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Deutsch: Deutschlands Bundespräsident unterzeichnet Internetgesetz gegen seine...

Despite the fact that the German Government had decided not to apply the internet censorship law (Zugangserschwerungsgesetz) proposed by the former Government in April 2009, the new bill was signed on 17 February 2010 by German President Horst Köhler.

The president decided that the Access Impediment Law did not raise any significant concerns related to the compatibility with the German Constitution and that it was meant to fight online child pornography allowing the blocking of offensive web sites.

This is a delicate situation for the government which will need the opposition's

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Deutsch: Frankreichs Parlament verfolgt weiterhin sein Ziel das Internet zu zen...

On 16 February, the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, passed the first draft of the so-called Loppsi 2 bill allowing the authorities to control the Internet under the pretext of improving the citizens' security.

The new legislation deals not only with child pornography sites, but has in view a long blacklist of other types of websites that ISPs will have to block.

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Deutsch: Erstes Urteil im italienischen Strafverfahren gegen Google-Führungskr...

Today, 24 February 2010, the Court of Milan made public the decision in the criminal trial against four Google executives, charged of defamation and illegal personal data handling in relationship to the publication on the video sharing platform of a video containing act of bullyism against a person affected by the Down Syndrome.

The legal basis for the charges, following the prosecutor's theory of the case, was that those executives failed to exercise a pre-emptive control over the contents published by Google final users', thus allowing the infringement of the reputation of the concerned pers

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Deutsch: Frankreich/Dänemark: Sperren für Glücksspielseiten

An amendment to the draft law on the opening of the market of online gambling was introduced to the French Senate Commission for culture and communication, in order to give the administration the power to apply filters to gambling sites without a court order.

While initially, during the examination of the draft law in the National Assembly, the decision was that filtering non-homologated sites would be subject to a court order, the amendment wants to give ARJEL (the authority regulating online games), as it was intended initially, the power to order the blocking measures.

Hopefully, even if adopted by the Senate, t

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Deutsch: Italien: The Pirate Bay wieder zensuriert

Following the reversal by the Italian Court of Cassation of the appeal won on 24 September 2008 against the decision of the Italian court of August 2008 that ordered the seizure of The Pirate Bay (TPB) in Italy, TPB was once again censored in Italy.

The Italian Supreme Court has revised the case and has found that Italian ISPs can be obliged to censor their networks and block BitTorrent search sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. The Supreme Court decided that sites offering torrent files linking to copyrighted material are considered as engaged in criminal activity.

At the beginning of

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Deutsch: Französisches LOPPSI 2 Gesetz – Internet sperren oder nicht sperren

The members of the Law Commission of the French National Assembly have issued their first amendments to LOPPSI 2 draft law that is to be discussed in the Assembly starting with 9 February 2010.

If adopted as such, the law will oblige ISPs to block the access to the sites included on a list established by the French administration without any judicial control, under the pretext of the protection of children.

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Deutsch: Italien wünscht eine Lizenz für das Hochladen von Videos ins Interne...

The Italian Government intends to introduce a new decree that would require people who upload videos onto the Internet to get authorization from the Communications Ministry just like television broadcasters.

Article 4 of the respective decree, which is strongly pushed by Silvio Berlusconi, specifies that a ministerial authorisation is required for the dissemination over the Internet "of moving pictures, whether or not accompanied by sound." This will affect sites of newspapers, IPTV and mobile TV, as well as any person who wants to upload a video on a video-sharing website.

A press conference was he

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Deutsch: OSZE fordert die Türkei auf Gesetze für Internetsperren zu ändern

OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Media Freedom representative Miklos Haraszti asked the Turkish Government on 18 January to change their Internet law in order to observe OSCE commitments and other international standards protecting freedom of expression.

A survey commissioned by Haraszti's office, analyzing Turkey's Internet Law in force since 2007, has shown that based on the respective law, the Turkish authorities were able to block the access to Internet of about 3700 websites.