The EDRI-gram fundraising campaign has been very successful. Thanks to the kind donations of both individuals and companies, EDRI is confident it will be able to afford 24 editions of EDRI-gram in 2006. Pledges for support will be collected in February 2006, after EDRI is sure it has guarantees for the full amount of 3.500 euro. More donations are still very welcome, to help EDRI fund campaigns against the abundant invasions of digital civil rights.
Editor Sjoera Nas from the Dutch NGO Bits of Freedom is leaving EDRI-gram after having run it for 3 years. She will be on maternity leave later this year. She is replaced by a new editor, Bogdan Manolea from Romania. Bogdan has a legal background and plenty of expertise in IT and civil rights. He is the co-founder of the new Romanian association APTI, that has become EDRI-member in August 2005. The Association for Technology and Internet (APTI) is a group of internet experts who wish to promote human rights in the digital environment and support digital civil rights in the Romanian society.
EDRI-gram support page
http://www.edri.org/pledge
The European Parliament gave its final vote on 14 December 2005 on the European mandatory data retention directive. The Parliament approved the compromise that was reached between Council of Ministers of Justice (JHA Council), representatives from the Commission and the leaders in the European Parliament of the social-democrat and Christian-democrat groups. (see EDRI-gram 3.24)
The final text was approved with 378 for, 197 against and 30 abstentions. The two biggest parties, the PSE (socialist group) and PPE (conservative group) overwhelmingly voted in favour -only 39 PPE MEPs voted against (10 abstained) and 24 PSE MEPs voted against (2 abstained). The Green/EFA and GUE (left group) voted against while the ALDE (liberal group) split with 25 MEPs voting in favour and 37 against (including Mr Alvaro, the rapporteur). Rapporteur Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) was so disappointed by the procedure and the outcome that he asked to have his name removed from the report.
The European Commission Vice-President Franco Frattini hailed a "victory for democracy" - and EU compromise, meanwhile Mr. Alvaro said : "By voting as we (the Parliament) did today we create a precedent where Council need only say 'jump!' and Parliament cries 'how high?'" Alvaro substantially criticised that data must now be stored for a period of 6 to 24 months, while member states may adjust maximum retention periods at will. The fact that no guideline on cost reimbursement was approved raises the danger of fragmentation in the single market for the important telecoms sector. The directive is no longer limited to the fight against terrorism and organised crime, but now includes all serious crimes, as defined by each individual member state.
The EU Parliament included in the types of data to be retained the telephone calls location data, SMS and internet use. This includes unsuccessful call attempts if the company already stores such data.
Within 18 months, all member states of the EU will have to introduce mandatory data retention for telephony and internet data, for 6 to 24 months. Each member state will have to decide for which period it will retain the data. The national adoption will probably not be without problems because the national laws could be tested in the national constitutional courts if they breach any fundamental citizens' rights.
Also Ireland has announced its intent to take the Directive to the European Court of Justice for a supposed breach of the EC treaty, while some MEPs are considering contesting the Directive at the European Court of Human Rights because the directive lacks adequate safeguards.
MEP Charlotte Cederschiöld (PPE-DE) asked the Commission already on 15 December when it intended to begin and complete the impact assessment of the Directive and whether the Commission guaranteed that the data retention proposal was not contrary to fundamental rights in accordance with Article 8.2 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. No answer has been received so far.
The adoption of the directive is in opposition with some strong civil society activities, including the EDRI campaign that raised 58 000 signatures against such a directive in Europe. The petition is available in 21 languages and has been supported by 85 organisations and companies. The act was highly criticized by a number of consumers organisations, as well as electronic communication industry associations or journalists associations ( see EDRI-gram 3.23)
The percentage of votes and which MEP from which country and from which
group has voted.
http://p166.null.priv.at/temp/14-12-2005_ep_vote_legislative_resolutio...
EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society (14 12
2005)
http://wiki.ffii.org/DataRetPr051214En
Two-page overview of the effects of the most important amendments(14 12
2005)
http://www.ffii.org/~jmaebe/dataret/plen1/summary.pdf
Ireland to contest data retention law at EU Court (14 12 2005)
http://euobserver.com/9/20548
Data Retention Directive webpage on the EU Parliament website
http://www.europarl.eu.int/oeil/file.jsp?id=5275032
Question from MEP Charlotte Cederschiöld (PPE-DE) on Data retention
directive ( 15 12 2005)
http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?PROG=QP&L=EN&SORT_ORDER...
EDRI-gram : Final push for single EP vote on data retention (5 12 2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.24/EPvote
EDRI-gram : Petition closed: 58.000 signatures (21 11 2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.23/petition
After the European Parliament adopted the data retention directive, in many countries the debate only began about the costs. The European Parliament decided to delete the article that demanded cost reimbursement for all additional costs of retention, storage and transmission of data. In the draft directive adopted by the Civil Liberties Committee, Members had initially called for a full reimbursement of the costs.
The question everywhere is who's paying for the data retention. The costs don't just involve storing space but also the management, development and security of these data. This concern is shared not only by ISPs but also by the police in some countries, where they are obliged to reimburse the costs for the retrieval of these data.
According to Finland's Ministry of the Interior if the original proposal had been adopted it would have involved costs of about Euro 5.5 billion Euro for his country. As it is now,mandatory data retention is limited to VoIP services and operators' own email. It does not concern Internet calls or www-based email services, the costs for the state reaching, under the circumstances, about 10-40 million Euro. Mandatory data retention will also be applied only to those companies that are authorized as telecom services.
Some of the experts expressed this concern as according to them unlike telephone calls where things are rather clear, Internet traffic data retention is more tricky. It is not as easy to separate between data and content and the practical solution will probably be to get everything and throw what content should not be kept. This will trigger rather elaborated filtering methods for the ISPs and implicitly costs. Richard Clayton from the Cambridge University Computer Lab who has written a doctoral dissertation in data retention, considers that the EU does not understand the Internet and therefore created an act that if applied as such will involve high costs.
A debatable aspect is also the retention period of two years; the Internet is moving fast and changes rapidly. Traffic data as old as two years may very well be obsolete at the rate addresses and sites change. One other major concern is that these data will not only be used to fight terrorism as initially intended, but will be used is civil cases as well. Questions arose whether this directive would protect citizens from unauthorized access to their private, confidential data.
Charles Clarke, Home Secretary, while giving assurances that the human rights will be observed and while stating he understands the ISPs concerns regarding the costs related to data retention, doesn't offer any clear answers and is appealing for a dialogue between the Government and the industry in order to co-operate in enforcing the law but expressing no commitment to a clear system of reimbursement of data retention costs to ISPs.
Will logging your email combat terrorism in Europe? (12.01.2006)
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1683944,00.html
ISPs, telcos and police voice fears over data retention cost (13.01.2006)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39246970,00.htm
Finland: Ministries comment mandatory data retention (15.12.2005)
http://e.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=45216
Data law passed in EU seen as restrictive (15.12.2005)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/14/business/data.php
MEPs vote for mandatory data retention (14.12.2005)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/14/eu_data_retention_vote/
In a tight decision (6-5) ruled on 12 January 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Yahoo's case of sale of Nazi-related books and memorabilia on its French auction site.
The majority stated that "First Amendment harm may not exist at all" and that it's "extremely unlikely" that any penalty could be assessed against Yahoo's U.S. operations. "Unless and until Yahoo changes its policy again, and thereby more clearly violates the French court's orders, it is unclear how much is now actually in dispute,"
The minority considered that "criminal statutes of most nations do not comport with the U.S. Constitution. That does not give judges in this country the unfettered authority to pass critical judgment on their validity,"
The case came as a result of a French court decision against Yahoo by La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L'Antisemitisme (LICRA) and L'Union des Etudiants Juifs de France (UEJF) that obliged Yahoo to make it "impossible" for French citizens to connect to a Yahoo website with auctions related to Nazi objects.
A District U.S. court had previously declared as unenforceable the French court decision considering that "although France has the sovereign right to regulate what speech is permissible in France, this court may not enforce a foreign order that violates the protections of the United States Constitution."
Susan Crawford, a law professor who teaches a course on cyberlaw at Cardozo School of Law in New York, considered that "The facts in this case allowed the court to avoid the difficult diplomatic issues raised by the dispute."
Court rules against Yahoo in Nazi speech case ( 12 01 2005)
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&s...
Court dismisses Yahoo's free speech lawsuit (12.01.2005)
http://news.com.com/Court+dismisses+Yahoos+free+speech+lawsuit/2100-10...
San Francisco appeal court verdict (12.01.2005)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0117424p.pdf
LICRA vs. Yahoo - case documents
http://www.eff.org/legal/Jurisdiction_and_sovereignty/LICRA_v_Yahoo/
At the end of 2005 the French National Assembly took a surprising decision by adopting unexpected amendments on the draft law that transposes the directive on copyright in the information society. During a night meeting on December 21/22, with only 10% of its members present, the National Assembly adopted (30 pro and 28 against votes) an amendment legalising the exchange of music and video files on the Internet, as private copies.
The amendment meant to complete paragraph 2 of art. 122-5 of the Intellectual property Code is as follows:
" The author cannot forbid the reproductions made on any medium from an on-line communication service by a natural person for his personal use with no direct or indirect commercial purposes, except for the copies of a software other than a backup copy, provided the reproductions make the object of a royalty as stated by article L. 311-4 ."
The amendment comes in total contradiction with the project proposed by the Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, establishing fines up to 430 000 Euro and three years of imprisonment for natural persons condemned for publishing copyrighted works.
The decision was saluted by the Association of Audionauts that suggests the completion of the amendment text with a royalty tax collected from Internet service providers. Those companies would likely raise the money by levying a monthly fee ( they suggested 2 to 5 euros ) on customers who engage in a certain amount of downloading and uploading.
Patrick Bloche, a Socialist representative from Paris who co-authored the amendments, told the New York Times." We are trying to bring the law up to date with reality. It is wrong to describe the eight million French people who have downloaded music from the Internet as delinquents."
The draft must be approved also by the Senate in order to become a law and it is clear that the pressure groups have not yet had their last word in this. In case of disagreement between the two chambers of the Parliament a mixed commission will be created to agree on the final text.
In an attempt to make a common ground for the adoption of the draft copyright law, the Minister of Internal Affairs Nicolas Sarkozy, had a common meeting on 16 January 2005 with the main actors from cinema, music and Internet industries and representatives of consumers. The participants agreed on 7 principles to be followed in the new legislative debates, including ensuring the private usage of legal acquired works or allowing the free sharing of the works for which theirs authors choose this option.
The latest news says that the debate will be resumed in the Senate in February 2006.
France may sanction unfettered P2P downloads ( 22 12 2005)
http://news.com.com/France+may+sanction+unfettered+P2P+downloads/2100-...
The National Assembly wants to legalise the peer-to-peer downloading ( only
in French, 22 12 2005)
http://www.droit-technologie.org/1_2.asp?actu_id=1141
Draft law on the copyright and the related rights in the information
society, no. 1206 ( only in French )
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031206.asp
DADVSI : Nicolas Sarkozy agrees on seven principles (only in French, 17 01
2006)
http://www.ratiatum.com/news2761_DADVSI_Nicolas_Sarkozy_degage_sept_pr...
As a result of the modification of the copyright law in Italy through Urbani Law, an administrator of an OpenNap server, « Soniknap5 » was condemned for illegal sharing of music files.
The Italian Urbani law modified in March 2005, stipulates administrative penalties for those downloading copyrighted files from the Internet but penal sanctions for those sharing on the Internet with other users copyrighted files. According to the law, the condemned persons may pay penal fines as an alternative to imprisonment.
As an alternative to two months and ten days of prison, the Italian administrator of OpenNap was fined to the payment of 3660 Euros for having shared music files to about 2500 users. This condemnation came as a result of a large international operation involving several Italian server administrators and users of P2P.
P2P, Italian OpenNap Administrator Condemned (only in Italian) ( 13.01.2006)
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=57221&r=PI
Urbani Law, Modifications approved (only in Italian) (24.03.2005)
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=52069
In November 23, the anti-terrorist draft law proposed by the Ministry on Internal Affairs of France, Nicolas Sarzoky was voted by a large majority of the deputies of the National Assembly. The law facilitates the surveillance of communications allowing the police to obtain communication data from telephone operators, Internet Services Providers, Internet cafes. ( see EDRI-gram 3.18)
In December, the Senate voted also (202 for and 122 against) the law, even though it was harder than expected. Several members of the socialist and communist groups sent the law to the Constitutional Council considering that this law gives a too high power to the Internal Affairs taking at the same time the issue out of the hands of the judges.
Adopted in an emergency procedure, this law comes after a series of other laws such as the law on the Daily Security meant to prevent terrorist acts. The law creates serious concerns to the advocates for public freedoms as well as to the magistrates.
The text of the law states that Internet Service Providers, Internet cafes, hosting providers and operators must communicate the traffic data, called numbers, IP addresses to specialised services in case of investigations related to suspect terrorist activities. Mobile phone operators and internet cafes will be required to keep records of client connections for one year under its provisions. The law also gives the possibility to use surveillance cameras in public spaces such as train stations, churches and mosques, shops, factories or nuclear plants.
This procedure ignores the magistrates and needs no judge involvement thus creating a sort of administrative police and ignoring all the guarantees related to public freedoms.
According to CNIL this law and its provisions must be considered as "exceptional measures taken to respond to an exceptionally serious threat". But concerns are that the measures are out of proportion. According to Bruno Thouzellier, national secretary of the Magistrates Union while true that certain terrorist groups may use the cybercafe to organize their actions, the measures taken must be appropriate and "An inquiry should not involve all or too large a number of traffic data".
Traffic data retention proposal sent back to the Constitutional Council
(only
French, 26.12.2005)
http://www.01net.com/article/295934.html
French parliament adopts tough anti-terrorism law ( 22 12 2005)
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2005/12/22/afx2410169.html
Anti-terrorist fight, a draft law and more unknowns (only French,
26.10.2005)
http://www.01net.com/article/293365.html
EDRI-gram 3.18, New French anti-terrorism surveillance plans
(09.09.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.18/France
In a report titled " Threatening the Open Society: Comparing Anti-terror Policies and Strategies in the U.S. and Europe" and released on 13 December 2005, Privacy International compared the anti-terrorism approaches in the U.S. with those in Europe. The report finds that on every policy involving mass surveillance of its citizens, the EU is prepared to go well beyond what the U.S. Government finds acceptable, and violates the privacy of citizens.
The report is highlighting the differences between EU and US in terms of access to communications data, retention of communications transactions data, data profiling and data mining, access to passenger reservation files and biometric registration and is concluding that in each case the EU is implementing surveillance powers well beyond those in U.S., and with far less openness and debate over these measures.
According to Privacy International's Senior Fellow Dr. Gus Hosein: "It is no surprise that governments introduce harsh laws after terrorist attacks. But what is surprising when you compare the surveillance laws in Europe and the U.S. you find that the EU always goes further. The EU plans to fingerprint all of its citizens, monitor all communications transactions, surveillance all movement and travel. All these policies have been rejected by the U.S. but are now law in Europe. The EU and some of its member states may paint the U.S. as a monster when it comes to anti-terror powers and civil liberties but they need to look into the mirror every now and then."
Report" Threatening the Open Society: Comparing Anti-terror Policies and
Strategies in the U.S. and Europe" ( 13.12.2005)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/comparativeterrorpowers
The Directive on the legal protection of Databases was adopted in February 1996. The Directive created a new exclusive 'sui generis' right for database producers, valid for 15 years, to protect their investment of time, money and effort, irrespective of whether the database is in itself innovative ("non-original" databases).
The European Commission published on 12 December 2005 an evaluation of the protection EU law gives to databases. The evaluation focuses on whether the introduction of this right led to an increase in the European database industry. It also looks at whether the scope of the right targets those areas where Europe needs to encourage innovation.
The directive was strongly criticised for being a useless invention of the European Community, especially created to stimulate the database sector to compete with the US.However there is no proof it has brought the expected improvement. This is in fact admitted in the evaluation by the Commission:: "The economic impact of the "sui generis" right on database production is unproven. Introduced to stimulate the production of databases in Europe, the new instrument has had no proven impact on the production of databases."
It is also considered that the US database industry, where there is no specific database right, has been growing much faster than the one in EU, the report mentioning that "the ratio of European/US database production, which was nearly 1:2 in 1996, has become 1:3 in 2004."
The report takes also into consideration the impact the European Court of Justice has made with the Decision in the case The British Horseracing Board vs. William Hill on 9 November 2004. The decision is diminishing the legal protection of so called 'spin-off' databases under the Database Directive 1996/9/EC. In order to claim 'sui generis' database protection, a substantial investment must be made "in seeking, collecting, verifying and presenting existing materials". ( see EDRI-Gram 2.22 )
The report suggests a series of possible actions related to the directive: repeal the whole directive, withdraw the sui-generis right, amend the sui-generis provision or maintain the status-quo.
Despite the reserved evaluations of the report, the European Commission considers that "further evidence on the usefulness of "sui generis" protection needs to be gathered " and therefore stakeholders are invited to comment on the evaluation by 12 March 2006.
James Boyle: Two database cheers for the EU ( 2 01 2006)
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/99610a50-7bb2-11da-ab8e-0000779e2340.html
Press Release : Intellectual property: evaluation of EU rules on databases
(12 12 2005)
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/1567...
Evaluation of Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/docs/databases/eva...
EDRI-gram - ECJ: no legal protection for spin-off databases (17.11.2004)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.22/databases
In November 2005 BEUC (the coalition of all consumers' organisations in Europe) has launched a Campaign on Consumers' Digital Rights. The campaign is meant to show consumers what their digital rights are. BEUC is supported by Zusana Roithova, Member of the European Parliament, Czech Republic.
The campaign highlights the complex threats for consumers in today's digital world. Data retention, covering commercial and non-commercial infringements under the same "piracy" umbrella, the general criminalisation of consumers and last but not least, DRM (Digital Rights Management).
Within this campaign a dedicated website was created at http://www.consumersdigitalrights.org/ , available in English, French and German. The website includes a compilation of musical tracks from 14 artists who want you to share their music under the Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
Also, it gives the opportunity for its visitors to support the campaign by signing an electronic petition for consumer rights in the digital world. Until 17 January 2006 the petition was signed by more than 4 000 persons.
BEUC presents a list of what they consider basic consumer rights in the digital world: right to choice, right to knowledge and cultural diversity, right to the principle of "technical neutrality", right to benefit from technological innovations without abusive restrictions and to interoperability of content and devices, right to the protection of privacy, right not to be criminalised.
The campaign also deals with the P2P issue. While everybody acknowledges that piracy is a serious issue and the consumers should be discouraged to buy counterfeit copies of CDs or DVDs, a clear difference between consumers and criminals must be made. Consumers should not be threatened with high penalties for downloading films or music from the Internet and the industry should stop treating the consumers as pirates.
The message of the campaign initiated by BEUC is that the consumers should have some digital rights guaranteed and that they should be advised on what they can do with their digital hardware and content.
BEUC's campaign for Consumers' Digital Rights
http://www.consumersdigitalrights.org
Some of the reasons for BEUC's Campaign on Consumers' Digital Rights
(20.12.2005)
http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=162
On 17 January 2006, a full House of Lords debated at length the purposes,
costs, and details of the proposed identity cards scheme. And in three votes
serious obstacles were raised against the Government. The Government
contends that the card is essential for combating crime, illegal
immigration, and identity theft, and can be achieved for an operating cost
of 584 million pounds per year. Other estimates vary widely, as some have
questioned the ability of the scheme to be delivered, or to be delivered at
cost, and the likelihood that the delivered system will have the desired
effects.
The first vote was on a set of amendments that required the Government to
halt the scheme until detailed costs could be clarified. The vote was 237 to
156 in favour of the amendment, setting the Government back by 81 votes. The
second amendment demanded that there be tighter security on the recording
the storing of personal data that is central to the scheme. This vote was
206 to 144 in favour of the amendment. The third amendment changed one of
the purposes of the scheme from 'securing efficient and effective provision
of public services' to preventing 'illegal and fraudulent access to public
services'. The Government lost, as the vote in support of the amendment was
194 to 141.
Conservative leader David Cameron vowed on Sunday to oppose the ID card
plans, calling them "un-British". "I don't like the idea that you have to
have this bit of paper just for existing," he told BBC.
Recently, the London School of Economics 'Identity Project' released a
report outlining some issue areas that deserve greater attention.
The report says that ID cards could in principle have some benefits to
citizens, but it criticizes the current proposal for lacking well-defined
goals; for example, the government never clearly explained what impact ID
cards would have on identity theft and terrorism. Moreover, the report says,
the ID cards' proponents hugely underestimated the project's cost. The
government projection is £584 million per year, or about £5.8 billion for
the expected 10-year rollout. But the LSE study estimated the expenditures
at £10.6 billion to £19.2 billion. The LSE researchers also concluded that
the project's deepest flaws are of a technical nature. "The controversy,
challenges, and threats arising from the Government's identity proposals,"
they wrote, "are largely due to the technological design itself."
The bill will continue in Report Stage in the coming weeks before it is sent
back to the House of Commons for consideration of the Lords amendments. In
the coming weeks the Lords are to review even more contentious aspects to
the bill, including the binding between the ID card and the passport, making
the identity card a voluntary scheme.
UK Government loses crucial votes on ID card (17 01 2006)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-507374
Lords defeat for ID cards scheme (17 01 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4616356.stm
Loser: Britain's Identity Crisis (January 2006)
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan06/2597
London School of Economics 'Identity Project'
http://is.lse.ac.uk/idcard/
Thanks to Simon Davies, Privacy International
Freedom of speech won in a battle that lasted for a decade between Karin Spaink, a Dutch writer and XS4ALL, her Internet service provider, on one side, and the Church of Scientology, on the other side, which was claiming copyright infringement.
It all began in 1995 when the Church of Scientology attempted to seize the servers of the Internet service provider, XS4ALL, for having hosted a web site where some of the Scientology religious documents were published, claiming the infringement of the copyright.
Hearing of the dispute, Spaink posted the same documents to her own site hosted by Xs4all. Later on she stated: "I got into this because I thought it was important to define how copyright issues are settled online and how ISPs should or should not be held accountable," .
The Church of Scientology filed a copyright lawsuit, asking for the removal of the documents from the respective sites and claiming that the ISP should be responsible for the activities of its subscribers regarding copyright.
But a District Court of Amsterdam decided that the documents were legally posted, based on individuals' rights to quote from any copyrighted material.
In 1999 the Amsterdam court also reflected on the accountability of providers in general. The court concluded that internet providers are themselves not responsible for the material that is disseminated by their customers. However, a provider should take action when has evidence of an obvious illegal or unjustified action. This so-called 'three step procedure' clearly was a source of inspiration for the later e-commmerce directive, which follows a similar reasoning. But different from the e-commerced directive, the Amsterdam court extended the liability also to hyperlinks to copyright infringing material.
Yet, as a victory for XS4ALL, a later decision in 2003 overturned this ruling completely.
Scientologists continued their compaign by criticising Web sites, pressuring site operators, ISPs and even large Internet players such as Google in similar cases. In 1999, Amazon.com removed links to a book critical of Scientology only to restore them later on.
The Supreme Court was to give the last ruling on the case in December 2005, after XS4ALL and Karin Spaink had won the summary proceedings, full proceedings, appeal and dismissal of appeal. I In an attempt to prevent another defeat at the highest court in the Netherlands, the Church of Scientology proceeded to withdraw its appeal at a very late stage. XS4ALL objected strongly, wanting to end the case forever. However, the Supreme Court accepted the Scientology withdrawal and did not judge the merits of the case. Having used all the national means, the Scientology Church cannot go with the case to the European Court, thus making Spaink's victory final.
Final Victory! XS4ALL and Spaink Win Scientology Battle (16.12.2005)
http://www.xs4all.nl/nieuws/bericht.php?id=706&taal=en
Scientology loss keeps hyperlinks legal (08.09.2003)
http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien490.html
The Civil Society in Macedonia is very much concerned about the quality of the proposed draft Law on Free Access to Information of Public Character as it does not meet international standards on access to information. Today (18.01.2006), it is expected that the Macedonian Parliament will adopt the Law.
Nongovernmental organizations Article 19, Foundation Open Society Institute - Macedonia, Pro Media-Skopje and Transparency-Macedonia sent an open letter to the President of the Republic of Macedonia, President of the Parliament and the President of the Government stating their concerns regarding the weaknesses in the latest Draft Law on Free Access to Information. They also complain about the lack of real progress towards its adoption.
The letter that was signed by 126 Macedonian civil society organizations appeals for prompt adoption of the Law on Free Access to Information that considers the recommendations given by Article 19 and is consistent with international standards. The main concerns include:
- The law does not claim final authority in matters of freedom of information, and is vulnerable to being eclipsed by secrecy laws, such as the Classified Information Law. - Plans to establish a commission charged with hearing appeals and promoting implementation of the law have been dropped in favour of adjudication in the regular court system. Experience across many countries shows that an independent administrative complaints mechanism is essential to the effective functioning of an access to information system; court procedures are simply too lengthy and costly for the vast majority of potential information complainants. - The law does not contain a clear "harm test", which would stipulate that requests for information should never be refused unless disclosure would pose a serious risk of actual harm. - The law does not guarantee protection of whistleblowers
The process of drafting the law was initiated by several NGOs in June 2003. Additionally, during this two year period, they contributed to the drafting of the FOI law through organizing public hearings, debates and facilitating the process of draft law improvements.
The draft proposal of the Law suffered dramatic changes during this period and the adoption of the Law was postponed several times. Unfortunately the concerns of the civil society, articulated in front of the Parliamentary Commission this week, were not taken into account when drafting the final version of the Law that went into parliamentary procedure. NGOs and FOI activists push for changes to the Law and hope that the Macedonian Parliament will adopt it taking into consideration their remarks and recommendations. In the mean time, Macedonia remains the only country in the region that has not adopted a Freedom of Information Law.
Article 19 calls for the speedy adoption of Macedonian Freedom of
Information law ( 12.01 2006)
http://www.article19.org/pdfs/letters/macedonian-foi-law-letter.pdf
Comments on the Draft Law on Free Access to Information
http://www.soros.org.mk/dokumenti/MacedoniaLawonFreeAccesstoInformatio...
(Contribution by Bardhyl Jashari, EDRI-member Foundation Metamorphosis - Macedonia)
Following the agenda of the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) in Tunis in November 2005, the stakeholders will attend a meeting in Geneva, on 16 and 17 February for consultations regarding the convening of an IGF ( Internet Governance Forum) for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. The meeting in Geneva is meant to deal with the scope and priorities of the Forum, its programme and character. The Forum will be hosted by the Government of Greece sometime in 2006, probably in Autumn.
The Forum was proposed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to solve the mostly argued and controversial subject of Internet governance occurred in Tunis WSIS. ( see EDRI-Gram 3.23)
Although the Forum has no binding or decision-making power many expect it to bear a large influence and to result in solutions and best practices to various issues such as security and availability of the internet.
The forum will be most probably controversial as some governments, particularly the US government, expressed the intention to maintain the present situation in Internet governance.
The leader of the US delegation at WSIS in Tunis, David Gross, ambassador of the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State had stated in an earlier interview that the Internet should continue to be led by the private sector in the bottom-up system.
On the other hand, some governments, and especially the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), hope for IGF to result in getting some power back from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the US Government.
The meeting in Geneva in February will have the task to prepare an event that will most definitely be an significant one.
The Internet Government Forum (IGF) website
http://www.intgovforum.org/index.htm
UN to hold consultations on new Net governance body - (12.01.2006)
http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/networking/story/0,10801...
Internet Governance Forum takes shape (12.01.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/12/igf_formation/
UN prepares to set up net group (13.01.2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4609216.stm
Consultations in view of the Forum on Internet Governance of next February
in Geneva (in French,13.01.2006)
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/fr/ev.php-URL_ID=20957&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC...
18-21 January 2006 Roma, Italia
Linux Club - Open Source of Copy Left - an event
intended to promote the use of technology and Internet as instruments to
state foundamental rights such as the freedom of expression and thinking.
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=57284&r=PI
24 January 2006 Brussels , Belgium
Workshop on Review of the EU regulatory framework for electronic
communications and services, including review of the Recommendation on
relevant markets
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/policy/ecomm/info_centre/docu...
27 January 2006 Paris, France European Pluridisciplinary Seminar on the Role of ICTs in the Evolution of Security Policies in Europe Information and registration (free of charge) at:
EN
http://www-polytic.lip6.fr/article.php3?id_article=123
FR
http://www-polytic.lip6.fr/article.php3?id_article=122
28 January 2006 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dutch Big Brother Awards ceremony
The Dutch NGO Bits of Freedom is presenting the fourth Big Brother
Award ceremony in music centre Melkweg.
http://www.bigbrotherawards.nl
30-31 January 2006 Rome, Italy
OECD Conference on the Future Digital Economy: Digital Content Creation,
Distribution and Access
http://www.oecd.org/sti/digitalcontent/conference/registration
20-24 February 2006 Geneva, Switzerland
Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda :
First Session
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=9643
1-3 March 2006 Geneva, Switzerland
WIPO - Open Forum on the draft Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT)
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/2006/scp_of_ge_06/en/