A Spanish gaming programmer may face up to one year prison charges for developing a video-game which makes fun of religious practices. 'Matanza Cofrade' is a video-game, a first person shooter Doom-like game in which the player shoots participants to the famous Holy Week procession. The participants are zombies and in the background, images of several religious brotherhoods from Sevilla are shown.

This game was supposed to be offered as a present with a CD of the Spanish Rock band "Narco" in November 2002, but when the brotherhoods heard about it, they started a lawsuit against it. In the end, the game was removed from the CD.

In a legal movement that it is becoming a classic when facing issues of freedom of expression, the programmer has been accused by the attorney of both offending religious feelings and of misuse of intellectual property,

The 27th international conference of data protection commissioners took place in Montreux/Switzerland from 13 to 15 September 2005. The meeting with the title "The protection of personal data and privacy in a globalised world: A universal right respecting diversities" saw several hundred data protection authorities (DPA) officials, industry, cyberrights groups and other stake-holders for three intense days of discussion. One big issue was the tenth anniversary of the EU's data protection directive from 1995. The assessment was mixed, though. There are still many differences in national laws and enforcement is weak. While the EU directive had a big impact on the globalisation of data protection legislation, this approach is hard to enforce on the border-less Internet. There is also a strategic rival emerging with the APEC privacy guidelines

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus (White Russia) apparently wasn't amused by some satirical animated cartoons about him. The Minsk office of the Public Prosecutor started criminal proceedings against 3 activists from the organisation Third Way 'for insulting the President'. Such behaviour can be punished with a maximum of 5 years prison sentence under article 367 of the Belarussian Criminal Code.

The secret police carried out raids on three apartments in Minsk and Grodno. The KGB confiscated at least 12 computers and material used to produce the cartoons. The website administrators were interrogated for 5 hours and the person suspected of creating the Flash animations was arrested, but later released.

The news source E-belarus reports about an interview given by one of the

ANEM, the Association of Independent Electronic Media in Serbia has issued an alarming statement about the lack of respect for press freedom in the country. ANEM "protests strongly at the re-emergence of unacceptable and irresponsible rhetoric in the public arena in Serbia" and "urges all democratic public and professional journalism and media associations to express solidarity with journalists and media who are subject to attacks and threats."

On 15 August 2005 Capital Investments Minister Velimir Ilic called the journalists from the renowned radio and television station B92 "sick and in need of a psychiatric clinic". When a B92 journalist attempted to ask him about his role in the withdrawal of charges against Marko Milosevic, the son of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, the media advisor

The long running legal fight between the German software company Nutzwerk (Leipzig) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII, best known for its extensive lobby against software patents) has culminated in the takedown of the FFII.org website on 1 August 2005. Technically, the website itself wasn't removed, but in a far more radical move, the German company Teamware removed the DNS-registration of the website, making it invisible to the rest of the world. Nutzwerk justified the takedown claim to Teamware by referring to an intermediate Hamburg court injunction that ordered FFII to remove some specific phrases and an insultory headline about Nutzwerk. The line was: 'Nutzwerk: Zuck und Nepp mit Softwarepatenten' (which roughly translates as 'gamble and fake with software patents').

In a similar move both the UK and Dutch governments have revealed plans against the justification and glorification of terrorist and other offences.

The UK proposal would authorise the Home secretary to deport any foreigner involved in extremist bookshops, centres, organisations and websites. The UK government plans to draw up a list of specific extremist websites, bookshops, centres, networks and particular organisations of concern. Active engagement with any of these will be a trigger for the home secretary to consider deportation. The UK proposal also makes justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere an offence. It is unclear if the list with extremist sites and bookshops would be made public or kept secret.

In a consultation document the active involvement in a website is described as "running a website". The document states that the UK government considers as extreme views: to foment terrorism or seek to provoke others to terrorist acts; justify or glorify terrorism; foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts; foster hatred which may lead to inter-community violence in the UK and advocate violence in furtherance of particular beliefs.

Alvar Freude, the German internet activist, was acquitted on all accounts in the appeal at the German penal State Court of Stuttgart on 15 June 2006. On his website, Freude documents many developments regarding filtering and blocking in Germany, including hyper-links to websites with radical right-wing content and a distasteful website. 4 of these sites had to be blocked by all ISPs in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen since 2002. Two of the sites have meanwhile been dropped from the blocking order.

The public prosecutor demanded the financial equivalent of 140 days of prison sentence for incitement of the masses, distributing propaganda from anti-constitutional organisations and representation of violence. According to the prosecutor, all hyper-links to radical right-wing websites were forbidden. But according to Freude's lawyer and to the

According to the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), severe threats to freedom of expression and freedom of the press may occur if the European Parliament adopts Article 6 of the draft Rome II Treaty as modified by the EP Legal Affairs Committee on 21 June 2005. The rapporteur was Diana Wallis, ALDE UK MEP. The EP Plenary vote in the first reading is scheduled for 6 July 2005. After the final adoption in the co-decision procedure, Rome II will determine the law applicable to non-contractual obligations, thus regulating judicial co-operation in civil and commercial matters.

But the Rome II draft also regulates the law applicable in case of violations of privacy and rights relating to the personality (Article 6, which applies e.g. in defamation cases). This article provides for