In other times, events as those taking place in Turkey now would have probably been much unknown to the rest of the world. But, over the past several years, social media has developed spectacularly and with it, its role in promoting, organizing and responding to protest and revolution.

The protests taking place in Turkey, organized initially in response to government plans to build a new mall on a green space in the centre, have turned into a demonstration against the government’s policies.

The fight between the Turkish government and the demonstrating citizens has not taken place only in the streets but also in the social media. A huge amount of tweets mentioning hashtags related to the protest have been sent.

Last week, European Digital Rights attended the second annual Stockholm Internet Forum which focused on two main themes: Internet Freedom and Security and Internet Freedom and Development. A novelty this year were the Unconference sessions.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Abgeordnete schlagen schon wieder einmal Netzsperren vor

It seems that some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) simply think that Internet gambling & web blocking must be added to all relevant documents. There have been blocking proposals under discussion at least three times in three years, after the previous proposals had been overwhelmingly rejected.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Europäische Finanzkoalition gegen den sexuellen Missbrauc...

In 2009, the Swedish Presidency of the European Union helped launch the “European Financial Coalition against Child Pornography”. The initiative was based on the pre-existing US “Financial Coalition against Child Pornography,” involved the same companies and addressed the same websites.

The Italian police imposed on 13 February 2013 the blocking of domain name 25.media.tumblr.com, which was actually one of the Amazon cloud computing server that contains all the images loaded on the tumblr website. The domain blocking was based on an alleged child pornography content on the site. This domain name blocking was lifted one day later.

Therefore, for two days, the Italian visitors could not see many images hosted on tumblr website, unless they knew how to add alternative name servers in their computer.

CNCPO (National Centre for the Fight against Online Pedopornography) is the Italian agency which manages a black list of websites deemed to host child pornographic material.

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Deutsch: Island: Innenministerium will Internetfilter einrichten

Ögmundur Jónasson, Iceland's Minister of Interior, intends to support an "anti-shield" against online pornography, that is Internet filters, to prevent Internet users from accessing certain sites.

Although Jónasson has until now promoted progressive legislation, he is now trying to introduce a law to stop the access to online pornographic images and videos by young people through computers, games consoles and smartphones, a legislation that would do great harm to freedom of expression and speech.

Iceland already has a l

After a year of working group meetings, the “CEO Coalition to make the Internet a better place for kids” produces its final documents on 4 February. The outcome of the project is a set of voluntary guidelines divided into five broad headings, ranging from “reporting tools” to “notice and takedown,” It is intended that this will be followed up by a meeting, in about six months, between Commissioner Kroes and the CEOs of the companies responsible. The meeting is designed to put pressure on the CEOs to fully implement the “voluntary” measures.

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Deutsch: Frankreich: US-Unternehmen soll französische Werte hochhalten

The French government seems to be very confused regarding questions of net neutrality and interference in networks. In the first two weeks of the new year, the new government managed to contradict itself by organising a round-table to discuss the importance of net neutrality on the one hand... and by asking a private corporation to interfere with communications on its network, on the other.