was fired recently for an internet posting. She was accused of spreading negative opinions about the public broadcaster via a discussion list on the internet. The discussion list is FreeEx, a public online forum dedicated to journalists hosted by Yahoo. The list is part of […]

January 15, 2004

Schengen information system goes biometric

With the planned inclusion of two biometric identifiers into EU Member States’ passports and ID Cards as well as Visa to the EU, it was only a question of time when the first plans to store these identifiers in an EU-wide database would be announced. The announcement came shortly before Christmas: Biometric data will, according […]