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A French Parliamentary report suggests a change in the law (LCEN) that implements the European Directive on e-commerce in order to make clearer the distinction between editing and hosting activities in the new applications related to Web 2.0.

The report of the Deputy Jean Dionis du Séjour on the application of the LCEN was updated on 16 April 2008, after the first version was submitted to the Parliament on 23 January. The update concerns some of the latest court decisions in France that established the responsibility of some websites for others' RSS feeds or for user-generated content. The report specifies that the law has created a hosting status that is different from that of an

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U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White reversed his initial decision of shutting down the wikileaks.org domain of Wikileaks, a website where whistleblowers can untraceably leak documents.

Wikileaks, launched in early 2007, has anonymously posted documents revealing delicate subjects such as the infiltration of agents of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, into the commission investigating their organization or massive corruption in Kenya.

The Swiss bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks, at the beginning of February 2008, in relation to documents posted to the site that were showing corruption in the bank's Cayman Islands branch allegedly used by bank clients to launder money, hide assets and evade taxes. The Bank had obtained

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On 25 February 2008, following pressure from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and a petition initiated by the 12 biggest record companies of Israel, the Haifa District Court ordered the country's three largest ISPs to block access to HttpShare.com, a BitTorrent and http hyperlink-only website.

Gideo Ginat, Haifa District Court Judge, stated: "I order the respondents, that is Israeli internet service providers, to systematically block access to the illicit site, HttpShare, so that surfers cannot enter this site and utilize it in order to impede upon the claimants' copy rights." The decision did not indicate any deadline for the application of the decision

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On 8 January 2008, at the launching of the government consultation on new copyright exceptions, Lord Triesman, the UK minister for intellectual property, threatened the ISPs with the introduction of new legislation to force them to block illegal filesharing in case they cannot find a voluntary agreement together with the music and film industries by the end of summer.

Referring to the Government's attitude towards illegal filesharing, Triesman said "We're not prepared to see the kinds of damage that will be done to the creative economy," and regarding the ISPs he added in an interview for The Register "There is no objective reason why they (rights holders and ISPs) cannot arrive at an agreement. Whether they have the will to do so is

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Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, made a statement on 14 November 2007 announcing, among other security measures, the intention to ask Internet companies to assist the government in its fight against online terrorist propaganda by finding ways to stop such content.

The Prime Minister stated the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was "inviting the largest global technology and Internet companies to work together to ensure that our best technical expertise is galvanized to counter online incitement to hatred". The proposal comes in line with the European Union efforts to find ways to sanction Web sites that display terror material.

The Home Office said it was not yet clear if Brown's proposal would need new

A Turkish court from the eastern city of Sivas decided on 18 September 2007 to order the ISPs to block the access to YouTube, considering that one of the video hosted there insulted Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish army.

Anatolia news agency reported that the order "has been forwarded to the state regulatory body, the Telecommunications Board, to be put into effect." YouTube declared it was ready to cooperate with Turkish authorities to resolve the dispute.

The trial has been initiated by a citizen from Sivas, who complained to the Turkish prosecutors on that video content.

The decision triggered prompt reaction from Reporters Without Borders: "Blocking an entire website because of a few videos is a disproportionate

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Turkey blocked the access to all the blogs hosted at wordpress.com on 17 August 2007, after a Turkish court decided on this action by agreing with a law firm hired by Adnan Oktar, that claimed that several blogs on the wordpress platform were publishing allegedly defamatory and "unlawful" statements about their client.

Since 17 August 2007, over a million WordPress hosted blogs could have not been accessible in Turkey, and a standard message has been displayed instead: "Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C.Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance ".

Adnan Oktar's lawyers claimed that they had tried to contact wordpress.com

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Rapidshare AG sued the German society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights (GEMA) in order to clarify the legal situation regarding free file hosting in Germany.

The counter-attack from Rapidshare, a well-known free file hosting provider based in Switzerland, comes after the suit initiated in Germany by GEMA in January 2007 for distributing MP3 files on Rapidshare.com. GEMA won a preliminary injunction in the first lawsuit that was upheld by the appeal in March of the District Court of Cologne.

The District Court in Cologne had considered that Rapidshare was liable for copyright infringements even if the works were uploaded by the users and not by the provider.

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After six years of debates in trying to reach an agreement, the European Council will adopt a Framework decision that makes incitement to racism and xenophobia a crime in all the EU members states. At the same time, five MEPs promoted a declaration that asks for an increased involvement of the ISPs in the fight against hate webpages.

The text of the new Framework decision on Racism and Xenophobia has been agreed by the Justice and Interior Ministers from EU, that have reached a compromise, thus making the incitement to racism a crime that should be punished by criminal penalties of 1-3 years of imprisonment. However the member countries may "choose to punish only conduct which is either carried

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A recent shock video published at the end of November on YouTube, the free video hosting service now owned by Google, has triggered extensive reactions in Italy. The video was showing a group of four Italian teenagers attacking a 17-year-old disabled boy in a classroom in Turin. The attackers also made a video of their actions that was posted on YouTube.

Although Google had deleted the movie as soon as they were informed about it, the Italian Police has opened a criminal proceeding against Google - the Italian subsidiary. The action included a police raid on the Milan offices of Google.

Google Italy has confirmed that the videos published by the users go online automatically and there is no editorial preventive filter from their part.