Jurisprudence 2
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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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Danish conference on on-line freedom of expression
On 2 September the Danish network on the World Summit on the Information Society hosted a conference on Freedom of Expression in the Information Society. The conference addressed global tendencies of regulation of freedom of expression, the new Council of Europe Declaration on Freedom of Communication on the Internet, intellectual property rights, (traditional) media, access […]
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France: 2 court cases about liability of intermediaries
While the E-commerce directive (2000/58/EC) is not yet transposed, in France the liability of intermediaries is decided via jurisprudence. In April the owner of the discussion-website percussions.org was convicted to pay half of the legal costs made by the company Eurodim, because a visitor of the website posted a negative message about the head of […]
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Deep-linking legal in Germany
The German Federal Supreme Court ruled on 17 July that deep links from a news search engine to articles on a publishers web site do not violate German copyright or competition law. The plaintiff, a media group that publishes several newspapers and magazines, including ‘Handelsblatt’ and ‘DM’, sued the search engine provider www.paperboy.de for forbearance. […]
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German chancellor demands take-down of satirical website
A German comedian was ordered to take down his parody website about the German Federal Chancellor (Bundeskanzler). The comedian, Joseph Pohl, operated the website for almost 5 years. Two weeks ago, he received an email from the Chancellors press office, accusing him of infringing on their trademark. Even though the site is as clear a […]
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Dutch court orders ban on foreign gambling websites
Last Tuesday, a Dutch court ordered 21 foreign gambling websites to ban Dutch visitors. The sites are located in 10 different countries, from a well-known gambling paradise like Antigua to companies based in Canada and Australia. The case was instigated by the national Dutch lottery (Lotto). This 100% state-owned company became very confident after winning […]
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OSCE statement about freedom of the media on-line
At the end of a two-day conference in Amsterdam on internet-related perils to freedom of expression, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve has issued a call to take up a strong position towards free flow of information on the internet. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the […]
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Right of reply in on-line media
The Council of Europe (45 member states) is finalizing a recommendation on the ‘right of reply’ in on-line media. Through a right of reply persons and organisations can reply to articles in the media in which they have been portrayed or criticized. Many countries in Europe already have a limited right of reply for printed […]
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Council of Europe declaration on freedom on the internet
The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers has adopted a Declaration on freedom of communication on the internet. The text contains 7 principles that underline the principle of freedom of expression and condemn practices aimed at restricting or controlling internet access, especially for political reasons. Remarkably, the 7th principle is the right of anonymity. “In […]
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Internet censorship in the Ukraine
During a meeting of the Freedom of Speech Committee of the Parliament and Council of Europe on 18 April, Privacy Ukraine presented a report on Internet censorship in Ukraine. Though the Ukrainian parliament has organised several hearings on censorship, and earlier this month even adopted legislation clarifying the term ‘censorship’, the overall perspective is bleak. […]
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New content restrictions in Germany
In Germany, new content restrictions were introduced for the protection of minors, extending current regulations and indexing schemes for film and video to internet and games. Since 1 April all kinds of ego shooters and electronic media “glorifying war” are banned. Furthermore, under the new regulation, all computer games must carry labels with minimum age […]
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Censoring the internet: the situation in Turkey
‘Turkey, showing the symptoms of a developing country, has not yet established the jurisprudence necessary for the Internet. The existing Turkish laws, especially the Press Law, are naively applied to alleged lawbreakers on the Internet, resulting in ludicrous outcomes.’ Paper about internet censorship in Turkey by Kemal Altintas, Tolga Aydin and Varol Akman published 10 […]
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