Microsoft has launched a second appeal case against the anti-trust decision by the European Commission in March 2004. On 10 August 2005 Microsoft filed a new complaint at the European Court of Justice (First Instance) in Luxembourg, asking for annulment of the decision to open up the Windows source code enough to create interoperability and allow open source vendors to distribute Windows source code.

"We are taking this step so the court can begin its review now of this issue, given its far-reaching implications for the protection of our intellectual property rights around the world," said Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes. The hearing won't begin until 2006.

In December 2004, the Court of First Instance entirely dismissed Microsoft's first legal objections to the sanctions and ruled that the Commission's decision does not "cause serious and irreparable damage" to Microsoft. In March and again in June 2005, the Commission rejected a proposed license scheme because Microsoft did not agree to license the protocols for use in open-source products.

The Study "Protecting the Virtual Commons, Self-Organizing Open Source and Free Software Communities and Innovative Intellectual Property Regimes" by 2 technical and 1 legal scientist from the Netherlands dates back to early 2003, but offers a nice insight in the world of open source and free software. It makes good introductory reading for whomever is interested in the upcoming heated debate about the new third version of the General Public License. On 9 June 2005 Eben Moglen and Richard M. Stallman announced their intentions to create a new version. The second GPL version dates back to 1991 and hasn't been changed since.

In chapter two the authors explore why anybody would contribute software for free to the community. They cite low participation costs, and the benefits of the users direct need for a specific tool, pure joy and reputation. They also analyse the process of innovation. When normally this is done in a hierarchy, termed 'collective decision making' with a central command center, in the free software and open source community, selection is done through 'professional attention', meaning crowds of people will flock to the developers with the highest reputation. "Why is open source and free software so innovative? According to our argument, a high level of variation and emergent selection among that variety are responsible for much of the innovation. Individuals in open source and free software communities create a high level of variety, as they face hardly any restrictions."

From 15 to 17 July there will be a (freely accessible) festival on copyleft and creative commons in Barcelona, with talks by Lawrence Lessig, Wikipedia, Cory Doctorow and John Perry Barlow and plenty of workshops, screenings and presentations in the CCCB (Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre). The festival is devoted to the exploration of non-restrictive alternatives to the current intellectual property regime, new models of copyleft licenses, remix culture, and all the possibilities opened by free culture creation and distribution tools. The organisers, Oscar Abril Ascaso and the Elastico collective, write: "The effects of copyright and the reach of intellectual property laws on the development of culture have become one of the hottest issues in the last few years. Everybody wants to protects culture, but from whom? From the artists? From the consumers? Is culture a luxury item? Can culture be owned? These contradictions are pitting governments and public institutions against each other, companies against their own costumers, rights management societies against their own artists."

EDRI-member ISOC Bulgaria has sent an angry letter in May 2005 to the US Trade Representative about grave errors in their recent Special 301 Report.

The Bulgarian organisation defends the Bulgarian government for its attempts to solve the problems with the illegal usage of software, music and films. In the 5-page letter, also sent to the US Ambassador to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Ambassador to the USA and to the Bulgarian minister of culture, ISOC-Bulgaria protests against the use of fake data in the report. Allegedly these data were provided by the Business Software Alliance through their Bulgarian representative.

The letter comes as part of the continuous efforts of the Bulgarian Internet Society to ensure that all software companies are treated equally and fairly by the government, in stead of special, complimentary relations. The most recent result of these efforts is a statement by the Bulgarian Minister of State Administration. In May 2005 he announced that he will not renew the contract between the government and Microsoft. This contract was closed in 2002, but has been heavily criticised since, both nationally and internationally.

On 13 May 2005 the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers adopted a declaration on human rights and Internet that was prepared by a special committee of academic experts and government representatives. According to the press release, "the declaration is the first international attempt to draw up a framework on the issue and breaks ground by up-dating the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights for the cyber-age."

Indeed the declaration contains a very reassuring confirmation of the fact that "all rights enshrined in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) remain fully valid in the Information Age and should continue to be protected regardless of new technological developments" and a firm statement that "Both the content and traffic data of electronic communications fall under the scope of Article 8 of the ECHR and should not be submitted to restrictions other than those provided for in that provision."

The European Commission has rejected Microsoft's proposal to comply with the EU anti-trust ruling. Microsoft needs to enable other software providers to interoperate with computers that run the Windows operating system. But the proposed Microsoft server interoperability licence contains a number of serious flaws including unjustifiably high royalty fees and the exclusion of open source vendors, according to the Commission.

In March 2004 Microsoft got a record fine of 497 million euro after a five-year investigation by the Competition Commissioner into Microsoft's business practice. According to the Commission's ruling Microsoft's illegal business practice has enabled it to acquire a dominant position in the market for work group server operating systems and has significantly weakened competition on the media player market. As a remedy the

EDRI-member ISOC Bulgaria has published an overview of activities in 2004. From a strong focus on free and open source software, they initiated an important project to use FOSS on the municipal level. The project is steered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help municipal governments in South-eastern Europe use the Internet to better respond to citizens' needs. Bulgaria is the first region to use FOSS applications to enhance government transparency and people's access to municipal services. After Bulgaria, the program will expand to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro.

The mayor of Kardjali, the first pilot municipality in Bulgaria, expressed his appreciation for ISOC-BG publicly, in front of the President of the Republic, for the successful efforts to train and increase computer literacy of the employees and to provide grant free e-government solutions. ISOC-BG also began to work on preliminary criteria for the development of a FOSS based on-line documentation system for municipal administrations.

The Free Software Foundation Europe says Microsoft is blocking Linux, Samba and other major open source projects from taking part in a protocol licensing scheme mandated by the European Commission's antitrust ruling.

If developers want to build the protocols into their products, they must agree not to distribute that product in source-code form, or to subject it to licenses that require source-code disclosure, a formula that excludes many open source licenses.

The European Commission gave Microsoft a record fine of 497 million euro after a five-year investigation by the Competition Commissioner into Microsoft's business practice. The Commission ordered Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without a bundled media player and to share more technical information with server rivals.