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On 16 March 2007 the Bulgarian special forces for combating organized crime ordered the major ISPs to filter the access to and from the web site arenabg.com, a torrent tracker hosted in the US, claiming that it was the source of copyright infringement activities. Only three big ISPs accepted to do so while the others considered the action as illegal.

The ordinance was withdrawn by the Police after a few days, following a lot of criticism from lawyers that questioned the legality of such an action. EDRI-member ISOC Bulgaria was the only organization of Internet users to publicly criticize these actions.

The police also arrested the owner of the web site who was however released

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The new French law for the prevention of delinquency is yet another vehicle to worsen penalties and to increase the prerogatives of the police, when infractions are committed through or using the Internet. The main purpose of this law is to reduce the limitation of penal responsibility for 16 to 18 years old minors and to increase the powers of mayors, including by providing them with normally private information on families and minors in difficult social situation. As it has become usual in France, the parliamentary discussion has been the occasion to include various provisions having little to do with the core of the law.

The law imposes new obligations to French ISPs, reducing their limitation of

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After the first reading in the European Parliament of the new proposed Television without Frontiers directive, the European Commission has made the new consolidated text public on 9 March 2007 .

The initial proposal was criticized by Internet media specialists and some significant changes were adopted by the European Parliament in December 2006 during the first reading. The changes are now incorporated in the consolidated text presented by the Commission. They include the initial proposal that those non-TV audiovisual services, comprising so-called non-linear or on-demand services, will be made subject to some basic content regulation.

The Commission wants to push the draft directive hoping that it will be

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Viktor Alksnis, a Duma State deputy, has acted on his threat to take to court blogger Timofey Shevyakov, a LifeJournal user, for insults addressed to the former as a state authority.

The deputy started his blog on the LifeJournal on 3 February, wanting to "demonstrate the everyday routine work of a Duma opposition member", but became soon unhappy of some comments on his blog.

As a response to comments placed by Alksnis on his blog on 18 February on the new military banners in the Russian army, which he was not content with, a user "tarlith" said the depute was "either a liar or a fool". Alksnis threatened with filing a criminal complaint against him, and the discussion

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A report of the Lords European Union Committee offered new reasons to oppose the Commission's draft Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS), successor of the Television Without Frontiers Directive, that will extend television regulation to some Internet video services.

The Directive was approved in its first reading by the Parliament in December 2006 and should be backed now by the Council of Ministers.

The Directive, as it is now drafted, applies only to commercial TV-like services, but concerns still exist on the vagueness of what this would cover and the fear that the regulation might be wrongly applied to other content such as that of blogs.

Lord Freeman, chairman of the Lords European Union Committee stated: "Such

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The European Parliament has voted in its second reading on the Rome II Regulation to reintroduce the rules regarding the defamation by media or publications via the Internet and other electronic networks. The Rome II regulation is establishing the rules on the applicable law to non-contractual obligations. . The member states and media organizations wanted a simple formula to be introduced and not to apply the general principle - the applicable law to be that of the country in which the defamed person lives. That would practically mean that every media company would have to know the privacy and defamation laws of every European country.

At the first reading in July 2005, MEPs had approved a compromise amendment

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Revenue from online content will reach €8.3 billion by 2010 in Europe, a growth of over 400% in five years, says a new study for the European Commission. For the most advanced sectors, online content will represent a significant share of total revenue: about 20% for music and 33% for video games. Thanks to the spread of broadband, the roll-out of advanced mobile networks, and the massive adoption of digital devices, the study shows that mass market online content distribution is becoming a reality, creating unique opportunities for Europe.
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/95&f...

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At the beginning of 2007 a ministerial decree was signed by Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni that obliges Internet Service Providers to block child pornography sites within 6 hours from being announced to do so.

The body that has the responsibility to notify the ISPs on the sites that must be blocked will be "Centro nazionale per il contrasto della pedopornografia" (The National Centre against Child Pornography), coordinated by the Post Police under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications. The Centre has to create and update a list of sites considered as containing child pornography and keep informed those responsible by notifying the ISPs.

The notifying procedure will be established within the Ministry of