Our work
EDRi is the biggest European network defending rights and freedoms online. We work to to challenge private and state actors who abuse their power to control or manipulate the public. We do so by advocating for robust and enforced laws, informing and mobilising people, promoting a healthy and accountable technology market, and building a movement of organisations and individuals committed to digital rights and freedoms in a connected world.
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New Finnish draft copyright law
The Finnish Ministry of Education has published a new draft copyright law. The new proposal does not differ a lot from an earlier version that was rejected by parliament last February. It is still highly complicated and overzealous. On the positive side the so-called ‘community first sale doctrine’ is now limited to commercial entities only. […]
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Excessive e-government demands in Poland
On the first of July, the Polish Access to Public Data Bill (2001) came into force. The bill obliges up to 10 thousands of public sector institutions (including local government, political parties, public schools, etc…) to put public information (such as information about property, structure, authorities, procedures, etc…) on special web sites. Each institution is […]
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EU Commission finishes Microsoft antitrust probe
The EU Commission is preparing the last steps in it’s antitrust probe against Microsoft. The Commission has been investigating Microsoft practices since 2000 following a complaint by Sun Microsystems. Sun accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the market by not releasing crucial information on the communication between computers and servers running MS Windows. […]
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German debate about wiretapping statistics
After public criticism the German ministry of economy (Bundeswirtschaftsministerium) is withdrawing plans to discontinue the central yearly statistics on wiretapped telephones. In an article in ‘Focus’-magazine the ministry announced its intention to change the next draft of the telecommunications law accordingly. A week later the ministry issued a press release denying the abolishment plan. According […]
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France: 2 court cases about liability of intermediaries
While the E-commerce directive (2000/58/EC) is not yet transposed, in France the liability of intermediaries is decided via jurisprudence. In April the owner of the discussion-website percussions.org was convicted to pay half of the legal costs made by the company Eurodim, because a visitor of the website posted a negative message about the head of […]
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Deep-linking legal in Germany
The German Federal Supreme Court ruled on 17 July that deep links from a news search engine to articles on a publishers web site do not violate German copyright or competition law. The plaintiff, a media group that publishes several newspapers and magazines, including ‘Handelsblatt’ and ‘DM’, sued the search engine provider www.paperboy.de for forbearance. […]
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New German idea-competition
BRIDGE, the German foundation for civil right in the digital society (Burgerrechte in der digitalen Gesellschaft) has opened an interesting idea-competition. People and organisations are invited to come with ideas for a public campaign to raise awareness about threats to freedom in the digital society. Topic and timeframe must be clearly defined. The winner, to […]
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Big brother in the supermarket
The UK supermarket chain Tesco has confirmed that it is testing a controversial surveillance system that tracks customers in one of their stores in Cambridge. Anyone buying certain products will have their picture taken. Twice. The system uses Radio Frequency Identifiers (RFIDs) to trigger CCTV cameras to take a picture of the customer. In the […]
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Dutch MEP announces court case about PNR-data
A Dutch member of the European Parliament is threatening to take the European Commission to court for failing to protect the digital privacy of its EU citizens. EU MP Johanna Boogerd is also vice-chairman of LIBE, the parliamentary committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs. She opposes the agreement between the Commission […]
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Landwell scares Spanish peer-to-peer users
On 17 July, Landwell, a Spanish legal firm related to Price-Waterhouse-Coopers, issued a press release stating that they were planning to present a lawsuit against 4.000 Spanish Kazaa users for illegally downloading copyrighted material such as movies, songs or software. They announced they had identified a total of 95.000 Spanish file-sharers, and were going to […]
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Analysis of draft IP enforcement directive
The EU parliament Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market will vote on 11 September on the proposed EU Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The Directive proposes to harmonize IP law in such a way that all enforcement measures available to IP owners in any EU member state must be available […]
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French IP commission promotes internet-surveillance
On 26 June a special copyright advisory board within the French Ministry of Culture published a report supporting government plans to increase surveillance of Internet users as part of a wider bid to stop the online copying of protected works. The Superior Council for Artistic and Literary Intellectual Property (Conseil Supérieur de la Propriété Littéraire […]
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