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Civil rights organizations call for protests against the constant increase of surveillance conducted by governments and enterprises. A rally under the motto "Freedom not Fear" will be held in Berlin on 11 October 2008. The organizers agree that it is high time to take to the streets in order to defend basic constitutional rights in the light of an ongoing intensification of security and surveillance measures.

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During its 32nd International Public Meeting in Paris of 22-26 June, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the proposal to expand the world's Domain Name System.

Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO, said in a statement: "The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity. (...) The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net. It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the Internet."

"This was an extremely successful meeting that will be remembered as a

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On 11 March 2008 Ville Oksanen, representing EDRi at the WIPO SCCR, made the following statement on the agenda item related to limitations & exceptions:

"European Digital Rights, EDRI, represents 28 privacy and civil rights organisations from 17 different countries in Europe. As this is the first time EDRI takes the floor, we'd like to congratulate you and your vice chairs on your election.

Not surprisingly, we are strongly in favour of starting the work that would hopefully lead to new international instrument on limitations and exceptions of copyright. EDRI therefore warmly supports the proposal presented by the honourable delegate of Chile.

However, EDRI firmly believes that any new instrument should have also

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The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that took place this year in Rio de Janeiro was attended by over1300 participants from 109 countries and focused on the following main themes - critical Internet resources, access, diversity, openness and security. In total there were 84 events in a 4-day time frame (12-15 November 2007) where people could participate in any plenary sessions, workshops, best practice sessions, dynamic coalition meetings and other related meetings.

The UN Undersecretary-General Sha Zhukang explained in the opening session the scope of the IGF: "The United Nations does not have a role in managing the Internet. But we do embrace the opportunity to provide, through this

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A recent statement from the European Commission reveals that it has started negotiations with US, Japan, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand to create an international treaty on counterfeiting - Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), despite the absence of any independent data on the topic.

The European Commission is looking for a mandate from the European Member States to proceed in this endeavour, but the ball is already rolling, taking into consideration the almost simultaneous press statements from the US Trade Representative and Canada's Minister of International Trade as well.

But "while the claims regularly focus on health and safety risks or suggestions that organized crime or terrorist groups benefit from

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The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) member states adopted during the General Assembly on 28 September 2007 the recommendations made in June 2007 by the Provisional Committee on Proposals for a WIPO Development Agenda (PCDA).

The recommendations include 45 proposals that cover six activity clusters: Technical Assistance and Capacity Building; Norm-setting, Flexibilities, Public Policy and Public Knowledge; Technology Transfer, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Access to Knowledge; Assessments, Evaluation and Impact Studies; Institutional Matters including Mandate and Governance; and Other Issues.

The Plan of Action started in 2004 at WIPO General Assembly with a proposal

On 13-14 September 2007 the French Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO and the Council of Europe organised the conference "Ethics and Human Rights in the Information Society" in Strasbourg, to which EDRi was invited to contribute.

This conference was the third in a cycle of regional conferences on the ethical dimensions of the information society, which aims to contribute to the WSIS process and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The first two regional conferences took place in Latin-America and Africa. While the Latin-American conference contributed to the exchange of views in the region, the African conference was suffering from a lack of participation of local stakeholders. There, mainly African expatriots from the USA and Europe and representatives of South Africa were present.

The recent vote on the OOXML draft standard revealed a number of problems with the ISO procedures, at national as well as international level.

The national procedures have been often accused of being influenced by Microsoft, especially in Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the US.

Protests about Microsoft exerting improper influence on the results of the vote have been made in Poland and Switzerland, the latter voting in favour of OpenXML, despite the fact that the EDRI-member SIUG (Swiss Internet User Group) has pointed out a number of irregularities in the voting process and that a large number of Microsoft partner companies have joined the standardization committee a short time before the debate.

An attempt to influence the Swedish vote was revealed by the open-source

Microsoft supported format Office Open XML (OOXML) did not received a positive vote in the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) ballot that ended on 2 September 2007, failing to achieve the number of votes necessary for its approval as a standard.

Open Office XML is a XML-based file format specification for electronic documents, developed by Microsoft and sent to Ecma International, an international, private standards organization, to be published as the Ecma 376 standard in December 2006. Ecma International submit it to ISO for adoption as an International Standard, through the "fast-track procedure".

Microsoft OOXML claims there is a strong international support for its adoption as an International standard: " The Ecma Office Open XML file formats are being rapidly adopted across multiple platforms and products

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The summer special session of United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related rights (SCCR) ended with an outcome that effectively killed the proposed treaty for protection of broadcast organisations (Broadcast Treaty). The committee called off the Diplomatic Conference that was supposed to take place in November to approve the treaty. Even if the treaty remains on the agenda of SCCR, it is unlikely that there will be any serious push to overcome the vastly different positions on key issues relating to objectives, scope and object of protection.

There were several reasons for this outcome. The treaty was unwanted by