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UK Digital Economy Act: Millions of websites could be blocked
The Digital Economy Act has become law in the United Kingdom. This wide-ranging law has several areas of concern for digital rights, and could seriously affect privacy and freedom of expression of internet users. One of the main concerns is that it will compel legal pornographic websites to verify the age of their users. The British […]
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Reclaim the net! Copyright and online freedoms at re:publica17
It is hard to count how many times we have been saying that the current European copyright regime is outdated. Sometimes the focus is on the negatives: what it should not be like. The ongoing copyright reform reinforces that tendency with proposals such as the content filter. However, at re:publica17, an annual gathering of media […]
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Killing parody, killing memes, killing the internet?
We love the internet because it creates fantastic opportunities to express ourselves and to innovate. But do we love it enough to pass it on to future generations? Nearly 20 years ago, politicians made decisions that gave us the internet we have today. Visionary policy-makers decided not to punish internet companies for the actions of […]
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ENDitorial: Transparency and law-making on EU copyright – mutually exclusive?
Transparency should be a core principle for an open democracy. According to the European Union (EU) founding treaties, in order to have a democratic decision-making process, the EU institutions “shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society”. However, by following the legislative process on the copyright directive, one can […]
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EU moves one step closer to the world’s worst internet filtering law
In September 2016, the European Commission proposed legislation that would require the constant monitoring and filtering of virtually everything that is uploaded to the internet in Europe. Under the extreme rules proposed by the Commission in the Copyright Directive, uploads to the internet would need to be scanned to assess if any photo, video or […]
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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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Copyright Directive: Lead MEP partly deletes the “censorship machine”
Note: We have updated this article on 20 March 2017 eliminating mentions to the leak when it was no longer necessary and updating the number of amendments below. The rest of the analysis remains relevant and has not been modified. On 8 March, we were able to gain an insight into a leaked Draft Report […]
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A positive step forward against the “censorship machine” in the Copyright Directive
On 24 February 2017 the Rapporteur of the European Parliament (EP) Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), Catherine Stihler MEP, published her draft Opinion on the Copyright Directive. The Opinion sends a strong message against the most extremist parts of the European Commission’s proposal: the “censorship machine” (aka upload filter) proposal in Article […]
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The UK Digital Economy Bill: Threat to free speech and privacy
The Digital Economy Bill is being debated by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom. This is a far-reaching bill that covers a range of digital issues, including better broadband coverage across the UK. However, from the digital rights point of view, there are three main areas of concern.
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Lead Parliamentarian for Culture Committee defends upload filtering
On 6 February 2017, the Parliamentarian in charge of the Copyright Directive for the European Parliament (EP) Committee for Culture and Education (CULT), Marc Joulaud, published his draft Opinion on the proposal for the Directive. As we described in our previous blogposts (here, here and here) the European Commission’s proposal has not fulfilled hopes for […]
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2017 – another extremely challenging year for digital rights
The agenda of the year 2016 for the protection of digital rights was filled with challenges, and it looks like 2017 is not going to be any easier.
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EDRi’s Press Review 2016
During the past year, our work to defend citizens’ rights and freedoms online has gained an impressive visibility – we counted nearly four hundred mentions! – in European and international media. Below, you can find our press review 2016.
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