Jurisprudence 2
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German parliament debates filtering or blocking
On 12 November, the German Lower House (Bundestag) debated in plenary on the merits of individual filtering or state-ordered blocking of illegal and harmful content. Germany is the only country in Western Europe (besides Switzerland) were governmental blocking-orders were issued to providers to prevent internet users from accessing information deemed illegal or indecent. Over 80 […]
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Recommended reading: internet filtering
The OpenNet Initiative has published a report on the diversity of filtering programs and their impact on international law, communications, and policy. The initiative is an ongoing research partnership by the Advanced Network Research Group of the University of Cambridge, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and the Berkman Center to monitor international […]
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Europarl hearing on Safer Internet Plus programme
On 11 October, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European parliament (LIBE) organised a hearing on the Safer Internet Plus programme, covering 50 million euro for the years 2005-2008. Learning from past discussions in the European Parliament on the effectivity of this funding, the Commission wrote a pre-evaluation of the action plan. Rapporteur Edith Mastenbroek […]
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7 of 10 NL providers remove public domain text
7 out of 10 internet providers in the Netherlands remove a text by the famous Dutch author Multatuli (who died in 1887), without even looking at the webpage, or verifying the identity of the plaintiff. These are the results of an experiment conducted this summer by the Dutch EDRI-member Bits of Freedom about complaint procedures […]
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Germany attempts to censor website on censorship
The district government of Dusseldorf, Germany is bringing the anti-censorship activist Alvar Freude to court. The hearing starts tomorrow, on 7 October 2004. Freude is accused of posting hyper-links to censored websites with radical right-wing content on his website and thus helping to promote the distribution of the materials. Freude on the other hand claims […]
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Autistici wins case over railroad parody site
The Italian hostingprovider Austici does not have to remove a satirical website it hosts with a parody on the website of the Italian railroad company Trenitalia. On 14 September 2004 the court of Milan rejected a request from Trenitalia to remove the ‘offending content’ and impose a fine on the provider. The court decided that […]
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Conference report 'freedom of the media online'
On 27 and 28 August 2004, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Mr Miklos Haraszti, organised a conference on ‘freedom of the media online’ in the Amsterdam city hall. Two panels focussed on the problematic definition of harmful content and self-regulation. Yaman Akdeniz (director of the UK NGO Cyberrights), Sandy Starr (editor of […]
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Euro ISPA warns against BT web block-list
The UK telephone and internetprovider BT is blocking the access for its customers to an unknown number of websites since 21 June 2004, allegedly containing images of child pornography. So far, BT has not disclosed any information about the banned sites and the precise technical way in which the filtering is deployed, raising serious questions […]
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Court attacks Dutch internet anonymity
By verdict of 24 June 2004 the Appeals Court of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has to a large extent limited the freedom of internet users to express their opinion anonimously. The main issue in this principal case was whether internet provider Lycos was required to hand over the personal data of one of its subscribers […]
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WSIS Tunisia prepcom report
The first Prepcom of the WSIS second phase took place from 24 to 26 June 2004 in Hammamet, Tunisia. The Prepcom started with major obstruction of civil society participation even before civil society could make their first intervention in the governmental plenary session. On the second morning of the Prepcom, the Tunisian ambassador objected in […]
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Report OSCE conference on racism on the internet
Is there any proven link between hate speech on the Internet and committed hate crimes ? This was the difficult question faced by a meeting organised by OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) on the relationship between racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic propaganda on the Internet and hate crimes, which was held in Paris […]
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Notice and take down procedure validated in French law
On 13 June 2004 the French Constitutional Council published a decision on the Digital economy law (Loi pour la confiance dans l’economie numerique or LEN). Among the 3 provisions challenged by the parliamentary opposition, only one has been found unconstitutional and one was slightly modified. None of the 7 further provisions challenged by EDRI-member IRIS […]
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