As host country of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Tunisia has not lived up to the optimistic expectations of some UN officials, but in stead exceeded the worst expectations of civil society. Many individuals searched their souls whether to attend the Summit or not. But the promise of a Citizens Summit, dedicated to the human rights demands of civil society and inclusive of the Tunisian people and organisations purposefully excluded by the Tunisian government, convinced many of them to come to Tunis and mingle amongst the 23.000 official participants.

In an opinion article titled 'No place to talk about Internet freedom' for the International Herald Tribune, Kamel Labidi, the former director of Amnesty International-Tunisia, describes Tunisia as "one of the Arabs

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on its program to digitise the collections of European libraries. The program on digital libraries is a response to a letter sent in April this year by six European presidents and priministers to create a virtual European library.

On 30 September the Commission adopted a Communication on the topic and published an accompanying staff working paper. In this Communication the Commission explains the link with Google's digitisation initiative. "Digitisation activities exist in all the Member States, but efforts are fragmented and progress has been relatively slow. This was underlined by the announcement of the Google initiative to digitise 15 million books from four major libraries in the US and one in Europe. If realised as planned, the Google initiative by far exceeds the efforts at national level in any of the Member States."

On 12 and 13 September the Council of Europe convened a Pan-European Forum on "Human Rights in the Information Society: Responsible Behaviour by Key Actors" with representatives from state, industry and civil society.

The Forum was a follow-up to the recent Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Information Society, plus general Council of Europe priorities regarding the protection of children and internet content. The Forum aimed at identifying and discussing "responsible" and "irresponsible" behaviour by key actors and how states, industry and civil society can work together (inter alia through partnerships, policy making, greater awareness and education) to ensure the promotion and protection of human rights in the Information Society. On behalf of EDRI, Meryem Marzouki (IRIS, France) and Rikke Frank

Ms Leena Luhtanen, Minister of Transport and Communications, announced on 26 August 2005 that Finnish ISPs will implement a censorship system to curb access to foreign web pages containing child pornography.

The announcement was accompanied by a study conducted by the ministry exploring the legal and practical aspects of such a system. The study concludes that the system is not efficient at curtailing child porn distribution, but may result in legitimate pages being blocked. The legal basis of the system is also somewhat suspect. Critics have denounced the Minister's plan as an empty attempt to woo voters.

The Finnish constitution makes it very difficult to pass a law sanctioning ex ante censorship of web pages. The ministry acknowledges this and as a result, Ms Luhtanen's plan is framed as a voluntary scheme of industry self-regulation, instead of mandatory regulation. The ministry contends that this is allowable under the constitution, and points out that similar systems are already in use in Sweden and Norway. However, in Sweden and Norway the systems are truly voluntary, in that end-users may choose whether to have their connection subjected to censorship or not. In Finland, the biggest ISP TeliaSonera has indicated that end-users will not have a choice, meaning that censorship is mandatory. According to EDRI member Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI), this mode of censorship conflicts with the constitution.

The UK government is planning to outlaw the possession of "extreme pornographic material". The proposed new law is outlined in a consultation document published by the UK Home Office.

The consultation sets out "options for creating a new offence of simple possession of extreme pornographic material which is graphic and sexually explicit and which contains actual scenes or realistic depictions of serious violence, bestiality or necrophilia." Possession could be punished with a prison sentence of up to 3 years. The law is limited to material featuring adults as the possession of child pornography is already a criminal offence in the UK.

It is already illegal to publish, sell or import extreme pornographic material in the UK under the Obscene Publications Act. The proposed new law is specifically aimed at pornographic material on the Internet, from websites outside of the UK which can not be prosecuted for publishing under UK law. The proposal will make it illegal to access such sites as the consultation document describes viewing as downloading and thus possession. Home Officer Minister Paul Goggins told the BCC radio that the proposal would especially protect young children and "reduce demand" for the material.

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."

Alvar Freude, the German internet activist, was acquitted on all accounts in the appeal at the German penal State Court of Stuttgart on 15 June 2006. On his website, Freude documents many developments regarding filtering and blocking in Germany, including hyper-links to websites with radical right-wing content and a distasteful website. 4 of these sites had to be blocked by all ISPs in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen since 2002. Two of the sites have meanwhile been dropped from the blocking order.

The public prosecutor demanded the financial equivalent of 140 days of prison sentence for incitement of the masses, distributing propaganda from anti-constitutional organisations and representation of violence. According to the prosecutor, all hyper-links to radical right-wing websites were forbidden. But according to Freude's lawyer and to the

The third OSCE Amsterdam Internet Conference was held on 17-18 June 2005. The conference focused on the situation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Southern Caucasus and Central Asian regions, with experts from this region delivering presentations on the situation in their countries. The debate showed that governmental over-regulation and content censorship are common in Central Asian countries and pose a serious danger to new media in the emerging Internet scene. "In countries where almost all information is tightly controlled, the Internet is already used, but it needs to be developed and more accessible to advocate free speech, access to information and a stronger foundation for democracy", Mark Skogen of Access and Training Program (IATP) in Kazakhstan stressed in his presentation.