The Council of Europe is working on a new declaration or recommendation on human rights and internet. An ad-hoc committee of experts on the information society has been meeting for the first time in November 2004, and will have a second meeting in Strasbourg on 3 and 4 February 2005. The Council does not provide any information about the proceedings or specific members of the committee, but has recently published the terms of reference. The aim of the committee is to provide "a draft political statement on the principles and guidelines for ensuring respect for freedom of expression and opinion, for human rights and for the rule of law in the Information Society, with a view to its use as a Committee of Ministers' contribution to the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe (16-17 May 2005) and the 2005 Tunis

In a response to the European Commission on 9 December 2004, EDRI welcomes the creation of a Human Rights Agency within the European Union.

"The creation of the Agency is especially relevant at a time when, one the hand, many new EU countries have joined through the expansion of member states from 15 to 25 countries and, on the other hand, the European legislation is extending its scope to new fields and sectors, especially those relevant to the third pillar," EDRI states.  

In the response EDRI stresses that since human rights issues cross-cut all policy areas of the European Union the creation of one central Agency must be complemented with more effective human rights mainstreaming in all EU policy areas and activities.

EDRI suggests that the Human Rights Agency focuses on:

1. Strengthening and promoting the protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law within the member states, and in the EU institutions and work areas.

On Thursday 2 December, the European Parliament adopted the report from the Dutch PSE rapporteur Edith Mastenbroek on the goals and funding of the Safer Internet Plus Programme. Parliament has decided to dedicate 45 million Euro to the program, of which 20,05 million are to be spent in the first 2 years, 2005 and 2006. Since the amendments were already agreed with the Commission and the Council, the report is adopted at first reading and will enter into force on 1 January 2005.

The programme is divided into four action lines and the budget is divided along these lines:

1.  Fighting against illegal content (25-30% of the budget) by the means of hotlines. To ensure that the Programme is effective, hotlines are required in all Member States and candidate countries. Currently, hotlines exist in 13 of the 25 Member States.

On 12 November, the German Lower House (Bundestag) debated in plenary on the merits of individual filtering or state-ordered blocking of illegal and harmful content. Germany is the only country in Western Europe (besides Switzerland) were governmental blocking-orders were issued to providers to prevent internet users from accessing information deemed illegal or indecent. Over 80 internet providers in Nordrein-Westfalen were ordered early in 2002 by the district government of Dusseldorf to block access to 4 foreign websites with neo-nazi content. Meanwhile, 2 of the 4 websites have been dropped from the blocking-order, including the distasteful, but certainly not illegal website rotten.com. More recently, the anti-censorship activist Alvar Freude was brought to court by the same regional government of Dusseldorf for posting hyper-links to censored

The OpenNet Initiative has published a report on the diversity of filtering programs and their impact on international law, communications, and policy. The initiative is an ongoing research partnership by the Advanced Network Research Group of the University of Cambridge, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and the Berkman Center to monitor international Internet censorship

A starting point: legal implications of internet filtering (24.10.2004)
http://opennetinitiative.net/docs/Legal_Implications.pdf

On 11 October, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European parliament (LIBE) organised a hearing on the Safer Internet Plus programme, covering 50 million euro for the years 2005-2008. Learning from past discussions in the European Parliament on the effectivity of this funding, the Commission wrote a pre-evaluation of the action plan. Rapporteur Edith Mastenbroek (Dutch Labour party) wholeheartedly agreed with the commission in putting the main focus on end-user empowerment, as opposed to central filtering. She suggested one major alteration in the suggested spending; in stead of spending 16 to 23% on the development of filter software and software for hotlines, she suggested to move that budget to the action line of raising public awareness (already taking 43 to 50% of the funding). The Commission should only fund research into the performance and the transparency of filter software.

The district government of Dusseldorf, Germany is bringing the anti-censorship activist Alvar Freude to court. The hearing starts tomorrow, on 7 October 2004. Freude is accused of posting hyper-links to censored websites with radical right-wing content on his website and thus helping to promote the distribution of the materials. Freude on the other hand claims he only wants to make German censorship transparent.

The case dates back to a decision taken early in 2002 by the district government of Dusseldorf. They passed orders to more than 80 internet providers to block access from their users to 4 foreign websites.

Providers and civil rights groups united in protest against the directive, but lost 3 out of 4 court cases, confirming immediate enforceability of the orders. Meanwhile, 2 of the 4 websites have been dropped from the blocking-order (rotten.com, a distasteful but not radical right-wing website and front14.org).

7 out of 10 internet providers in the Netherlands remove a text by the famous Dutch author Multatuli (who died in 1887), without even looking at the webpage, or verifying the identity of the plaintiff. These are the results of an experiment conducted this summer by the Dutch EDRI-member Bits of Freedom about complaint procedures at ISPs.

Bits of Freedom picked 10 internet providers for the test, 3 free and 3 paid (dial-up) access providers, 3 hosting providers dedicated to business customers and 1 cable internet provider. A text was uploaded from Multatuli (pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker), dating from 1871. The text is about democracy, and begins with the story of the sheep. The sheep chase away a tyrant, only to find themselves in need of specialists to represent them, and they end up inviting the tyrant back, disguised as 'Specialist'. The text clearly states in the opening line that the work dates from 1871, and was reprinted in 1981. At the bottom of the text there is a line stating 'this works belongs to the public domain'. Since copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author, all works by Multatuli are in the public domain since 1957.