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The European Parliament adopted on 12 December 2006, at its second reading, a recommendation on the protection of minors and human dignity and on the right of reply in relation to the competitiveness of the European audiovisual and online information services industry.

The right of reply in the online media has been heavily discussed also in the previous years, including a much contested 2004 Council of Europe Recommendation on the right of reply in the new media environment. In practice the recommendation has not been implemented in the member countries, but various human rights groups have expressed their serious concerns regarding its practical effects on the freedom of expression.

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On 13 December 2006, exactly one year after the presentation of the revised directive by the Commission, the European Parliament's Plenary voted on a report on the draft Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS) that was prepared by the Parliament's Committee for Culture and Education.

In December 2005, the Commission proposed a set of new rules for television regulation to bring it into line with new developments in audiovisual technology and advertising. The new directive will amend the 1989 "Television without Frontiers" Directive, which was last revised in 1997, and include, inter alia, new rules on advertising and the extension of the directive to more audiovisual services than just 'classic' on-air

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The Appeal Court in Paris has decided that the French ISPs need to block the access to website AAARGH, considered as revisionist by the court. This decision was made even though the judges admitted that the measures would be imperfect and the site would still be accessible through other means as well.

The action was started by a number of French anti-racist groups that have first asked three US-based hosting providers to shut down the website of AAARGH. But one of them refused to shut down the website and therefore the anti-racist NGOs continued their action in the French court.

The 2004 French law that implements the EU E-commerce Directive gives the possibility to the plaintiffs, after all the possible measures to convince

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A recent shock video published at the end of November on YouTube, the free video hosting service now owned by Google, has triggered extensive reactions in Italy. The video was showing a group of four Italian teenagers attacking a 17-year-old disabled boy in a classroom in Turin. The attackers also made a video of their actions that was posted on YouTube.

Although Google had deleted the movie as soon as they were informed about it, the Italian Police has opened a criminal proceeding against Google - the Italian subsidiary. The action included a police raid on the Milan offices of Google.

Google Italy has confirmed that the videos published by the users go online automatically and there is no editorial preventive filter from their part.

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The first global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was organized by United Nations in Athens between 30 October and 2 November 2006.

The forum has shown a strong and large opposition to Internet blocking and filtering, putting under pressure repressive governments such as China. The three sessions devoted to content regulation and control have been dominated by the advocates of anti-censorship and access to knowledge that have criticized the state control of Internet content.

Thus, Amnesty International publicly handed a pledge, called Irrepressible Info. that states: "I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and

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At the end of July 2006, the Office of the Hungarian Prime Minister released their legislative plans for the Autumn comprising the Act on classified information.

Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) have filed two requests inquiring about the details of the draft, but the PM’s Office refused to disclose anything about it.

Last time the Hungarian Government submitted the draft of a new Act on classified information (ACI) to the Parliament was in early December 2005 when the Parliament discussed it in an expedited procedure and completed its first reading within two weeks. Debate continued throughout January and the only obstacle was the government’s having not attached the Penal Code’s

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The public prosecutor's office of Konstanz, Germany raided, during the last weekend some computing centres and seized several servers that were running copies of TOR, a well known software used for the anonymisation of the Internet usage.

The action was related to a child pornography case, and, apparently, the IP addresses of the servers were found in a chat room where these kinds of images were traded. Those servers were probably configured as TOR Exit-Nodes.

No charges have been brought against any of the owners of the servers - at least for now. Moreover, according to one of the persons whose servers were seized, a prosecutor told him that it was legal to run TOR servers in

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The German anonymization program An.On, developed by the University of Dresden and the regional data protection authority of Schleswig Holstein (ULD), is enabling its users to surf anonymously via a Java-webproxy. The program has been heavily criticized by the Minister of Justice of the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein Uwe Döring, even though An.On is still being financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

Considering that combating terrorism has become a much more important objective than respecting privacy and the right to anonymity on the Internet, Mr. Doring said that "The spending of taxpayers' money on a project that makes it possible for terrorists and criminals of all kinds to