January 18, 2006

Evaluation of EU rules on databases

The Directive on the legal protection of Databases was adopted in February 1996. The Directive created a new exclusive ‘sui generis’ right for database producers, valid for 15 years, to protect their investment of time, money and effort, irrespective of whether the database is in itself innovative (“non-original” databases). The European Commission published on 12 […]

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March 13, 2017 · Blogs

Civil society urges EU institutions to stop the “censorship machine” in the copyright proposal

EDRi has signed a joint open letter together with 27 other civil society organisations expressing concerns about European Commission’s copyright proposal. The proposal requires internet platforms to use automated upload filtering technologies. This obligation would impact negatively on free speech and democracy by building a system where citizens will face internet platforms blocking the upload of […]

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February 25, 2015 · Blogs

Net neutrality: Freedom also means banning positive discrimination

Zero rating, also known as “sponsored data”, is the policy of mobile network providers and mobile virtual network providers to not charge their clients for using specific services, such as Facebook or YouTube. Zero rating is a bad idea for several reasons: You give specific services an advantage over their competitors, and push users towards […]

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May 21, 2003 · Blogs

Update on Swiss website blocking order

The internet censorship requests issued by the examining magistrate of the canton of Vaud (see EDRigram number 2 from 12 February) have been rejected on 30 April by a judge from the court of Lausanne. In December, over 30 providers had received the order, and while most of them installed some technical blocking-measures, they joined […]

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February 24, 2021 · Blogs | EDRi-gram | Highlights | Privacy and data protection | Data protection standards | Freedom of expression online | Privacy and confidentiality | Surveillance and data retention | Transparency

ePrivacy strikes back

“And when we woke up, the ePrivacy Regulation was still there”, could be the EU bubble version of the famous micro-tale. Four years after the main text protecting privacy and confidentiality of people in the EU was proposed, Member States have finally given the green light to finalise the adoption. But, where will this lead us?

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February 12, 2014 · Blogs

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 […]

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July 30, 2003 · Blogs

European Commission rejects Greek gaming law

On 22 July, the European Commission announced legal steps against the government of Greece for it’s unjust anti-gaming law. The Commission questions the compatibility of the law in question (of 29 July 2002) with the provisions of the EC Treaty on the free movement of goods and services and the freedom of establishment. The Greek […]

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March 14, 2007

UK Home Office plans to fingerprint children starting 11

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) “Restricted” documents circulated among officials in the UK Identity and Passport have shown Home Office plans to fingerprint children aged 11 years and over, beginning with 2010, as part of the programme for the introduction of new biometric passports and ID cards. The fingerprints are to be […]

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April 12, 2006

Free parental control software in France

As a result of the agreement signed between the French ISPs and the Ministry of the Family on 16 November 2005, starting with 1 April 2006, most of the ISPs started providing a free of charge parental control software to their subscribers. The agreement signed between ISPs and the French authorities has followed strong protests […]

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March 26, 2008

Sony BMG accused of using pirated software

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) Sony BMG has been accused by PointDev company of having used Ideal Migration, the administration software for Windows servers and client accounts, without having a licence. On 22 January 2008, a bailiff mandated by PointDev found an illegal installation of the software on four computers belonging to […]

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March 26, 2014 · Blogs

ENDitorial: Microsoft’s terms of service strike again

Under Microsoft’s terms of service, the company gives itself the right to do almost anything at any time and for any reason. This ranges from the bizarre – they reserve the right to withdraw participation in Bing ads “at any time for any reason or for no reason” – to the ridiculous – their “code […]

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September 11, 2013 · Blogs

More than 20 000 protest in Berlin against surveillance

The Freiheit statt Angst (Freedom Not Fear) mass anti-surveillance rally took place in Berlin, Germany on 7 September 2013. The event was organized by a broad civil coalition of over 80 NGO, associations and parties demanding an end to surveillance and a clear statement from the government on the surveillance scandal. While the organizers expected […]

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