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As it already happened six years ago with the infamous law 62/2001, a new law draft on the "re-arrangement of publishing", prepared by the Italian government on 3 August 2007 and now entering parliament procedure, clearly intends to enforce bureaucratic and financial burdens, as well as sanctions, also on the free and private expression of thought by "normal citizens" using the internet.

The text prepared by the government is deliberately confusing and ambiguous. If approved by parliament as it is, it would cause confusion and uncertainty on the possibility of free expression even for people who are not professional journalists or publishers of newspapers, magazines or broadcasting.

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31 international and national organisations from different countries have already signed EDRI statement on a new Recommendation from the Council of Europe (CoE) failing to uphold freedom of expression in the online environment.

As other related instruments are currently in preparation by the CoE, EDRI calls for NGOs and groups from all over the world to sign up in support of EDRI statement and take further action to help avoid the risk of more damages to freedom of expression and information in the online world. Signatures should preferably be gathered before 28 October 2007, as the next meeting of the CoE expert group having prepared this Recommendation is scheduled on 29-30 October 2007 in Strasbourg

Act Now to Protect Freedom of Expression Online:
- Sign up in support to this EDRI statement (NGOs and groups from non CoE member States also welcome)

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Today EDRI issued a statement to express its serious concerns over a new Council of Europe Recommendation on 'promoting freedom of expression and information in the new information and communications environment'.

According to EDRI, the newly adopted instrument promotes opaque "self-regulation" and other soft law instruments driven by private interests and implemented through technical mechanisms. EDRI considers this Recommendation to be damaging and a retrograde step for freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the online world. EDRI is deeply concerned that such instruments will be used to legitimize subtle means of censorship, through privatised censorship and measures to protect against

On October 10, 2007, EDRI issued a statement to express its serious concerns over a new Council of Europe Recommendation on 'promoting freedom of expression and information in the new information and communications
environment'.

As other related instruments are currently in preparation by the CoE, EDRI calls for NGOs and groups from all over the world to sign up in support of EDRI statement and take further action to help avoid the risk of more damages to freedom of expression and information in the online world.

Read EDRI Statement and Act Now to Protect Freedom of Expression Online:
- EDRI Statement: 'New Council of Europe Recommendation fails to uphold online
freedom of expression' (PDF). Also available in the following languages: Čeština, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Македонски

So there's a new verb in Europe: to frattinise. It first appeared in German, soon after in French and in Italian, it may creep around in other languages. Or it may be replaced by another one, next time someone else jumps on the same hideous bandwagon.

On 10 September 2007 (quite deliberately, one day before the anniversary of "September Eleven") European Commissioner Franco Frattini declared to Reuters: "I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector... on how it may be possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism."

As far as I can tell, there wasn't much reporting of this statement in mainstream media. But there was immediate reaction online, starting with ALCEI's press release "Repression and censorship. The ghost is still around

In the past weeks a small online videogame has been the center of much controversy in Italy, with center-right MPs explicitly asking governmental intervention in its removal, questioning once again the limits of freedom of expression in the country.

Everything started when Molleindustria, a group of "artists, designers and programmers that aims at starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of videogames", developed and published on its website a small Flash-based videogame called "Operation Pedopriest". Molleindustria was already quite famous in Italian specialized circles for its Flash-based games on politically sensitive topics, including exploitation of workers and gender identity.

"Operation Pedopriest" was Molleindustria's provocative follow-up to

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Yahoo and Google seems to have problems adapting their business to the tough requirements of the German law regarding content harmful to minors and the implementation of the data retention directive, respectively.

Yahoo has recently changed the way the content filter setting for its photo-sharing service Flickr works for German members so that they can't view photos labelled as "moderate" or "restricted" via the search function. This caused a lot of complaints from German users, that created special groups on the platform such as Against Censorship! Also they started uploading anti-Flickr pictures in the Yahoo photo sharing service and tag them as "thinkflickrthink".

In the end Flickr allowed the German users to turn SafeSearch off to allow