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Deutsch: EDRi sendet offenen Brief an die EU-Kommission und lehnt Internetblock...

EDRi's letter was sent to Commissioners Cecilia Malmström (Home Affairs), Viviane Reding (Justice and Fundamental Rights) and Neelie Kroes (Digital Agenda).

The letter congratulates the Commissioners for their nominations and approval in their new portfolios. It welcomes the positive statements made by all three Commissioners on the need to respect fundamental rights and to insist that legislation is "evidence based".

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Deutsch: Frankreichs Parlament verfolgt weiterhin sein Ziel das Internet zu zen...

On 16 February, the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, passed the first draft of the so-called Loppsi 2 bill allowing the authorities to control the Internet under the pretext of improving the citizens' security.

The new legislation deals not only with child pornography sites, but has in view a long blacklist of other types of websites that ISPs will have to block.

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Deutsch: Frankreich/Dänemark: Sperren für Glücksspielseiten

An amendment to the draft law on the opening of the market of online gambling was introduced to the French Senate Commission for culture and communication, in order to give the administration the power to apply filters to gambling sites without a court order.

While initially, during the examination of the draft law in the National Assembly, the decision was that filtering non-homologated sites would be subject to a court order, the amendment wants to give ARJEL (the authority regulating online games), as it was intended initially, the power to order the blocking measures.

Hopefully, even if adopted by the Senate, t

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Deutsch: Italien wünscht eine Lizenz für das Hochladen von Videos ins Interne...

The Italian Government intends to introduce a new decree that would require people who upload videos onto the Internet to get authorization from the Communications Ministry just like television broadcasters.

Article 4 of the respective decree, which is strongly pushed by Silvio Berlusconi, specifies that a ministerial authorisation is required for the dissemination over the Internet "of moving pictures, whether or not accompanied by sound." This will affect sites of newspapers, IPTV and mobile TV, as well as any person who wants to upload a video on a video-sharing website.

A press conference was he

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Deutsch: Aserbaidschanische Blogger vom Gericht in Baku missbräuchlich verurte...

On 11 November 2009, two Azerbaijani bloggers were found guilty on hooliganism and violence charges by a court in Baku and sentenced to two years and two years and a half prison respectively.

Bloggers and political activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev were arrested on 8 July 2009 on false charges of "hooliganism" after they had posted a video on YouTube mocking the purchase of donkeys from Germany by the Azeri Government.

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Deutsch: Internetsperren erhalten die rote Karte!

Government attempts to block access to the Internet are mounting throughout Europe - but look set to backfire, a new study published on 22 October 2009 concludes.

The Open Society Institute funded the report which is titled "Internet Blocking: Balancing Cybercrime Responses in Democratic Societies." Four experienced professionals, Cormac Callanan of Ireland, Marco Gercke of Germany, Estelle De Marco of France, and Hein Dries-Ziekenheiner of the Netherlands, collaborated on the research.

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Deutsch: Websperren müssen der Wahrheit ins Auge blicken

In the negotiations surrounding the formation of a new conservative-liberal coalition in Germany following the recent elections, an agreement has been reached to postpone, for at least a year, the introduction of web blocking. As the law has already been adopted, the procedure by which the law will be stopped from entering into force has not yet been decided.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: die Regulierung von online-Medien in Aserbeidschan

I was invited last week to a meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan by the Council of Europe that organized together with the local National TV and Radio Council in order to discuss some issues related to the regulation of online media.

The meeting took place on 4 June 2009 and the first part was dedicated to the local authorities (Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies or National TV and Radio Council) local Internet actors (The online news agency lent.az, or APA news agency) and NGOs (such as Azerbaijan Internet Forum or IREX Azerbaijan).

Although the authorities and private partners sat at the same ta