From 15 to 17 May the University of Illinois Chicago (USA) hosted the conference "FM10 Openness: Code, Science and Content". The occasion was the tenth anniversary of "First Monday", the first peer-reviewer journal born on the Internet. The final day of the conference gathered a group that brainstormed over the first draft of the "Chicago Manifesto".

Chicago Manifesto on Openness (17.05.2006)
http://blogger.uic.edu:16080/weblog/nrj/FM10/?permalink=ChicagoManifes...

Website of the conference (with abstracts and papers)
http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

First Monday
http://www.firstmonday.org/

The European Commission proposal to regulate commercial audio and video broadcasts over the Internet and mobile phones, continues to be strongly opposed by supporters of free speech, but also tranditional and new media providers.

At the meeting of Education, Youth and Culture Council in Brussels (18-19 May 2006) the proposal for a directive amending the Directive on the pursuit of television broadcasting activities was discussed. The debate covered, in particular, the following issues in relation with the proposed directive: the appropriateness and the sustainability of the distinction between linear and non-linear services; the common rules applying to both categories of services; the extent of the modernization and simplification of television advertising and teleshopping rules.

Reporters Without Borders - Internet Annual report 2006 : Everyone's interested in the Internet - especially dictators

The Internet has revolutionised the world's media. Personal websites, blogs and discussion groups have given a voice to men and women who were once only passive consumers of information. It has made many newspaper readers and TV viewers into fairly successful amateur journalists. Dictators would seem powerless faced with this explosion of online material. How could they monitor the e-mails of China's 130 million users or censor the messages posted by Iran's 70,000 bloggers? The enemies of the Internet have unfortunately shown their determination and skill in doing just that. China was the first repressive country to realise that the Internet was an extraordinary tool of free expression and quickly assembled the money and

After many complaints from Russia, the Swedish authorities closed up on 5 May, Kavkazcenter.com, a Chechen separatist Web site that allegedly encouraged terrorism. The police arrived at PRQ Web hosting company in Stockholm with a search warrant and confiscated two servers.

The Finish owner of the servers, Mikael Storsjo, told Swedish news agency TT that the Russian embassy had filed a police complaint that the site incited rebellion for an attack in Nalchik by suspected Islamic extremists in October last year. "I see this as an outrage. I don't agree with what's written on the website but I respect their right to free speech." said Mr. Storsjo.

The Web site has moved around on numerous servers in the Nordics and Baltic countries during the last years and has previously been shut down by

The first-instance court of Hamburg gave its final ruling on the liability of forum comments, stating that moderators of internet forums are liable for content posted on their sites.

Initially, the legislation held forum providers liable for illegal content they had knowledge about and there was no obligation for them to search for such content. This interpretation was now overruled by the Hamburg court who considered providing forums as a business operation. Therefore forum providers should be able to have sufficient staff and means to check out comments on their forums. As the court stated, in case they cannot operate accordingly, “they either have to expand their in-house resources or ... reduce the scope of their business operations,"

The case originating the ruling was that of a forum member of German news

The EU report drafted by economists from Toulouse University and the Free University of Brussels on the economic and technical evolution of scientific publishing in Europe, published on 31 March 2006, recommends public access to scientific research funded by the European taxpayer.

The report proposes the development of a European policy that would allow researchers receiving EU funding to place copies of articles published in subscription journals on web-based archives that can be accessed by everyone for free. It also expressed the need to “specify standards that will insure that the archives are accessible, interoperable, and have cross-searching facilities. In addition, set up a general European archive for researchers with access to a subject-based or institutional archive.”

Laila Freivalds, the Swedish Foreign Minister resigned on 21 March after having been cornered by the press on her involvement in the closure on 9 February of a far-right party's website.

The Web site, which was planning to publish caricatures of Muhammad like those that led to deadly protests by Muslims all over the world, was contacted by a top Foreign Ministry official who said it should be closed for security reasons.

Although, in the beginning, the minister denied having known about the official's action and having exerted pressure on the hosting company, a later report from the ministry said she had been involved in the decision.

The minister told the media that the cartoons were "offensive to other peoples' religious beliefs" and admitted to the media that she was concerned

On 19 March 2006, date of the presidential elections in Belarus, the major online independent news resources (svaboda.org, charter97.org, belapan.com, ucpb.org, naviny.by, kozylin.com, zubr-belarus.com) were the targets of various types of attacks.

The Website of "Nasha Niva" newspaper was not available from Belarus on 18 March on the Internet. Other problems were spotted in accessing tut.by, a major Belarusian portal with about 60 000 visitors/day.

Also, Milinkievich's (candidate from Unified Democratic Forces) official website was unavailable for 2 days starting on 19 March. According with website administrators, they lost control over the server.

Charter97 press-centre websites were permanently attacked. Authorities not only used their usual techniques (IP address blocking, massive DoS attacks)