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Deutsch: Spanisches Gericht urteilt: Links zu P2P-Inhalten nicht gesetzeswidrig
A civil court in Barcelona has recently ruled against SGAE (the Spanish collective society of authors and editors) in a case brought against Jesus Guerra who was administrating a site called elrincondejesus.com with links to P2P content.
SGAE accused Guerra of infringing copyrights by having reproduced and communicated to the public works owned by their constituency. The defendant argued that his website was a non-profit site only providing links that could be used by users only through eMule, a P2P application, to connect to other Internet users. No content was actually hosted on that specific website.
The judge ruled in favour of the defendant arguing that linking "does not suppose distributing, reproducing or making publicly available copyrighted works." In the judge's opinion, the creation of an index of links is not an infringing practice as linking is an integrant part of the Internet.
"P2P networks, as mere conduits in the transmission of data between individual users of the Internet, do not infringe any right protected by Intellectual Property Law. Some P2P networks contain files that are not protected. There are also works which are no longer protected because the term of protection has run out; and there are works whose protection is not allocated to SGAE. Therefore, it has become necessary to clearly delimit which works are protected, and what conducts can infringe Intellectual Property Law, which was not done in this occasion," said the judge who considered it was difficult to clearly identify P2P users and the files they are sharing, even if they are infringing copyright and that the legislation in force was not adequate for the new technologies.
He concluded that "this is a mere exchange of files between individuals, without commercial gain, directly or indirectly (as it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between downloading and not purchasing a work) through a medium such as the Internet, which is distinct from other obsolete technologies ( such as exchange or copy of tapes), in the fact that it has become massive and global, as is the distribution by the same medium of publicity, access and authorised communication of works by their authors or managers with the corresponding monetary rewards and cultural diffusion".
The SGAE will probably appeal this decision.
Despite this promising decision, the situation might change in Spain with the modification of the legislation by the Government through the proposed Sustainable Economy Law presently under discussion. (See article 5 from current EDRi-gram).
A civil court declares p2p downloading networks legal (only in Spanish,
14.03.2010)
http://www.elpais.com:80/articulo/cultura/sentencia/civil/declara/lega...
The keys of a historical sentence in favour of P2P in Spain (only in
Spanish, 15.03.2010)
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/03/13/navegante/1268485864.html
Commercial Court sentence (only in Spanish, 12.03.2010)
http://www.bufetalmeida.com/upload/file/sentenciaelrincondejesus.pdf
Linking to P2P content declared legal in Spain (14.03.2010)
http://www.technollama.co.uk/linking-to-p2p-content-declared-legal-in-...
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Deutsch: Diskussionen im EP zur Durchsetzung des geistigen Eigentumsrechts
The recent votes in the Industry and Internal Market Committees of the European Parliament (who are providing Opinions to the responsible Committee - the Legal Affairs Committee) have given a good insight into the main battle lines as the Parliament reaches the final stages of adopting its non-legislative report on IPR enforcement. These can be broadly categorised as follows:
1. Data Protection
Efforts are being made to downgrade citizens' fundamental right to privacy through amendments to the Gallo Report. There were two amendments of this type in the Internal Market Committee, one of which was rejected and the other of which was withdrawn. We are already seeing widespread breaches of personal data through online collection of IP addresses, unauthorised "warning" letters to consumers and, more recently, a plan by UK ISP Virgin Media to carry out widespread "deep packet inspection" surveillance of their networks to analyse possible unauthorised use of music. It is to be hoped that the European Parliament will see that the rule of law will hardly be reinforced by adopting texts seeking to encourage and defend such activities.
2. Criminal sanctions for IPR infringement
The Council of Ministers has proposed criminal sanctions for "counterfeiting and piracy", without any indication of the scale of the infringements which would attract such penalties. Similarly, the draft Legal Affairs Committee report prepared by Ms Gallo (EPP, France) asks the Commission to put forward a new Directive on criminal sanctions.
3. Confusion of unauthorised filesharing and counterfeiting
There are only two possible outcomes of confusing life-threatening counterfeit medicines or fraudulently sold products on the one hand and private individuals sharing content on the other. Either the fight against counterfeiting will be weakened, weighed down by being conflated with an innocuous activity, or private consumers will be increasingly treated like organised criminals.
4. "Cooperation" and "self-regulation"
Coercion of ISPs, as described in paragraph 20 of Ms Gallo's draft report, is a major danger for the openness of the Internet in Europe and globally. That text essentially says to ISPs - "either impose policing measures of your own choice, or we will impose them by law".
This intention behind this coercion is clearly shown by the leaked "digital chapter" of ACTA. That text suggests that ISPs should introduce "policies" such as disconnection of alleged infringers or lose the legal certainty offered by existing "safe harbours" from liability. These policies would be imposed outside the democratic process, beyond the reach of the necessary restrictions placed on governments and the EU by the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and would facilitate the growth of an anti-competitive non-neutral Internet in the European Union.
5. Demands for immediate legislation
The IPR Enforcement Directive is currently being assessed. It is very obvious that this process should be allowed to be completed and a thorough investigation of the outcomes must be undertaken before any further legislation should be imposed on European citizens and European business. That said, with an overlap of Commission personnel between those working on ACTA and those working on the report on the implementation and enforcement of the IPR Enforcement Directive, we should not expect much from that report.
6. Bureaucratic measures to slow down reform of licensing and access to content
It is essential to take every possible action to ensure the introduction of the most open, transparent and functional licensing regime possible in Europe. Amendments arguing for new impact assessments, reviews of whether all sectors would benefit from wider availability of their products appear to have no motivation other than to slow down availability of legal content, thereby creating problems for IPR enforcement. Several such amendments have been adopted in the Internal Market Committee recently.
7. General, directionless statements about the cost of counterfeiting and/or unauthorised filesharing.
The rash of directionless amendments making general statements regarding the scale of two very different, conflated problems undermines the credibility of the Parliament's work on these issues.
8. Other issues
Efforts are being made to create support for the proposed new Observatory as (yet) another creator of soft law. This was made quite clear by the Council Conclusions on IPR enforcement (paragraph 33) which calls for the Observatory to "pay special attention to the compilation of best practices in public and private sectors and codes of conduct in private sectors". This is quite clearly not the role of an "observatory" and also risks feeding into the "self-regulation" dangers mentioned above. The Industry Committee adopted an amendment aiming specifically at stopping this development. It remains to be seen whether the Legal Affairs Committee will take this approach.
Draft Legal Affairs Committee report (13.01.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+CO...
Council Conclusions on IPR Enforcement (1.03.2010)
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/intm/...
EDRi-gram 8.4: EP: Draft reports on IPR enforcement published (24.02.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/ep-ip-enforcement-report
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
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Deutsch: EP, EDPS und EDRi über RFID und das Internet der Dinge
The European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) discussed at its meeting on 17 March 2010 the draft report by rapporteur Maria Badia i Cutchet on the Internet of Things (IoT). The report welcomes the Communication from the Commission "Internet of Things -An action plan for Europe" and endorses the Commission's focus on safety, protection of personal data and privacy and governance of the Internet of Things.
The draft report calls for further, more detailed assessments by the Commission especially concerning - among others - privacy, data protection and the right to the "silence of the chips". It takes the view that the actual functioning of the Internet of Things will be intrinsically linked to the trust consumers have in the system and that specific European regulation should be established if needed. Furthermore we welcome the Commissions' intention to present in 2010 a Communication on privacy and trust in the information society. We acknowledge the importance of this communication and of the proposed measures for strengthening the rules related to privacy and the protection of personal data.
Following the presentation of the draft report, EDRi was invited to present to the ITRE Committee its views on data protection and privacy with regard to the Internet of Things. EDRi's presentation highlighted some of the main difficulties of IoT applications, like the question of how to obtain informed consent of data subjects when IoT systems are meant to operate widely unnoticed "in the background", how to identify the data controller and data processor of IoT services in order to exercise data subjects rights and how to determine and report data flows in IoT systems, when these flows highly depend on external factors like e.g. the movements of a car in the context of Intelligent Transport Systems.
As main requirements for a successful, data protection friendly implementation of IoT systems, EDRi's presentation emphasized that individuals (as data subjects) need to be in control of these systems and need to have a free choice of participation without discrimination (right to the silence of the chips), that interactions with IoT systems need to be on an anonymised basis whenever possible and that strict data minimisation and strict purpose limitation are important cornerstones for IoT systems. In short: Privacy, Data Protection and Security by Design were identified as a fundamental requirement.
Furthermore EDRi called for an improved enforcement of data protection legislation by strengthening the financial and personal resources of Data Protection Authorities and by improving data protection education. A better harmonisation of global data protection legislation was identified as one of the main areas, where the European Parliament could have an important role (see also the Civil Society Madrid Declaration: Global Privacy Standards for a Global World).
Not in the context of the ITRE hearing but related to the topic, the European Data Protection Supervisor published on 18 March his opinion on "Promoting Trust in the Information Society by Fostering Data Protection and Privacy". Among other things the EDPS stressed the importance of Privacy by Design as the guiding principle in Europe's Digital Agenda and highlights in the chapter on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) - which is considered to be an enabling technology of the Internet of Things - that in the context of this technology, the existing data protection rules need to be complemented with additional rules imposing specific safeguards, particularly making it mandatory to embed technical solutions (Privacy by Design) in RFID technology.
The EDPS expressed his concern that RFID operators in the retail sector may overlook the possibility for RFID tags to be monitored by unwanted third parties and thinks it is conceivable that self-regulation will not deliver the expected results. He therefore calls upon the Commission to be ready to propose legislative instruments regulating the main issues of RFID usage in case the effective implementation of the existing legal framework fails. The EDPS warns that the Commission's assessment should not be unduly postponed since this would put individuals at risk and would also be counterproductive for the industry as the legal uncertainties are too high and entrenched problems are likely to be more difficult and expensive to correct.
EDRi expressly welcomes the opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor and also understands it to be a valuable input to the informal working group on the development of a RFID Privacy Impact Assessment framework in which EDRi participates.
EP ITRE Draft report on the Internet of Things, Rapporteur: Maria Badia i
Cutchet (24.02.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+CO...
Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament,
the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of
the Regions of 18 June 2009 on the 'Internet of Things - An action plan for
Europe' (COM(2009)0278)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/com/com_com(2009)0278_/com_com(2009)0278_en.pdf
EDRi presentation at the EP ITRE hearing - Internet of Things: Privacy and
Data Protection (17.03.2010)
http://www.edri.org/files/Krisch_EP-ITRE_Privacy_20100317.pdf
Civil Society Madrid Declaration: Global Privacy Standards for a Global
World
http://thepublicvoice.org/madrid-declaration/
Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor on Promoting Trust in the
Information Society by Fostering Data Protection and Privacy (19.03.2010)
http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/...
(Contribution by Andreas Krisch - EDRi)
Article corrected on 31.03.2010
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Deutsch: GB macht einen Schritt auf die Unterbindung von Internetzugängen zu
The most controversial Digital Economy Bill has advanced one more step having been passed by the British House of Lords on 15 March 2010. The bill allows for the "temporary suspension" of Internet connections for those allegdly continuing "substantial" copyright infringement after warnings from their ISPs.
While usually the creation of a Parliament Act needs a rather long time, this particular legislation might have a brief journey as Lord Mandelson, secretary of state for business, is rushing its next reading on 6 April. By getting its next reading in the Commons before the general election likely to be held on 6 May, the bill becomes eligible for so-called "wash-up" procedure which implies that a bill that has run out of proper parliamentary time may be hurried and the usual debating process may be by-passed through a series of negotiations to turn proposals into law before the Parliament dissolves.
The bill was passed by the House of Lords with the amendments proposed earlier this month by the Liberal Democrats rejecting the initial Clause 17. However, the modification is also controversial giving High Court judges the power to force ISPs to block websites with a "substantial" amount of copyrighted material, which might affect a large number of video sharing sites.
A worrying fact is that the original Liberal Democrat amendment to Clause 17 was almost identical to the one suggested by the British Phonographic Industry, as it was underlined by Monica Horten on 3 March 2010.
Clement-Jones one of the two peers having tabled the amendment told the Guardian that it was not unusual for peers to table amendments from lobby groups if they believed they had merit. What the peer failed to admit before the debates was that he was a partner in DLA Piper law firm which had closely worked with content industry.
"There is a massive groundswell of opposition to extreme laws being rammed through Parliament without debate," said Jim Killock, executive director of the EDRi-member Open Rights Group who added : "People are angry with lobbyists writing our laws and with disconnection being proposed as a punishment. MPs need to give this Bill the democratic scrutiny it deserves."
Killock called "for massive campaign of citizens to demand that their MPs debate this dangerous bill," as Lord Mandelson was "preparing to rush through this draconian legislation without democratic debate".
A campaign initiated by 38 degrees group and the Open Rights Group has led to 10 000 UK citizens having written, in less than three days, to MPs to stop the rushing of the bill and to demand a debate on the Digital Economy Bill.
Also, a group of public figures including artists, activists, campaigners, as well as politicians addressed a letter to the Government asking it to stop rushing the draft, emphasizing the fact that a bill which "threatens to severely infringe fundamental human rights" and introduces website blocking measures impeding free speech must be fully scrutinised by the Parliament before becoming a law. "Democracy and accountability will be sidestepped if this bill is rushed through and amended without debate during the so-called 'wash-up' process. The thousands of people we know to be contacting their MPs with concerns will find their faith in politicians even further undermined," says the letter.
Monica Horten - UK Liberal Democrats rise against Net blocking (10.03.2010)
http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&am...
Monica Horten - LibDems propose web blocking on say-so of music industry (3.03.2010)
http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&am...
Don't rush through extreme web laws
http://www.38degrees.org.uk:80/page/speakout/extremeinternetl
10,000 letters sent to MPs to demand disconnection debate (19.03.2010)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/10000-letters-sent-to-mps-to-...
Digital economy bill: what you need to know (22.03.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/22/digital-economy-bill
Rush to pass digital bill will 'sidestep democracy' (19.03.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/19/digital-bill-open-let...
Digital economy bill: peer defends not mentioning law firm's web work
(18.03.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/18/digital-economy-bill
Lords pass controversial internet piracy bill (16.03.2010)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8569750.stm
EDRI-gram: UK Government to decide on the Internet disconnections and web
blocking (10.03.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.5/uk-govt-web-blocking-disconnect...
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Deutsch: Spanische Regierung bestätigt Anti-Piraterie-Gesetz
The Spanish Council of Ministers approved on 19 March 2010 the draft for the Sustainable Economy Law (LES) that gives legal cover to the closure of sites that links to "illegal" content made available without the the copyright owners' permission.
Despite the very active and strong opposition and criticism (even that of the Spanish Fiscal Council) the draft LES was approved by the Spanish Government without any change as stated Ángeles González Sinde, Minister of Culture.
The approved draft stipulates the setting up of an Intellectual Property Commission that would have the power to denounce to the high court websites deemed to facilitate illegal downloading of copyrighted content. The court is to rule in a 4-day term whether one website accused of illegal downloading can be shut down or not, meaning that the court only decides on whether a website closure would violate fundamental rights such as the freedom of expression.
The draft law will further on go to the Parliament.
The Government approves the Sustainable Economy Law draft (only in Spanish,
20.03.2010)
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/economia/Gobierno/aprueba/proyecto/Ley/...
Sinde answers that "everything is all right" with the anti-downloading law
(only in Spanish, 22.03.2010)
http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20100322/sinde-responde-que-todo-esta-orde...
Spanish Govt Backs Anti-Piracy Proposals (22.03.2010)
http://www.itespresso.es/es/news/2010/03/22/ley-antidescargas-paso-fir...
EDRI-gram: Spanish Fiscal Council criticizes the new draft law on IPR
enforcement (24.02.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/spanish-fiscal-council-criticiz...
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Deutsch: Vier Treffer in der belgischen Nachahmung des französischen Hadopi-Ge...
On 17 March 2010, Belgian senator Philippe Monfils presented a new version of his proposition for a law that would implement in Belgium the graduated response system in illegal downloading cases, as the one introduced by the Hadopi law in France. The Belgium draft law includes blocking of websites via ISPs.
Very similar to the French system introduced by Hadopi law, the Belgium version of the graduate response would imply not three but four strikes. It starts with a warning by e-mail, followed by an administrative fine with the possibility to appeal. A third stage would be to send the infringer to court which would decide on the penalty that can range from a fine to the limitation of the infringer's access to the Internet connection and the final stage would be the doubling of the fine and the cutting of the Internet connection. Also differently from the French law, there would be no authority especially created to administrate the system; government agents would have the power to notify the infringements and ask ISPs to provide them with the suspicious user's coordinates.
The senator has recently presented a new proposition that includes sanctions against websites that have an "illegal" offer, by blocking them through the ISPs. Also, a court decision to an ISP to cut access to certain sites would automatically apply to all the other ISPs.
The newly proposed version of the senator's proposal involves sanctions for the ISPs that are unwilling to collaborate with the authorities. "I wish to concentrate on the level of responsibility of the ISPs and on blocking the illegal sites. Following their lobby, the European Parliament has decided that ISPs had little responsibility in the access of illegal content. This has to change" said the Belgian senator.
The senator also said that he wanted to oblige the administrators of downloading platforms to sign agreements with the copyright collective societies in order to develop a legal offer. But the actual draft text of the law is very unclear on this specific point.
Monfils opposes the idea of an ISP blanket license that was proposed by two Belgium senators (Benoît Hellings and Freya Piryns) from the Green Party in February 2010.
The latter suggestion would take the form of a contribution of several euros to be automatically integrated into the monthly broadband fees paid by Internet users. The amount of the contribution would be determined by copyright collective societies together with the ISPs.
The two senators also proposed the creation of an independent administrative body to monitor downloading practices thus allowing for a proper distribution of the royalties obtained from the blanket licence. The Belgian Greens believe the French Hadopi law type is inefficient as it does not lead to the transfer of Internet users to legal platforms and does not really solve the issue of the artists' proper compensation. Moreover, it is in violation of the users' privacy.
Hadopi : Monfils adapts his law proposal (only in French, 17.03.2010)
http://www.lesoir.be:80/la_vie_du_net/actunet/2010-03-17/hadopi-monfil...
Law proposition for the promotion of cultural creation on the Internet (only
in French, 19.03.2010)
http://medias.lemonde.fr//mmpub/edt/doc/20100319/1321805_7e34_proposit...
Hadopi in Belgium: "Besides the graduate response, we must fight pirate
sites" (only in French, 19.03.2010)
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2010/03/19/hadopi-en-belgiq...
The Belgium graduate response draft stipulates filtering from now on (only
in French, 17.03.2010)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/15285-le-projet-belge-de-riposte-grad...
Law proposition the the adaptation of the perception of the copyright to the
technological evolution while preserving the right to privacy of the
Internet users in Belgium (only in French, 24.02.2010)
http://desguin.net/spip/spip.php?article191
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Deutsch: Einige deutsche Bibliotheken veröffentlichen ihre Katalogdaten
Some German libraries, most of them from Cologne, announced at the beginning of the Leipzig Congress for Information and Library on 15 March 2010 that they would release 5.4 million bibliographic records under an open licence.
The University and Public Library of Cologne (USB), the Library of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the University Library of the University of Applied Science of Cologne and the the Library Centre of Rhineland-Palatinate in cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center are the first German libraries to implement the Open Access principles to their catalogue data, by releasing them under the Creative Commons Zero licence.
Rolf Thiele, deputy director of the USB Cologne, states: "Libraries appreciate the Open Access movement because they themselves feel obliged to provide access to knowledge without barriers. Providing this kind of access for bibliographic data, thus applying the idea of Open Access to their own products, has been disregarded until now. Up to this point, it was not possible to download library catalogues as a whole. This will now be possible. We are taking a first step towards a worldwide visibility of library holdings on the internet."
Silke Schomburg, deputy director of the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center underlined that these "libraries are funded by the public. And what is publicly financed should be made available to the public without restrictions." She also points that the catalogue data of the libraries can enhance the Internet development, providing the example of the Wikipedia Germany and the usage of the German National Library data under an open licence.
The Regional Library Service Center is also in discussions with other public libraries in their network in an effort to be actively involved in the Semantic web.
The library of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has already published its data under a public domain licence in January.
March 2010: Releasing catalogue data: Cologne-based libraries to pioneer
Open Data practices (15.03.2010)
http://www.hbz-nrw.de/dokumentencenter/presse/pm/datenfreigabe_engl
Open Access: Libraries free catalog data (only in German, 15.03.2010)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Open-Access-Bibliotheken-geben-...
Leipzig Congress for Information and Library (only in German)
http://www.bid-kongress2010.de/
North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre : Linked Open Data
http://www.hbz-nrw.de/projekte/linked_open_data/english_version/
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Deutsch: Litauisches Gericht urteilt zugunsten eines BitTorrent-Nutzers
A Lithuanian District Court has recently ruled against the anti-piracy organisation LANVA in a case against a user of the BitTorrent tracker LinkoManija.net.
Last year, LANVA accused 106 users of LinkoManija.net of sharing Windows 7 Ultimate and brought one of them to court, which has now decided in favour of the defendant due to faulty evidence. The evidence gathered by LANVA consisted of a screenshot of a list of peers as available on uTorrent and the court considered uTorrent was not a certified evidence gathering tool.
As none of parties involved was authorised for such an investigation and therefore the judge stated that LANVA had no right to collect and use the gathered information. The court also ruled that the techniques for such kind of evidence had to be approved prior to the use.
Aside from this case, LANVA together with Microsoft sued the alleged operator of LinkoManija.net in January 2010 demanding about 32 million euro from the defendant Kestas Ermanas and his company for facilitating the illegal distribution of Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007.
The case is ongoing and the assets of Kestas Ermanas and his company had been seized and the associated bank accounts frozen, but the website is functional. It appears however that the defendant had operated the site only until the end of 2009. Kestas also stated that Microsoft had never sent them a proper takedown request. "We informed them that we wanted to cooperate with them, they just had to give us the links to the infringing torrent files," said Kestas who added that "they never wrote back to us."
Following the recent outcome of LANVA case, it is doubtful whether the second case would be successful either. LANVA can appeal the decision but even if they do it, the case will be heard in about a year's time.
Court Acquits BitTorrent User Citing Faulty Evidence (15.03.2010)
http://torrentfreak.com:80/court-acquits-bittorrent-user-citing-faulty...
Anti-Piracy Group Reports Torrent Site Users to the Police (8.11.2009)
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-group-reports-torrent-site-users-t...
Microsoft Sues Prominent BitTorrent Tracker For $43m (27.01.2010)
http://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-sues-prominent-bittorrent-tracker-10...
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Deutsch: Kirgisistan protestiert gegen die Blockade von Webseiten und ruft Euro...
About 50 activists demonstrated in Kyrgyzstan on 14 March 2010 in front of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, appealing to European organizations to support them in regaining access to independent news websites blocked by the state.
The participants also protested against the blocking of broadcasts of US-funded radio and television programs. Several websites such as ferghana.ru, a leading news website, and paruskg.info, a local opposition website, had been inaccessible for Kyrgyz Internet users for about a week and the protesters said the sites had been blocked by the state.
Critics of the Kyrgyz Government and President say the state is trying to block the websites as well as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Kyrgyz service, known locally as Radio Azattyk, in order to shut down any independent news reporting.
"We demand that local authorities and international organizations take action over what is happening in Kyrgyzstan," stated Dinara Oshurakhunova, head of the For Democracy and Civil Society coalition, one of the organisers of the rally.
Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov declared for the press that he was unaware of any websites being blocked and Kyrgyz telecommmunications officials blamed the situation on a possible technical problem related to regulation policies in neighbouring Kazakhstan.
The participants in the demonstration said the websites had been inaccessible since a protest that took place on 10 March against the government decision to raise utility prices in the town of Naryn.
Kyrgyz activists call for Europe's help over websites (15.03.2010)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE62E2DB20100315
Kyrgyz activists rally in protest at block on US-funded television and radio
broadcasts (15.03.2010)
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/breakingnews/kyrgyz-activist...
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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Europäische Kommission präsentierte falsche ACTA-Version
At a meeting in Brussels on 22 March 2010, the European Commission presented a counterfeit version of ACTA to participants. As with any good counterfeit, it bore quite a strong relationship with the genuine article. However, the differences were quite obvious for those in the know.
For example, in this counterfeit version, there is no mention of ISP liability changes that would lead to measures such as the cutting off of consumers ("three strikes"). Similarly, in this counterfeit version, the European Union is not proposing language to require criminal penalties for "inciting, aiding and abetting" certain offences, including "at least in cases of willful trademark counterfeiting and copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale." The counterfeit version also presents no risks for fundamental rights in developing countries, which is great news because otherwise "information sharing" and policing obligations for Internet access providers would be a threat for privacy and free speech across the globe. Remarkably, and very oddly for a counterfeit, this version is better than the real thing in almost every way.
Thankfully, however, there are pirate versions of the negotiating documents available due to the many "leaks" that have happened over recent months. The pirate versions - unlike the counterfeit presented by Mr Devigne of the European Commission - are perfect copies of the original and show the ACTA proposals.
Of course, the question now is whether the Commission's promises of more transparency in this process are also counterfeits. In the meantime, we can only hope for more pirate versions in order to inject some democracy into the proceedings.
Video of the meeting (22.03.2010)
https://www.bof.nl/live/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/acta_2010mar22.ogg
The EU ACTA Consultation: European Commission vs. European Parliament
(22.03.2010)
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4894/125/
EDRi-gram: ENDitorial: ACTA, the Euro Parliament resolution and political
clarity (10.03.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.5/acta-european-parliament-positi...
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
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Deutsch: Mitmachen!
A Copyright Exception for Monetizing File-Sharing. A proposal for balancing
user freedom and author remuneration in the Brazilian copyright law reform
Request for Comments Draft (18.03.2010)
http://www.vgrass.de/?p=193
This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Lesestoff
Article 29 Working Group: Opinion 1/2010 on the concepts of "controller" and
"processor"
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2010/wp169_en...
EDPS opinion on privacy in the digital age: "Privacy by Design" as a key
tool to ensure citizens' trust in ICTs (22.03.2010)
http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/...
Social Science Research Council summary of why the recent headline-grabbing
BASCAP/TERA study on the economic impact of "piracy" is profoundly flawed.
http://bit.ly/piracyandjobs
European Court of Justice - Decision in case 236/08 - Google France vs Louis
Vuitton (23.03.2010)
http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=EN&Submit=reche...
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2010-03/cp1000...
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Deutsch: Agenda
29-31 March 2010, Barcelona, Spain
(D') Evolution Summit, the benefit of Culture
Citizen's Summit in response to the "Economy of the Culture" Congress of the
Ministers of Culture meeting of the EU during the Spanish Presidency
http://d-evolution.fcforum.net/en
12-13 April 2010, Oxford, UK
4th PrivacyOS Conference
https://www.privacyos.eu/archives/98-Invitation-4th-PrivacyOS-Conferen...
14-16 April 2010, Berlin, Germany
re:publica'10 - Conference about blogs, social media and the digital society
http://www.re-publica.de/10
14-18 April 2010, Madrid, Spain
Campus Party Europe - Technology, creativity and digital culture online
http://www.campus-party.eu
19-20 April 2010, Istanbul, Turkey
8th Communia Workshop - Education and the Public Domain: The Emergence of a
Shared Educational Commons
http://www.communia-project.eu/ws08
24 April 2010, London, United Kingdom
Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
29-30 April 2010, Madrid, Spain
EuroDIG 2010
http://www.eurodig.org/
6-7 May 2010, Krems, Austria
4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/en/department/gpa/telematik/veranstaltungen...
26-28 May 2010, Amsterdam, Netherlands
World Congress on Information Technology
http://www.wcit2010.com/
30-31 May 2010, Montreal, Canada
Third International Workshop on Global Internet Governance: An
Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction
http://giga-net.org/page/2010-international-workshop
8-9 June 2010 - Funchal, Portugal
4th International Workshop on RFID Technology - Concepts, Applications,
Challenges - IWRT 2010
http://www.iceis.org/Workshops/iwrt/iwrt2010-cfp.htm.
25-27 June 2010, Cluj, Romania
Networking Democracy?
New Media Innovations in Participatory Politics
http://www.brisc.info/NetDem/
9-11 July 2010, Gdansk, Poland
Wikimedia 2010 - the 6th annual Wikimedia Conference
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
25-31 July 2010, Meissen, Germany
European Summer School on Internet Governance
Call open until 15 May 2010.
http://www.euro-ssig.eu
29-31 July 2010, Freiburg, Germany
IADIS - International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings 2010
http://www.ict-conf.org/
13-17 September 2010, Crete, Greece
Privacy and Security in the Future Internet
3rd Network and Information Security (NIS'10) Summer School
http://www.nis-summer-school.eu