EDRI - Freedom of speech

Italian blog closed by Police

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:45:53 +0100

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On 6 June 2008, the blog of the Italian journalist Antonino Monteleone was closed, without notification, by the Polizia Postale of Calabria under accusations of defamation, but the journalist claims that this action came after having posted uncomfortable information on political figures.

The whole story started in 2006 after the elections, when the blogger posted extracts from a document containing CVs of candidates for the Italian Parliament. The document included information of certain names on the nomination list that had previous relations to cases of power abuse and manipulation of tenders or even with mafia activities. On 9 December 2006, Monteleone posted an article on Galati, member of UDP party then, undersecretary in the

France obtained ISPs support in blocking illegal sites

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:43:43 +0100

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French Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced on 10 June 2008 that the French state had come to an agreement with the French ISPs to block sites carrying pedophilic content or content related to terrorism and racial hatred. "We can no longer tolerate the sexual exploitation of children in the form of cyber-pedophilia. We have come to an agreement: the access to child pornography sites will be blocked in France. Other democracies have done it. France could wait no longer" said the minister.

The plan will be put into force in September by the creation of a blacklist on the basis of information received from Internet users on sites that carry offensive material. Internet users will be able, via a platform, to signal

ENDitorial: A new "NSA FRAnchise" set up in Sweden?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:04:51 +0100

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Lex Orwell, a law proposal for total surveillance, is urgently being pushed to a vote on 17 June 2008 by national security hawks in the peaceful Kingdom of Sweden. It will mandate the "NSA franchise", the FRA, to turn its forest of parabola ears and world's 5th largest super computer to listen to you - or rather what you do, say and share on the Internet - would an information package pass the Swedish borders.

FRA is the Swedish shorthand for The National Defence Radio Establishment. An institution very active during the cold war but without a clear task or purpose today since material from satellite traffic from military activities the Baltics isn't particularly a la mode any more. To stay in business, FRA has therefore for years pursued

Radio Free Europe's websites in Belarus under attack

Wed, 07 May 2008 18:41:04 +0100

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Several Radio Free Europe websites were under a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in the past week. The attacks started on 26 April 2008, the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, primary targeted at the Belarus Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) service which was offering live coverage of a rally of protest organized in Minsk against the plight of uncompensated victims and a government decision to build a new nuclear plant.

Martins Zvaners, RFE spokesman, thinks that was the largest attack ever experienced by RFE. At its peak, the DDoS attack was sending more than 50000 requests to the RFE sites, flooding its servers' capacity and throwing them

More control over the Internet wanted in Russia

Wed, 07 May 2008 18:37:27 +0100

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The Russian prosecutor's office wants to extend the anti-extremism laws to the Internet, proposing an amendment to the rules that presently govern printed media on the basis of which newspapers considered by the court to have published extremist material can be shut down.

In terms of the new proposal, which began circulating in the State Duma's Security Committee on 10 April 2008, any kind of material considered extremist or website deemed to have hosted extremist material should be blocked by ISPs. If found guilty of repeatedly hosting extremist materials, the website will be shut down. A list of extremist Internet-based materials and sites must be regularly made available and the ISPs will be bound to

France considering new rules for web 2.0

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:28:44 +0100

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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

Russian Government wants to control all WiFi devices

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:23:03 +0100

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On 14 April 2008, Fontanka.ru online newspaper reported that Rossvyazokhrankultura, the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service, intends to ask for the mandatory registration of all WiFi devices, including personal home networks, notebook computers, mobile telephones and PDAs.

Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency's communications monitoring division, told the newspaper that wireless Internet users will have to register any electronics using WiFi technology. The registration could take as long as ten days for standard devices like PDAs and laptops and the noncompliance may bring forth the confiscation of the respective equipment. Users wanting to operate a wireless access point or a

ENDitorial: CoE - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:22:40 +0100

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The 9th meeting of the Council of Europe (CoE) group of specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society (MC-S-IS) was held in Strasbourg from 31 March to 2 April 2008. At the same time, on 1-2 April, another division of the CoE was holding in a building across the street its 2008 Octopus conference on cooperation against cybercrime. This schedule overlapping is not the only sign that CoE's left hand seems to ignore what its right hand is doing: different divisions are also addressing same issues, though from different points of view and with different results.

It happened this time with the guidelines for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). While the Octopus conference was discussing and then adopting its

France: Linking can be damaging to your pockets

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:14:33 +0100

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A recent decision by the Paris Tribunal has condemned 3 different French websites for linking to another website containing gossip information on the French actor Olivier Martinez.

The actor has decided to sue 3 websites (Fuzz.fr, Vivre-en-normandie.com and CroixRousse.net) for linking to external websites that presented the respective information.

Fuzz.fr is a Digg-like website, where the website users can vote which news comes on first. However, the court decided that the owner of the website has an editorial responsibility, even if it's a digg-like service, and forced him to pay 1000 euros as damages for infringing the actor's privacy and 1500 euros as legal fees.

Ireland: Music industry sues ISP, demands filtering

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:23:27 +0000

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EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal have sued Ireland's largest ISP, Eircom, demanding that it install filters to prevent users from illegally sharing or downloading music. The action was admitted by Mr. Justice Peter Kelly to the Commercial Court, meaning that it will be heard on an expedited basis.

Eircom has said that it is not on notice of specific illegal activity that infringed the rights of the companies and has no legal obligation to monitor traffic on its network. Previously the music companies had sought to have Eircom voluntarily install software such as that produced by Audible Magic, which will "fingerprint" music files, but Eircom refused indicating that it could not run that software on its servers.

ENDitorial: Finnish web censorship

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:01:58 +0000

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As of 1 January 2007 a law took effect in Finland allowing the Police to maintain a secret blacklist of child porn sites and distribute it to ISPs so that these may block access to those sites. Use of the lists is ostensibly voluntary to ISPs, but there have been rather strong hints of making it mandatory if not adopted otherwise. After a slow start, Police actually started distributing the list late last year and several ISPs have began using them.

In February 2008, the police added the site lapsiporno.info to the blacklist. Despite the name (Lapsiporno means "child porn" in Finnish), the website contains no child or any other kind of porn, but criticism of censorship and a partial collection of addresses from the officially secret

French Police extends the Internet blacklist

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:54:01 +0000

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French Internal Affairs Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, announced on 14 February 2008 new measures to fight against cybercrime, including extending the websites blacklist and pushing for computer online investigations, without the permission of the country of the hosting company.

The Minister visited the Cybercrime Brigade that is located in Nanntere and announced a new "best practices chart" with the operators in order to block websites. According to the statements, the Norwegian model was taken into consideration, meaning the creation of a list with websites not only with child pornography information, but also the ones with information on making explosives or chemical weapons, terrorist propaganda and racial hate speech.

PirateBay - blocked in Denmark

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:13:14 +0000

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Following a complaint by IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), a Danish bailiff court issued on 4 February 2008 an injunction ordering Tele2, one of the major ISPs in Denmark, to block the access to the PirateBay domains.

IFPI asked the court for this injunction because most of the materials referred on PirateBay are copyrighted and the exchange of these materials between PirateBay users is illegal. IFPI considered that Tele2 was not directly liable for the illegal copying, but was contributing to it, by making temporary copies of torrent files.

Tele2 has been complying with the injunction so far by DNS filtering (same method as used in the child pornography filters and AllOfMp3), but is

YouTube blocked once more in Turkey

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:03:01 +0000

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An order issued by a Turkish court on 17 January 2008 blocked once again the access to Google's YouTube Web site on account of allegedly insulting clips referring to the country's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The ban lasted for 6 days and as no statements have been made by Turk Telekom which has implemented the ban or by YouTube representatives, it is not yet known whether the ban was lifted because the clips under question were removed.

The situation seems to be a repeated pattern as YouTube was first banned in March 2007 for similar allegations until the video considered disrespectful were removed by the site. A second time, in September, a Turkish court from

EDRI - Freedom of speech

Italian blog closed by Police

France obtained ISPs support in blocking illegal sites

ENDitorial: A new "NSA FRAnchise" set up in Sweden?

Radio Free Europe's websites in Belarus under attack

More control over the Internet wanted in Russia

France considering new rules for web 2.0

Russian Government wants to control all WiFi devices

More Internet content blacklisted in Europe

ENDitorial: CoE - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

France: Linking can be damaging to your pockets

Ireland: Music industry sues ISP, demands filtering

ENDitorial: Finnish web censorship

French Police extends the Internet blacklist

PirateBay - blocked in Denmark

YouTube blocked once more in Turkey