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Deutsch: Polnischer Oberster Gerichtshof: Elektronische Presse muss registriert...

On 15 December 2010, in a cassation proceeding, the Polish Supreme Court decided that all electronic press in Poland must be registered.

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Deutsch: Das neue ungarische Mediengesetz ermöglicht Zensur

On 1 January 2011, a new Hungarian media law entered into force, giving the government the power to control the Internet, endangering the freedom of speech and journalism in general.

As Hungary took over the EU Presidency on 6 January 2011, in a context where there are strong attempts from various EU governments to censor the Internet, the Hungarian authorities started the year with a new law giving excessive powers and control to the government over the public media including Internet content.

According to the newly introduced law, all media must be registered and the licences may be suspended or withdrawn for b

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Deutsch: Neue Debatte über französisches Loppsi 2 Gesetz

The so-called Loppsi 2 draft law (loi d'orientation et de programmation pour la performance de la sécurité intérieure - law on guidelines and programming for the performance of internal security) is being discussed these days in the French General Assembly in second reading, after having been approved by the Senate in September 2010.

The National Assembly is continuing the long and controversial debate on the draft text which might allow the blocking, at the level of ISPs, of websites considered by the authorities as undesirable, without judiciary control and which may give the police authority to install spyware o

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Deutsch: Das Prinzip der Rechtsstaatlichkeit in den Händen der Privatwirtschaf...

Private-sector attempts to undermine and attack the ability of WikiLeaks to function on the Internet have attracted much attention. Their domain name (wikileaks.org) was was taken out of service by EveryDNS, their ability to collect funds was restricted by Paypal, Visa and Mastercard while Amazon deleted their website. When did we abandon the rule of law and replace it with summary justice meted out by private companies? How does it happen that private companies can punish a website that has never been convicted of a crime?

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Deutsch: Azeri Blogger freigelassen

After a long and continuous pressure from several civil society groups and European international organisations such as the European Parliament, the Presidency of the European Union, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, the US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the two Azeri bloggers arrested in 2009 on false pretences of hooliganism, have been finally released from prison.

A Baku court released Emin Milli on 18 November 2010, one day after his friend Adnan Hajizade's release.

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Deutsch: E-Commerce-Richtlinie: Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung und ordentli...

EDRi has responded to the public consultation of the European Commission on Electronic Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) asking for the revision of the European regime of intermediaries liability, in view of better guaranteeing the respect for fundamental rights and the due process of law application on the Internet.

This consultation, closed on 5 November 2010, aimed at assessing the implementation of the Directive in Member States, and at identifying limitations with the current text.

EDRi focuses its answer on the liability regime of the technical intermediaries set by Ar

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Deutsch: Ist YouTube in der Türkei wieder online?

After almost three years of blocking, Turkey has finally lifted its ban on YouTube.

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Deutsch: Dänische Steuerbehörde will Festplatten privater Unternehmen spiegel...

A new proposed law would allow the Danish tax authorities to simply mirror entire hard disks of companies without a court order and before they have a reason to suspect the company has engaged in unlawful activities.

The proposal adds the following two paragraphs to the law of tax auditing (unofficial translation):

"Paragraph. 6. Customs and tax administration can make identical electronic copies (mirrors) of the content of electronic media that falls under the control of the customs and tax administrations, and can take the copied material away for subsequent review.