The Council of Europe Group of Specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society (CoE MC-S-IS) held its 4th meeting on 9-10 March in Strasbourg, with EDRI participating in its capacity of non governmental observer. Among the many issues on the agenda were:

- the analysis of answers to the questionnaire sent by the group to CoE member States on their implementation of the CoE Declaration of freedom of communication on the Internet (only 7 out of 46 answers received so far); -the review of the CoE Recommendation on media coverage of election campaigns taking into account new medias, the mapping of human rights issues and guidelines with regards to roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders; - the development of strategies promoting digital inclusion and Internet literacy; - the program of the next CoE Pan-European Forum on Human Rights in the Information Society to be held in Erevan in early October 2006.

EDRI-gram is making public the questionnaire on freedom of communication, and will report on these issues as they develop in the future.

An important part of this meeting was dedicated to the discussion of a preliminary draft CoE instrument on "harmful" content. This work is a core aspect of the group mandate, since MC-S-IS terms of reference state, inter alia, that it should "elaborate the meaning of "harmful content", as referred to in Council of Europe instruments, in order to promote coherence in the protection of minors in all media in the Information Society". It has been made clear for almost 10 years in other arenas, and specially within the EU and the OSCE, that human rights standards on freedom of expression should apply on-line in the same way as they do off-line. A clear difference should be made between illegal content and content which, though legal, may be considered as harmful to specific categories of persons, like children and young people.

It is also generally accepted that "harmful" content is hard to define at a global level as the "risk of harm" perception is highly depending on culture, education and other aspects that vary among and within societies. Even as regards illegal content, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed this essential diversity in two different cases. First in the Müller v. Switzerland case (no. 41202/98, §35, 5 November 2002) and reconfirmed in one of its first Internet case law (Perrin v. the United Kingdom, Decision on admissibility, no. 5446/03, 18 October 2005). "Today, as at the time of the Handyside judgment ..., it is not possible to find in the legal and social orders of the Contracting States a uniform European conception of morals. The view taken of the requirements of morals varies from time to time and from place to place, especially in our era, characterised as it is by a far-reaching evolution of opinions on the subject."

Despite this well-established background, a study commissioned by the MC-S-IS Secretariat and presented during the 2005 CoE Pan-European Forum on Human Rights in the Information Society still tries to mix the illegal and harmful content issues. The authors of this research report, Rachel O'Connell and Jo Bryce, from the University of Central Lancashire (UK), attempt to define a "taxonomy-based risk identification methodology", ranging activities, behaviours and contents from "normal" to "proscribed", considering in between those that represent a "risk of harm". The danger of such categorization resides not only in the caricatural globality of moral judgements (by qualifying what is "normal" and what is "deviant"), but also in this attempt to identify a continuum between "harmful" and "illegal" categories. This, inevitably, leads the authors to make highly controversial recommendations such as "it is hoped that the 'risk of harm' construct will serve as a key function of the developing horizontal and harmonised policies and mechanisms for the regulation of European cross-media content and services."

Fortunately, after strong criticisms during the 2005 CoE Pan-European Forum and the 3rd and 4th MC-S-IS group meetings, notably from EDRI, ENPA (The European Newspaper Publishers Association) and many CoE member States participant in the group of specialists, it is expected that the CoE won't endorse such an approach. It has been decided that the draft CoE instrument prepared by the group will mainly focus on "Responsible use, education, well-being and empowerment of children and young people using the Internet and related communication services and technologies", as its provisional title now reads, rather than on attempting to define "harmful content". The 4th working group meeting has again helped to remove the main dangers of the draft text, making it more consistent with the general CoE background of respect for and upholding of human rights, as well as with its specific efforts on media education and media literacy (a 2nd edition of the CoE 'Internet Literacy Handbook' has just been released).

Next steps are to be finalise, through on-line discussions, the drafting of the text so that the draft instrument may hopefully be discussed at the next meeting of the CDMC (Steering Committee on Medias and Communications, under the CoE Human Rights DG, scheduled by end of May 2006) and then submitted to the CoE Committee of Ministers, which should decide on its approval. This instrument may become either a CoE Declaration or a CoE Recommendation, its status being still under discussion.

CoE MC-S-IS public website
http://www.coe.int/t/e/human_rights/media/1_intergovernmental_co-opera...

EDRI-gram : EDRI Granted Observer Status In CoE HR Group (29.06.05)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.13/EDRI

EDRI-gram : Human Rights In The Information Society On CoE Agenda (21.09.05)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.19/CoE

CoE MC-S-IS questionnaire to member States on their implementation of the Declaration on Freedom of Communication (English and French, made public by EDRI on 15.03.06)
http://www.edri.org/docs/CoE-questFoC-en.pdf http://www.edri.org/docs/CoE-questFoC-fr.pdf

CoE Internet Literacy Handbook, 2nd edition (English and French versions)
http://www.coe.int/T/E/Human_Rights/Media/hbk_en.html http://www.coe.int/T/E/Human_Rights/Media/hbk_fr.html

(Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI-member IRIS)