So there's a new verb in Europe: to frattinise. It first appeared in German, soon after in French and in Italian, it may creep around in other languages. Or it may be replaced by another one, next time someone else jumps on the same hideous bandwagon.

On 10 September 2007 (quite deliberately, one day before the anniversary of "September Eleven") European Commissioner Franco Frattini declared to Reuters: "I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector... on how it may be possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism."

As far as I can tell, there wasn't much reporting of this statement in mainstream media. But there was immediate reaction online, starting with ALCEI's press release "Repression and censorship. The ghost is still around

A Polish computer programmer, Marek W, might go to prison for 3 years for having created a program that linked Polish President Lech Kaczynski's website to the word "kutas" meaning penis in Polish vulgar language.

Marek, charged for insulting the President, admitted he had created a so-called "Google bomb" in order to check out his abilities. He has written a software programme for what is known as "website positioning." Typing a certain word into a search engine automatically brings forth a certain website; in this case typing "kutas" in Google triggered the President's website.

Andrzej Holdys, a regional prosecutor stated: "If somebody uses a derogatory word to libel the head of state than it's a clear insult which violates the law" considering that the case had nothing to do with the freedom of speech.

A Turkish court from the eastern city of Sivas decided on 18 September 2007 to order the ISPs to block the access to YouTube, considering that one of the video hosted there insulted Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish army.

Anatolia news agency reported that the order "has been forwarded to the state regulatory body, the Telecommunications Board, to be put into effect." YouTube declared it was ready to cooperate with Turkish authorities to resolve the dispute.

The trial has been initiated by a citizen from Sivas, who complained to the Turkish prosecutors on that video content.

The decision triggered prompt reaction from Reporters Without Borders: "Blocking an entire website because of a few videos is a disproportionate

Belarus president Lukashenko claimed in a recent interview that on the Internet there was too much opposition to his views. As a response some groups of the Belarusian Internet community prepared a customized version of the Internet for their president.

Internet-community "Third Way" prepared a birthday present for Belarusian acting president A. Lukashenko - the most advanced version of the Internet - LuNet. The event, "Give Lukashenko his Lunet", that started on 30 August 2007, was intended to show how dangerous and absurd are Lukashenko's demands of control over the Internet in Belarus. Lunet consists of Lundex search engine, LuTube video service, LuJournal blog service and the most "honest" portal tut.lu.

"Internet surveillance may concern millions of Belarusians. That's why we

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Turkey blocked the access to all the blogs hosted at wordpress.com on 17 August 2007, after a Turkish court decided on this action by agreing with a law firm hired by Adnan Oktar, that claimed that several blogs on the wordpress platform were publishing allegedly defamatory and "unlawful" statements about their client.

Since 17 August 2007, over a million WordPress hosted blogs could have not been accessible in Turkey, and a standard message has been displayed instead: "Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C.Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance ".

Adnan Oktar's lawyers claimed that they had tried to contact wordpress.com

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On 13 July 2007, a French court has ruled against the French company DailyMotion, second world leader of video-sharing platforms after YouTube, in a counterfeit case. The legal action was initiated by the director, the producer, and the distributor of a movie put on-line by a user of the DailyMotion platform. The court decision is entirely based on the French law on the digital economy (LCEN), and not the copyright law (DADVSI). The LCEN provisions onISP liability are a direct transposition of the EU E-commerce Directive. This decision is likely to constitute a major turn in the legal qualification of web2.0 services.

The court acknowledges that DailyMotion is not a content provider as claimed

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In an unprecedented decision, the Court of First Instance in Bruxelles has order Scarlet, a Belgium ISP, to implement technical measures in order to prohibit its users to illegally download music files.

The decision comes after a complaint initiated in 2004 by Sabam (Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers) against the Belgium ISP Tiscali, now renamed as Scarlet. A first intermediary ruling of 26 November 2004 accepted the possibility for an ISP to disconnect customers if they violate copyrights, and block the access for all customers to websites offering file-sharing programs. But further technical clarifications were needed, so an expert was appointed in order to present its opinions.

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The Council of Europe (CoE) has definitely highly prioritised the broad ratification, all over the world, of its Convention on Cybercrime, opened to signatures since November 2001 and entered into force on 1 July 2004. As part of its efforts to achieve this goal, a conference on "Cooperation against cybercrime" was held in Strasbourg on 11-12 June 2007, to which EDRI was invited to participate with a presentation (some of the participants presentations are available on the conference website).

This conference was organized in the framework of the CoE Octopus programme against corruption and organised crime in Europe, three years after the 2004 venue on "The challenge of cybercrime" and two years after the joint CoE-OAS