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The Package of rules governing the Internet and telecoms sectors proposed by the European Commission in view of supporting competition and providing clearer information and a wider range of services to consumers was approved by the European Parliament on 24 September 2008, in the first reading.

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The case of Sharemula.com, the eDonkey website publishing links allowing users to download movies, music and software has been recently dismissed by the Provincial Court of Madrid which ruled that the website was operating legally.

The case had been brought to court by the Federación Antipiratería (Anti-piracy Federation) in 2006 when 15 people were arrested in Spain in relation with the operation of the site.

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On 5 September 2008, a Danish court decided that two woman that had been taken to court for illegally sharing music by Antipiratgruppen, anti-piracy affiliates, were innocent. The two women claimed they had not been the authors of the infringement, having been subject to WiFi theft.

Antipiratgruppen had sent letters to the two women who had P2P software on their computers, claiming the women had illegally downloaded copyrighted music and asking for compensations up to about 21 000 and 23 000 euro respectively. The women stated clearly that they were not the ones having done the downloading, claiming their Wi-Fi had been piggybacked by unknown persons.

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The European Chapters Coordinating Council of the Internet Society (ISOC-ECC) issued a press release on 5 September 2008 expressing its opposition against the "graduated response" proposed by the so-called HADOPI law presented to the French Council of Ministers in June 2008.

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The European Parliament (EP) discussed on 2 September 2008 the draft directives to reform the EU framework on electronic communications (telecom package). Besides the debates on the telecom issues, the MEPs have discussed the role of the ISPs in combating Intellectual Property Rights violations and the modifications to the ePrivacy directive in order to include more provisions on consumer protection and data security.

Some of the amendments that were passed by the EP Committees were challenged by some of the speakers, beliving they could endanger the principle of the neutrality of the Internet.

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In an investigation started by the Bergamo Prosecutors, an Order of the Justice for preliminary investigation of the Court of Bergamo was issued on 1 August 2008, asking for the "seizure" of the PirateBay website, hosted outside Italy, for displaying a collection of links to allegedly illegal duplicated material. The order was implemented by 10 August 2008 by forcing Italian Internet providers to block the access to that site, both to its domain, as well as to its associated IP number.

The PirateBay owners quickly reacted and changed their IP address and set up a new website called labaia.org (La Baia means The Bay in Italian).

UK consultation on legislative options to address illicit P2P file-sharing
http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page47141.html

Other opinions
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/07/24/government-to-consult-on-leg...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/25/three_strikes_dead_hurrah

Christine Albanel, the French Minister of Culture and Communication, has gathered her European homologues for an informal meeting in Versailles on 21 and 22 July 2008 in an attempt to push the French Hadopi law model to be embraced by Europe.

Some of the main issues approached during the meeting were piracy, telecommunications reform, the European Heritage Label project and the illegal trafficking of culturally significant objects. Much of the discussions at the meeting turned around copyright and illegal file sharing over the Internet. Without being discouraged by the very large opposition to the Creation and Internet draft law (so called Hadopi law), the French Minister took again the opportunity to offer Europe the French system as its contribution to the EU Telecommunication Package.