ANEM, the Association of Independent Electronic Media in Serbia has issued an alarming statement about the lack of respect for press freedom in the country. ANEM "protests strongly at the re-emergence of unacceptable and irresponsible rhetoric in the public arena in Serbia" and "urges all democratic public and professional journalism and media associations to express solidarity with journalists and media who are subject to attacks and threats."

On 15 August 2005 Capital Investments Minister Velimir Ilic called the journalists from the renowned radio and television station B92 "sick and in need of a psychiatric clinic". When a B92 journalist attempted to ask him about his role in the withdrawal of charges against Marko Milosevic, the son of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, the media advisor

On Monday 3 November, in intermediary proceedings against not-for-profit provider RAS in a Paris court, two telemarketing companies demanded the immediate take-down of the website of the radical trade union SUD PTT. The lawsuit was brought against the ISP and the trade union by the companies Ceritex and Mediatel. According to their complaint, some remarks published on the website about the management of the 2 companies are untrue and grave insults.

The French E-zine Transfert.net reports that the Slovakian domain registry Euroweb is threatening to wipe more than 40.000 domain-names ending on .sk, eliminating half of the Slovakian web-presence. Slovakian domain owners have been given one month extra, until 3 November, to renew their registration under new commercial conditions. The first deadline expired on 1 October, but less than half of the owners migrated to the new system.

Until 2002 domain registration under .sk was free and handled by Sanet, the main Slowakian university network. That way, 70.000 domain names were registered. On the first of January 2003 Euroweb, a subsidiary of the Dutch telecom firm KPN, took over.

A joint study about internet censorship by EDRI-member Privacy International and the GreenNet Educational Trust describes an alarming development of increased efforts to close down or inhibit the internet. Accelerated control is not just the case in countries like China and Burma where the medium has almost lost all usefulness for free speech. Worldwide, after the 11 September attacks governments have introduced new laws restricting a range of civil rights.

"While paying lip service to personal freedoms, the leaders of the democratic world have affirmed with uncharacteristic harmony that the pursuit of a safer society must prompt a reassessment of individual liberties and privacy.

8 years after Scientology started legal procedures against Dutch author Karin Spaink, internet provider XS4ALL and 20 other defendants, the Appellate Court of The Hague rejected all claims and ruled that freedom of expression should prevail upon copyrights.

According to the ruling "The (...) texts show that, in their doctrine and their organisation, Scientology et al. do not hesitate to overthrow democratic values. From the texts it also follows that one of the objects of the non-disclosure of the contents of OT II and OT III ...

The internet censorship requests issued by the examining magistrate of the canton of Vaud (see EDRigram number 2 from 12 February) have been rejected on 30 April by a judge from the court of Lausanne. In December, over 30 providers had received the order, and while most of them installed some technical blocking-measures, they joined the legal protest.

The verdict however isn't based on any ethical or constitutional objections against provider-filtering, but on the wrong selection of legal arguments. The judge recommends other heavier laws to proceed with the case, for example suing the providers for acting as accessaries.

The examining magistrate immediately responded by sending a threatening letter to at least one of the ISPs involved, Init Seven AG.

Romania has adopted a new law to make free access to pornography illegal.

Online pornography must always be protected by a password, and should always charge a fee per minute, to be declared with the fiscal authorities. Free access is explicitly forbidden in a law formally adopted on 20 May 2003. The law has raised a number of comments from the civil society and ISPs.

The National Regulatory Authority on Communications ( ANRC) can receive claims regarding non-compliance with the law. In case of receiving such claims and after checking the contents of the site, ANRC may require internet service providers to block access to the respective site.