March 29, 2006

Internet under attack on election day in Belarus

On 19 March 2006, date of the presidential elections in Belarus, the major online independent news resources (svaboda.org, charter97.org, belapan.com, ucpb.org, naviny.by, kozylin.com, zubr-belarus.com) were the targets of various types of attacks. The Website of “Nasha Niva” newspaper was not available from Belarus on 18 March on the Internet. Other problems were spotted in accessing […]

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August 24, 2011

UK riots give birth to the idea of suspending social media services

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Britische Ausschreitungen lösen Ruf nach Sperre sozialer Medien aus | http://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_9.16_Britische_Ausschreitungen_loesen_Ruf_nach_Sperre_sozialer_Medien_aus?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20110901] The recent riots that have taken place in the UK have initiated a wave of statements from officials on the necessity to shut down or suspend access of UK citizens to certain social media services. The Metropolitan […]

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March 29, 2006

Slovenia : Draft Police Act endangers privacy

The draft of new Police Act has raised a lot of criticism in the last days from privacy activists and legal experts on its broad encroachment upon citizens’ right to privacy, granted by the Slovenian Constitution. Through the suggested act, the Slovenian government grants more power to the police, using terrorism, the Schengen treaty and […]

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March 28, 2007

French draft decree regarding the right to reply on the Internet

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The French Ministry of Culture has forwarded to the European Commission a draft decree for the application of the right to reply legislation introduced by art. 6 IV of the law on Digital Economy of 21 June 2004 (‘Loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique’ or LCEN) […]

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July 18, 2012

French Supreme Court: Important rulings for intermediary liability

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Frankreich: Wichtige Entscheidungen in Sachen Providerhaftung | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.14_Frankreich_Wichtige_Entscheidungen_in_Sachen_Providerhaftung?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20120718] On 12 July 2012 the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation) issued four important and somewhat contradictory rulings regarding the role of online service providers in policing online copyright infringements. In the first case, SNEP vs. Google France, the Court’s […]

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March 12, 2014 · Blogs

Belgian NGO’s challenging the data retention law

At the end of 2013, Belgium passed a law forcing communication providers to retain certain data about the activities of their customers. This means information about each and every Belgian citizen that uses electronic communications services. Providers of fixed or mobile telephony and Internet access have a legal duty to retain data (who calls whom, […]

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September 10, 2003

Scientology loses legal battle with ISP's

8 years after Scientology started legal procedures against Dutch author Karin Spaink, internet provider XS4ALL and 20 other defendants, the Appellate Court of The Hague rejected all claims and ruled that freedom of expression should prevail upon copyrights. According to the ruling “The (…) texts show that, in their doctrine and their organisation, Scientology et […]

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March 26, 2014 · Blogs

Turkey blocks Twitter

Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan appears to have ordered Twitter be blocked in the country, after wiretapped voice recordings and documents apparently showing evidence of corruption the prime minister’s inner circle were leaked via the social media platform. The ban entered into force shortly before midnight on 20 March 2014. Users trying to access the […]

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March 26, 2008

UK: Phorm targeted advertising practices – under pressure

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) A large controversy has been lately spurred in the UK by the new technology Phorm, which can track users’ online surfing habits in order to better target ads. The Phorm system is apparently meant to assign a unique identifying number to a user’s browser, which, according to […]

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May 31, 2017 · Blogs

ENDitorial: Consumer protection MEPs launch attack on consumers

Documents leaked by Julia Reda, a Member the European Parliament (MEP) show that parliamentarians on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), whose job it is to protect consumers and improve legal consistency in the EU, are planning an assault on citizens’ fundamental rights, legal coherence and even the ultimate authority of […]

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September 25, 2003

Verisign violates privacy millions of internet users

Verisign, the US based registrar of the .com and .net top level domain, refuses to stop redirecting internet users to its own search engine Site Finder. Since 15 September everybody who makes a mistake in typing a web address is re-directed to their website, instead of just getting an error message. In spite of massive […]

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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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