July 16, 2008

Liberty groups win long court battle against UK wiretapping

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) After nine years of legal battle by civil rights groups in London and Dublin, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 1 July 2008 that UK Government had violated Human Rights by tapping their communications between 1990 and 1997. Liberty groups, along with British Irish Rights […]

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February 11, 2009

Protests against data retention in Bulgaria

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) After the decision at the end of last year when the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) annulled article 5 of the national legislation that implements the Data retention Directive, new initiatives by the Bulgarian authorities raise concerns in relation with data retention. Thus, in 2009, only a […]

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February 10, 2010

France and Denmark may filter online gambling websites

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Frankreich/Dänemark: Sperren für Glücksspielseiten | http://www.unwatched.org/node/1704] An amendment to the draft law on the opening of the market of online gambling was introduced to the French Senate Commission for culture and communication, in order to give the administration the power to apply filters to gambling sites without a […]

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October 5, 2016 · Blogs

Social media as censors of public sphere: YouTube vs. Ombudsman

In early September 2016, a popular Norwegian writer got suspended from Facebook, on account of “child nudity”. The matter escalated into an international incident, involving Norway’s largest printed newspaper and the country’s prime minister. Finally the writer’s Facebook status was restored, the suspension was ended, and Facebook promised to do better.

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January 18, 2012

ENDitorial: Copyright vs Public Domain-copyright as a barrier to culture?

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [ENDitorial: Urheberrechte vs Gemeinfreiheit als Kulturhindernis? | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.1_ENDitorial_Urheberrechte_vs_Gemeinfreiheit_als_Kulturhindernis?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20120127] “The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as thought it belongs — the word is not too big — to the human species. Any intelligent being has a right to it. If one of the two rights, […]

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June 30, 2004

French privacy authority forbids mail-service

The French data protection authority CNIL has declared the new U.S. mail-service ‘Did they read it?’ illegal. Through this service, launched in May 2004 by Rampell Software, subscribers get a report about the exact time their e-mail was opened, for how long, on what kind of operating system and if the mail was forwarded to […]

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September 27, 2006 · Blogs

The draft Audiovisual Media Service Directive considered unnecessary

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK communications regulator, commissioned a research report on the draft Audiovisual Media Service (AVMS) directive proposed by the European Commission in December 2005, as an extension to the Television Without Frontiers (TWF) Directive. The AVMS directive was proposed as a new […]

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September 24, 2008

European Competition Commissioner: We investigate Google-Yahoo deal

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) Google announced in June that it had struck a deal with Yahoo, so it would sell ads on Yahoo website in return for a share of the profits. The EU anti-competition authorities confirms that they are investigating the deal between the two majors in the online advertising. […]

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March 9, 2011

Four strikes law returns to Belgium

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Belgien: Four-Strikes kommen zurück | http://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_9.5_Four_Strikes_Gesetz_in_Belgien] After the proposition of a Belgian version of the French three strikes law was left aside due to the withdrawal from the political life of the deputy that proposed it in 2010, a new proposal was tabled on 27 January 2011 by […]

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October 22, 2014 · Blogs

Macedonian investigative magazine fined in defamation case

On 27 September, 2014, the Skopje Court of Appeals, Macedonia, confirmed the decision of a lower court, and ordered a critical independent magazine “Fokus” to pay a nearly ten thousand euro fine to a high government official for defamation. The ruling was another setback to country’s media freedom. Sasho Mijalkov, the Director of the Security […]

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April 22, 2009

Creative Commons licences launched in Czech Republic

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Creative Commons in der Tschechischen Republik eingeführt | http://www.unwatched.org/node/1378] Macedonian: [Лиценците Криејтив комонс во Република Чешка | http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/content/view/1432/4/lang,mk/] The localized version of the Creative Commons licences was launched on 15 April in the Czech Republic, which has become the fifty-second jurisdiction worldwide to offer localized Creative Commons licenses. […]

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November 5, 2008

The European Parliament says no to airport body scanners

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) MEPs will not support the European Commission plans to include body scanning procedures within the airport security systems. The new system planned by the European Union to be introduced in airports allows security personnel to see an outline of passengers’ bodies beneath their clothes, in order to […]

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