The public prosecutor's office of Rome has requested the relevant judicial authorities to allow the seizure of Indymedia Italy's website, on the ground of violation of the Italian penal law on 'vilipendio della religione cattolica' ('insult to the catholic religion') and 'vilipendio della figura del Papa' ('insult to the Pope's figure').

What happened? Someone, using Indymedia's content management system (which allows everyone to freely upload all kind of material) has published a fake photo of Pope Benedictus XVI dressed as a Nazi official. This was a clear reference to the Pope being a member - albeit, as he put it in various interviews, 'not a real enthusiast' - of the Hitlerjugend (the 'Hitler Youth').

Even though the constitutionality of the law on insult to the catholic religion, that is being invoked as a weapon against Indymedia Italy, is itself quite doubtful (on the basis that it is discriminatory towards other religions and in general not really compatible with the supposedly lay nature of the Italian State) the public prosecutor has nevertheless decided to issue an international judicial action; the website of Indymedia Italy is physically hosted in the US. Italian media consequently speak about hosting in Brazil, but they are probably confused the fact that the domain name is registered by a Brazilian entity.

On 6 and 7 April 2005 a committee of the Council of Europe debated on the merits of a new recommendation on human rights and Internet. On behalf of European Digital Rights Meryem Marzouki from the French digital rights organisation IRIS attended, in fact as the only NGO present. This second meeting of the Multidisciplinary Ad-hoc Committee of Experts on the Information Society (CAHSI) ended with a statement that will be presented to the CoE Committee of ministers, probably to be adopted by the CoE Summit of heads of states in mid May 2005.

The meeting was foremost an intergovernmental meeting, with EDRI in an observer role. Besides government representatives (of which the UK, the Netherlands and Norway were the most active), the secretariat of the group and the Culture and Media divisions of the CoE were present, as well as a

On 18 April WIPO hosted a seminar in Geneva on copyright and ISP liability. Dominated by representatives of the entertainment industry and international government officials, the highly politicised seminar ended with the conclusion that more legislation was indeed necessary. The main issue however remained unsolved; whether this legislation should provide stronger protection for the fundamental rights and freedoms of all internet users, or whether this legislation should further facilitate the entertainment industry in hunting down individual internet users.

The opening keynote speeches by Lilian Edwards and Charlotte Waelde from the AHRB Research Centre in Intellectual Property and Technology of the University of Edinburgh provided the audience with an excellent overview of all the issues related to provider liability for content provided or

On 24 March 2005 the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior issued a radical order to Bulgaria's largest internet providers. Within 7 days the ISPs "must remove all free hosting servers which offer works, audio records, entertaining or business software, images, pictures, books, graphical logos, etc." and notify the department. Remarkably, the order isn't limited to copyright infringement, but bluntly seems to ban all content on free hosting servers.

ISPs in Bulgaria are not forbidden to offer free hosting though, but can only provide free servers larger than 100 MB to identified customers. "More than 100 MB of webspace should be given only to customers with a signed user contract, accompanied with a copy of their ID card or relevant valid document for identification."

The order was issued by colonel Boyko Donchev Nikolov, chief of the

The MPA (Motion Picture Association) and the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) are pushing for a new collaboration with internet service providers in Europe. The MPA has drafted a 'possible ISP-Film Sector Voluntary Code of Conduct', while the IFPI called for a similar code in relation to the music sector during a conference of European telecom network operators (ETNO).

The industry demands that providers "remove references and links to sites or services that do not respect the copyrights of rights holders". Providers should also collectively adopt new terms and conditions, to 'require subscribers to consent in advance to the disclosure of their identity in response to a reasonable complaint of intellectual property infringement by an established right holder defence organisation or by

The Dutch Attorney-General for the Supreme Court, Verkade, has once more righted internetprovider XS4ALL and author Karin Spaink in their decade long defence against legal attacks by Scientology. In his opinion for the Supreme Court Verkade argues "Although copyright resides under Article 1 of the First Protocol of ECHR and can therefore be regarded as a human right, this does not exempt copyright from being balanced against the right to freedom of information." In this specific case, in which Spaink quoted several critical paragraphs from a statement made in court by a former member of the organisation, freedom of speech clearly prevails above the claimed copyrights of Scientology.

The case started in September 1995, when XS4ALL servers were formally seized by a bailiff, assisted by a representative from Scientology,

The Austrian regional power company TIWAG (based in Tirol) has claimed 500.000 euro in damages if an activist doesn't immediately take down a critical website. On 10 March they filed preliminary proceedings at the court of Innsbruck. On 23 March they sent another claim of 100.000 euro to the hosting provider of the site (based in Germany). TIWAG claims the information is confidential and the site a violation of their trademarks.

Austrian EDRI-member Quintessenz reports that two weeks ago, activist Markus Wilhelm published a list of 20 mainly American companies and banks with whom TIWAG allegedly closed cross-border leasing deals. The address of his website was www.dietiwag.at. But after a claim from TIWAG the national registrar of the Austrian top level domain deleted the domain

The French digital economy law (Loi pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique or LEN) recently entered into force. The first 2 court cases already demonstrate noxious effects of the law. As feared by French civil rights organisations like EDRI-member IRIS, the Human Rights League and others, the LEN creates judicial insecurity for French website editors and ISPs and legitimises private justice. Before the LEN, only courts could decide on take-down of websites (See EDRI-gram 2.12).

The first decision occurred in a defamation case. The French insurance company Groupama filed a case against an individual who maintained a web page with allegations of swindling by the company. The web page was accessible through equally defamatory URL names. Groupama was also suing the ISP, Free, as alleged defamation co-author, until Free decided to temporarily block access to the content. Free had received a notice by Groupama following the LEN ISP liability provisions (article 6), and made the commitment to definitely remove the site after a court decision. The court recognised the defamation by the web page editor and decided that the content must be removed as well as the URLs. Since the ISP had complied with the LEN provisions it was not found to be liable.