The French provider RAS does not have to remove a website from the trade-union SUD-PTT. On 24 November a Paris court rejected the claim from 2 telemarketing companies that the website was both hurtful and defamatory. The rejection is technical; the companies should have chosen 1 single argument for their complaint.

The contested remarks state that one of the companies is being reigned by 'little bosses', a manager is described as being unable to distinguish between friendship and hierarchical relationships and a female president is disqualified as being perfectly aware of the situation, but not acting on it - as usual. (See EDRI-gram nr. 21, 5 November 2003)

The companies are ordered to pay 2.000 Euro to the trade union and 3.000 Euro to provider RAS. The judge explicitly authorised to put the remarks

The RightsWatch Project, a research project funded under the European Commission's Information Society Technology programme, produced a white paper on notice and take-down of websites.

During a 2 year project RightsWatch tried to develop consensus between providers, right holders and internet users about self-regulatory notice and takedown (NTD) procedures. The attempts miserably failed, since self-regulation requires at least some willingness to achieve consensus. While right holders insisted on immediate take-down after any (unsubstantiated) complaint, internet users objected against private censorship by internet providers and internet providers dreaded their position in the middle.

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 ...

While the E-commerce directive (2000/58/EC) is not yet transposed, in France the liability of intermediaries is decided via jurisprudence. In April the owner of the discussion-website percussions.org was convicted to pay half of the legal costs made by the company Eurodim, because a visitor of the website posted a negative message about the head of the company. In the posting, he accused the manager of selling his African percussion instruments for way too much money and generally being better in marketing than teaching. The message appeared in September 2002. The CEO responded in April 2003, 6 months later, with a liability notice.

A German comedian was ordered to take down his parody website about the German Federal Chancellor (Bundeskanzler). The comedian, Joseph Pohl, operated the website for almost 5 years. Two weeks ago, he received an email from the Chancellors press office, accusing him of infringing on their trademark. Even though the site is as clear a parody as parodies come, with pictures of the comedian on his travels and software solutions for job unemployment, the Chancellors entourage is definitely not amused. They warn Pohl in this email not to undermine the dignity of the office with cheap sarcasm.

Pohls email with a request for mercy was answered by a fax threatening him with a court case.

At the end of a two-day conference in Amsterdam on internet-related perils to freedom of expression, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve has issued a call to take up a strong position towards free flow of information on the internet. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the largest regional security organization in the world with 55 participating States from Europe, Central Asia and North America.

"Freedom of the Media as a human right is universal.

The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers has adopted a Declaration on freedom of communication on the internet. The text contains 7 principles that underline the principle of freedom of expression and condemn practices aimed at restricting or controlling internet access, especially for political reasons. Remarkably, the 7th principle is the right of anonymity. "In order to ensure protection against online surveillance and to enhance the free expression of information and ideas, member states should respect the will of users of the Internet not to disclose their identity."

The declaration also deals with the freedom to provide services via the internet and the liability of providers. The provision of services via the internet should not be made subject to specific licence schemes, as still is the case in many countries outside of the European Union, nor should providers be obliged to monitor content on the internet. Closely following articles 12, 13 and 14 of the E-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC), the Council states that service providers should not be held liable for data they are merely transporting. In case of hosting, liability should only begin after the provider has become aware of the illegality of hosted material (to be defined in national law) and does not remove or disable access. Much clearer though than in the E-Commerce Directive, the Council of Europe underlines the need to protect the freedom of expression and the right of users to information.

In a remarkable change of heart, rapporteur Bill Newton Dunn removed all criticism from his draft report on the Safer Internet Action Plan (EU Document Number COD/2002/0071). In stead of the original recommendation to discontinue the program because of its complete in-effectiveness, Mr. Newton Dunn (British Liberal) now pleads for an extension of the program.

The change is the outcome of a series of so-called trilogue meetings, high-level, closed-door meetings of Council and Commission representatives as well as EP rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs. Newton Dunn subdued completely to the will of the Council. Not only did he withdraw all of his critical original amendments, he even asked the Council for formulas he then tabled as last-minute amendments in his own name. The result: not a single amendment was adopted in the EP Internal Affairs committee that had not been approved by the Council before. It is very likely that the outcome in the EP Plenary, which will vote on March 10, will look likewise.