Rapporteur Marielle De Sarnez (French, Liberal) of the European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education has released her opinion on the proposal of the European Commission to create a new Recommendation on the Protection of Minors and Human Dignity. The report deals with two issues; more liability for ISPs and the introduction of a legal right to reply.

According to De Sarnez "(...)businesses cannot escape their responsibilities under the pretext that parental control is needed to be exercised and governments have a duty to introduce rules that will protect the weakest members of society." That's why 'the liability of access providers needs to be established.' All access providers must create an effective and easy-to-use filter system for children. "Efficient filter technologies exist for the Internet and mobile phones. They are expensive

E-zine Heise reports that the Administrative Court of Cologne on 31 March 2005 has once more approved of an order to force ISPs to block 2 neo-nazi websites hosted in the US. The order was issued by the district government of Nordrhein-Westfalen in 2002 and aimed at 80 different providers in the region. The providers already saw 7 legal attempts fail to lift the order. Only 1 attempt, on 31 October 2002 at the administrative court of Minden, was successful, in allowing suspension of execution of the order pending full proceedings. A well-known critic of the blocking order, Alvar Freude, also lost his case on 7 October 2004, and was fined the equivalent amount of money of 120 days prison sentence. Freude appealed.

The blocking order is justified, according to the Cologne court and other

The Netherlands National Commission for Unesco has published Recommendations on human rights and Internet, following a conference held on 4 and 5 February 2005. The recommendation focusses on privacy, the right of freedom of expression and the right to communicate, including access to the vast cultural, educational and scientific heritage of mankind.

On privacy, the recommendation calls on States to "Acknowledge that privacy is an indispensable prerequisite to the right of freedom of expression and the right to communicate. Online as well as off-line, readers, listeners and viewers have a right to the same high level of privacy and anonymity. If online access to information is tracked and tied to detailed personal profiles, self-censorship is imminent and - more important still - the public debate and the rule of law are eroded."

In an important ruling in the McLibel case, the European Court of Human Rights has defended "the public’s right to criticise massive corporations whose business practices can affect people’s lives, health and the environment."

The McLibel case dates back to 1990 when McDonald's decided to file a libel case against 2 English people that were handing out critical leaflets in front of a branch in London. Helen Steel and Dave Morris didn't write the leaflet themselves but became the centre of a libel case which lasted 313 days - the longest trial of any kind in English legal history. In 1994 they were ordered to pay 60.000 UK pound in damages each, because they were unable to prove every allegation in the leaflet. In appeal, in 1997 the sentence was lowered to 40.000 UK pound each. Despite the fact that many allegations were proven to be true, no sanctions were ordered against McDonald's.

In preparation for the second phase of WSIS, in November 2005 in Tunis, Unesco has organised two conferences on the Internet and human rights.

On 3 and 4 February Unesco organised a special meeting on online freedom of expression inside of the Paris headquarters. Attended by over 300 delegates from countries all over the world, the conference addressed the applicability of media-law, the limits to freedom of expression, the right of reply, the right to access government information and models of self-regulation.

The director-general of Unesco, Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, kindly opened the conference with a strong speech in which he reminded everybody of the need to uphold the right to full freedom of expression, even in times of fear of terrorism. He stressed that this right does not distinguish between good or bad information, but is about the free flow of ideas, including for example racist speech, which should be debated in the open.

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, has published a 270 page cookbook with recipes on how to preserve the freedom of the Net. The Media Freedom Internet Cookbook aims to help users and governments fight "bad content", for example hate speech, without jeopardising freedom.

According to Haraszti "Regulatory activism can lead to suppression of freedom regardless of whether this censorship was intended or came as a consequence of ignorance. I intend to warn about the dangers over the Internet just as I do in the case of 'classic' censorship in the print press or the broadcast media."

The book is a result of major findings of the Second Internet Conference which was organized by the OSCE Media Representative in August 2004 in Amsterdam. The outcomes will be evaluated during the Third Amsterdam Internet Conference in 2005.

Members of the European Parliament have voted in favour of the EU's constitution today (12 January 2005), with a 500 to 137 majority (40 abstentions), setting the EU on a path toward more integration and a little bit more democracy. In the afternoon, the Constitution was celebrated with concerts, balloons and a festive debate involving Parliament President Josep Borrell and author Jeremy Rifkin. While the general tendency of the Constitution, as compared to present practice, is widely welcomed, critics say democratic standards in the Constitution are still far from being satisfactory and there is an inherent risk that the Constitution will freeze this situation for a long time. The vote is seen as being a blow to Constitution opponents in such countries as the UK and France, where the prognosed "no" vote in EU Constitution referenda is

The Council of Europe (46 member states) has issued a hotly debated recommendation on the right of reply on 15 December 2004. "Governments of the member states should examine and, if necessary, introduce in their domestic law or practice a right of reply or any other equivalent remedy, which allows a rapid correction of incorrect information in online or off-line media." "Anybody can claim a right to react to any information in the media presenting inaccurate facts about him or her and which affect his/her personal rights." The right is only limited in length (should not exceed the original article), should only 'correct facts' and should be provided in the same language as the original article. The replies must be 'given the same prominence', both in the publication as well as in any