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Montenegro's office in charge with the government Internet infrastructure decided to ban access to several social networking or video sharing websites, such as YouTube or Facebook. The public servants were announced by a statement sent at the end of December 2008 by the office to all civil servants.

Now, the civil servants trying to access those website will receive an access denied message.

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The UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has presented, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph at the end of the last year, some new plans in adopting to the web "new standards of decency".

The Cabinet minister is planing to give film-style ratings to individual websites and wants ISPs to offer parents "child-safe" web services. Because Internet is a global nature, he plans to negotiate with Obama Administration in order to drew up "international rules for English language websites."

Burnham explained the present situation: "If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn't reach.

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While some European countries block the illegal content (mostly child pornography websites), other are considering implementing a similar measure through a hidden list. However the past month has shown, one more time if necessary, that usually the list of any blocked content will leak and thus the allegedly blocked content will become widely available.

Belgium is one of the new countries considering such a list. The Minister of Enterprise and Administrative Reform, Vincent Van Quickenborne, want to ban child pornography on the Internet through a protocol between ISPs and the Government.

Article corrected on 27.12.2008 - it was OSCE instead of OECD in paragraph 3.

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On 8 and 9 December 2008, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) held its first Fundamental Rights Conference in Paris. The event examined key issues and challenges related to the freedom of expression.

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The Romanian Authority for Communication (ANC) requested ISPs last week to block the access to 40 websites hosted in Romania, considering they don't meet the criteria imposed by article 7 of Law no.196/2003 on preventing and fighting pornography.

Article 7 of the law states that "the natural and legal persons creating pornographic sites are obliged to password them, and the access to these will be allowed only after paying a fee per using minute, established by the creator of the site and declared at the fiscal bodies."

However, five years later after the law was adopted, no specific fee is foreseen in any normative act.

According to the ANC press release, its in

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Wikipedia administrators found on 5 December 2008 that six British ISPs were filtering the access to their site, after Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) had put the online encyclopedia on a child-pornography blacklist for its article on Virgin Killer, the record album of the German band the Scorpions.

The action was taken following a report occurred on 4 December through IWF's online reporting mechanism on the article which presents the album and its original cover depicting a naked prepubescent girl.

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For the forth time in two years, on 20 November 2008, the Turkish authorities blocked access to YouTube asserting that certain content posted on the site was disrespectful to Kemal Mustafa Atatürk, the Turkish Republic's founder, or supported the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Turkey is the only country in the world banning YouTube.

"We have said it before and we say it again now - blocking access to YouTube is wrong. It has been blocked since 5 May, as a result of an earlier court order, and the obstinacy shown by the authorities is unacceptable.

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A new report conducted by Privacy International (PI) for the Council of Europe Media and Information Society Division reveals effects of new counter-terrorism laws on media and free expression rights in European countries.

The report "Speaking of Terror" examines how the "war on terror" has affected access to information, the growth of incitement, glorification and "extremism" restrictions on speech, blocking of internet sites, increased surveillance of journalists and limits on protection of journalists' sources.