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Deutsch: ENDitrorial: IGF 2009 – das Forum ist die Message (und auch die Mass...

Internet Governance Forum or Internet Governance Fair? One might still wonder what the IGF acronym stands for, after the closing of its fourth annual meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, on 18 November 2009. As usual, the IGF featured a number (111 over 4 days!) of so-called multi-stakeholder panels and workshops, exhibition booths, launching events and other happenings.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Mobilisierung um ACTA zu stoppen

The negotiating partners of ACTA have announced that the next round of negotiations on ACTA will take place in Mexico in January and have promised to conclude the agreement in 2010. As the last edition of the EDRi-gram exposed, the Internet Provisions of ACTA lay down a global foundation for riposte graduée, a global DMCA, and increased authority for border guards to implement an information customs regime. This global secret copyright treaty seems unstoppable, but it stands on some fragile footing.

Not everyone was taken by surprise.

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Deutsch: Bankdatentransfer an die USA kurz vor dem Abbruch

The Swedish EU presidency and the United States government have finalized a draft agreement on bank data transfer for anti-terrorism purposes in mid-November. While the negotiations over the so-called "SWIFT agreement" were held exclusively behind closed doors, the draft has been leaked to the press and was published by the German blog netzpolitik.org (run by German EDRi member Netzwerk Neue Medien) on 11 November and later also by Wikileaks. It stirred a heavy debate in German-speaking media and made front-page news.

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Deutsch: Deklaration über globale Datenschutzstandards

The public voice coalition, where EDRi is also a member, gathered almost two hundred privacy experts, advocates, and governments officials from around the world for a civil society event in Madrid with the title "Global privacy standards for a Global world".

Held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Privacy and Data Protection Commissioners, the event was cybercasted, live blogged and tweted in order to be available to any Internet user interested in the privacy topics.

The conference had 5 different sessions, with two keynote speakers - Mr. Stavros Lambrinidis, Vice President, European Parliament and Mr.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: ACTA enthüllt, europäische Internet-Service-Provider dü...

Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement have started in Seoul, South Korea. This week's closed negotiations will focus on "enforcement in the digital environment." Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted by the US government. No text has been officially released but as Professor Michael Geist and IDG are reporting, leaks have surfaced. The leaks confirm everything that we feared about the secret ACTA negotiations.

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Deutsch: USA geben ihre unilaterale Aufsichtsbefugnisse über ICANN auf

In a movement welcomed by the European Commission, the US have announced they would become more open in Internet governance and give up their dominant position in the supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body created in 1998, responsible with the global management of the internet domain names and addresses.

A recent statement co-signed by US Communication and Information Administration and ICANN stated the "commitment to a multi-stakeholder, private sector-led, bottom-up policy development model for the domain name and addressing system (DNS)" and that "A private c

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Deutsch: Koalition der Zivilgesellschaft diskutiert globale Standards im Datens...

The Public Voice, the largest worldwide civil society coalition where EDRi is a an active member, will discuss "Global Privacy Standards in a Global World" during its conference on 3 November 2009 in Madrid, Spain, to be held in conjunction with the 31st Annual International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners.

Prominent advocates and experts from the academic, consumer, digital rights and labor communities will discuss with public officials and the business sector how to raise privacy awareness in the global community and how to promote civil society participation in decision

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Deutsch: EU beschuldigt China, das Internet zensieren zu wollen

On 25 June 2009, the European Commission condemned Chinese plans to enforce the instalment of the "Green Dam Youth Escort" filtering software on all PCs sold starting with 1 July.