Laila Freivalds, the Swedish Foreign Minister resigned on 21 March after having been cornered by the press on her involvement in the closure on 9 February of a far-right party's website.

The Web site, which was planning to publish caricatures of Muhammad like those that led to deadly protests by Muslims all over the world, was contacted by a top Foreign Ministry official who said it should be closed for security reasons.

Although, in the beginning, the minister denied having known about the official's action and having exerted pressure on the hosting company, a later report from the ministry said she had been involved in the decision.

The minister told the media that the cartoons were "offensive to other peoples' religious beliefs" and admitted to the media that she was concerned

Michael Keith Smith, a former parliamentary candidate for the UK Independence Party has received £10,000 in damages in a defamation case occurred on the internet

Smith was a participant in a discussion on the Iraq war held on a discussion board run by Yahoo!. Tracy Williams, another participant in the discussion, posted under pseudonym series of defamatory remarks about Smith on an internet bulletin board calling him a "lard brain" a "Nazi", a "racist bigot" and a "nonce". She also alleged that he had sexually harassed a female co-worker.

Although Smith had obtained court orders in June 2004 that allowed him to identify the person behind the remarks, Williams continued the defamatory campaign in 2005. Smith sued her and Judge Alistair MacDuff considered the remarks clearly defamatory and awarded Smith £10,000 damages - £5,000

On 19 March 2006, date of the presidential elections in Belarus, the major online independent news resources (svaboda.org, charter97.org, belapan.com, ucpb.org, naviny.by, kozylin.com, zubr-belarus.com) were the targets of various types of attacks.

The Website of "Nasha Niva" newspaper was not available from Belarus on 18 March on the Internet. Other problems were spotted in accessing tut.by, a major Belarusian portal with about 60 000 visitors/day.

Also, Milinkievich's (candidate from Unified Democratic Forces) official website was unavailable for 2 days starting on 19 March. According with website administrators, they lost control over the server.

Charter97 press-centre websites were permanently attacked. Authorities not only used their usual techniques (IP address blocking, massive DoS attacks)

In a long awaited ruling, the Maritime and Commercial Court in Copenhagen has decided that so-called deep linking is legal in Denmark. The decision is expected to have a major impact on many Danish online-services and search engines.

Controversially, the Maritime and Commercial Court has decided to go against a prior verdict by a lower Danish court. In July 2002, the court ruled that the Danish company Newsbooster was violating copyright law and marketing law by using deep links to articles in Danish online-newspapers. Instead of linking to the main pages of the newspapers, Newsbooster was linking directly to the individual articles, thereby allowing readers to bypass the front pages. The newspapers demanded that the service be shut down - with success.

In the new case, the court has taken the opposite stance. This time, the

The Council of Europe Group of Specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society (CoE MC-S-IS) held its 4th meeting on 9-10 March in Strasbourg, with EDRI participating in its capacity of non governmental observer. Among the many issues on the agenda were:

- the analysis of answers to the questionnaire sent by the group to CoE member States on their implementation of the CoE Declaration of freedom of communication on the Internet (only 7 out of 46 answers received so far); -the review of the CoE Recommendation on media coverage of election campaigns taking into account new medias, the mapping of human rights issues and guidelines with regards to roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders; - the development of strategies promoting digital inclusion and Internet literacy;

During 6 January - 6 February 2006, e-belarus.org conducted a survey of Belarusian online media by selecting 10 very different websites of various types, as well as with different political attitudes. The selection was made on the basis of the average number of visitors per day.

The analysis of the 10 selected online news resources revealed that 58% of the total number of news is taken from national online and offline resources and 37% from foreign sources. 5% of the total number of news is presented without mentioning its sources. National press agencies cover 34% of the news, 38% news comes from foreign sources (out of which 27% from Russia), 8% of news is taken from each other and only 5% of the total number of news is original content.

The major sources for Belarusian online media are national press agencies

The Italian parliament has caused controversy by two new legislative acts. A newly adopted law against child abuse gives overly broad powers to the police, while a proposed new law on the protection of intellectual property gives too much leeway to organisations for collective rights management.

On 23 January 2006 the Italian Parliament approved a modification of Law 269/1998, in order to fight child pornography, The modified provisions give a very broad power to the police. The text of the act includes a series of vague terms and descriptions which may lead to subjective interpretation.

Art.14bis of the law introduces the National Centre that should check "incriminated" sites and individuals.

Under the law, the internet providers become investigators who are obliged to control and announce to the National Centre any company or individual who

A High Level Seminar on Racism and the Internet - the 4th Session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action took place in Geneva, during 16-17 January 2006.

Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, director and founder of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties prepared a background report for the seminar with the title "Stocktaking on efforts to combat racism on the Internet".

The report makes an attempt to evaluate the possibilities and challenges an Internet user faces in propagating and countering material with a racist content. It tries to provide an overview of the issues under debate, focusing on self-regulation and co-regulation initiatives to combat racism on the Internet.

The report finds that the States have yet to reach a political agreement on