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[IP] eDonkey to close
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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[tahoe-dev] erasure coding makes files more fragile, not less
by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Folks: I've heard many stories of people losing their files from a Tahoe-LAFS grid even though they had erasure coding parameters that provide massive fault tolerance such as 3-of-10 or 4-of-8. In fact, I think approximately 90% of all files that have ever been stored on a Tahoe-LAFS grid have died. (That's excluding all of the files of all of the customers of allmydata.com, which went out of business.) I've been musing on this, and I just read this excellent blog rant by the original author of VoldemortbJay Kreps. I came up with this provocative slogan (I know Brian loves my provocative slogans): "erasure coding makes files more fragile, not less". The idea behind that is that erasure coding lulls people into a false sense of security. If K=N=1, or even if K=1 and N=2 (which is the same fault tolerance as RAID-1), then people understand that they need to constantly monitor and repair problems as they arise. But if K=3 and N=10, then the beautiful combinatorial math tells you that your file has lots of "9's" of reliability. The beautiful combinatorial math lies! That's because it is assuming each server has some fixed and independent chance of surviving, which is always false. ("90%" is always a good number to use for that fixed and independent chance. Plug in "90%" into the beautiful combinatorial math with K=3 and N=10 and you'll get more "9's" than you can shake a stick at!) Here's the excellent blog rant: http://blog.empathybox.com/post/19574936361/getting-real-about-distributed-… """ Where is the flaw in the reasoning? b& The problem is the assumption that failures are independent. b& Surely no belief could possibly be more counter to our own experience or just common sense than believing that there is no correlation between failures of machines in a cluster. b& The actual reliability of your system depends largely on how bug free it is, how good you are at monitoring it, and how well you have protected against the myriad issues and problems it has. This isnbt any different from traditional systems, except that the new software is far less mature. """ Now let's apply this idea to my empirical observations about the longevity of files stored in Tahoe-LAFS. If almost all of the files that have ever been stored on Tahoe-LAFS have died, this implies one of two things: 1. The "reliability" of the storage servers must have been below K/N. I.e. if a file was stored with 3-of-10 encoding, but if each storage server had a 75% chance of dying, then the file would be *more* likely to die due to the erasure coding, rather than less likely to die, because a 75% chance of dying, a.k.a. a 25% chance of staying alive, is worse than the 30% number of shares required to recover the file. or 2. The behavior of storage servers must not have been *independent*. I.e. if enough of the servers failed *at once*, then the file died, even if the chance of any individual server failing was lower than the erasure coding ratio. My conclusion: if you care about the longevity of your files, forget about erasure coding and concentrate on monitoring. (Go ahead and use 3-of-10 because everyone does, and it adds a reasonably low level of storage overhead.) Not coincidentally, Least Authority Enterprises (our startup company) has been spending most of our engineering effort on monitoring, measurements, and fault detection for the last couple of months. Our service is still not functional enough to advertise it as non-alpha. This monitoring and operations engineering is a lot of work! Regards, Zooko P.S. But if you want to help us alpha-test our service, by all means let us know! :-) _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list tahoe-dev(a)tahoe-lafs.org http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [ZS] Quantified Prestige
by Michael Hrenka 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Monday, 10 September 2012 20:14:18 UTC+2, Mark Nuzzolilo wrote: > > On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 12:34 PM, Michael Hrenka <meta...(a)gmail.com<javascript:>> > wrote: > > I just finished the updated version of the documentation of my > > reputation/money system with the updated name Quantified Prestige > (formerly: > > Prestige Fluido). > > This is very good stuff, but it must be handled with care. Similar to > what I was working on last year. I'm obligated to ask a few tough > questions. > > 1) This prestige score appears to be linear. Any thoughts on having a > two-dimensional score, score as a function of context? > No, how should that work? Context isn't even 1-dimensional, but much more complicated. If you really want different contexts, then use a different Quantified Prestige Network for each context. Finally, I want to create a service that makes it very easy to set one up. Like what Wordpress did with blogs. You can get one on wordpress.com, or you can download the software from wordpress.org and host one on your own. > > 2) How do points get taken away? In my system, a negative vote from a > person would equal the inverse of about six positive votes from that > same person, *but* a reason would always have to be given for the > negative vote, and those reasons could themselves be voted on, thereby > lowering the vote's weight if it did in itself receive negative votes. > This heavily gives incentive to quality over quantity, and helps > ensure that the scores are themselves indicative of the quality of an > individual's contributions. > User can take Esteem Points they allocated to others away at any time without having to give a reason. Think about it like an unrestricted 100% money back guarantee. Of course, you can give a reason for giving and taking back EPs to give clear information, but that's option. I don't think it's a good idea to force people to rationalize their decisions. I had thought a long time about including negative scores in my system, but I decided against it, because it's hardly possible to prevent any serious abuse of such a system. I'm a proponent of positive reinforcement. Your system sounds interesting. Is there any incentive to vote on the votes of others, or even to have a look at them? Most people probably won't bother with meta-voting, unless they see it as some kind of game or hobby. Unless they are so fed up with systems that don't allow meta-voting that they see it as obligation to meta-vote where it's possible. But then such a system would become like Reddit on steroids. Anyway, if you have good ideas for modifying Quantified Prestige to a kind of "Qualified Prestige", you are free to develop that alternative concept. > > 3) Do two relatively equal political opponents have a widely different > amount of prestige points based on their popularity? How do you deal > with bias? > It's a bit much to expect tools to fix psychological problems. Every voting system is prone to biases. Is there any way that is proven to reduce the level of bias in such systems? > > 4) There are many different pieces to this system, including Esteem > Matrix, re-allocation, user circles, etc. Are each of these an > absolute necessary component to the system and have you completely > worked out why they are necessary? I would strongly suggest including > the "why" in the paper, and if you can't come up with a reason, > *consider* dropping the mechanic from the system. > Reallocation is necessary because otherwise a system with a fixed quota of points would stop working once all your points are used up. There is a fixed quota in order to prevent Prestige inflation. It might be possible to use a monthly quota instead and to weight points with how recently they were allocated. I haven't given such a system a lot of thought. Need to think about that option. Many parts of the system are just for convenience or security. They are optional in that sense. The core of the system is Esteem Point allocation (-> Esteem Matrix) that determines a Prestige Score for each user (-> Prestige Vector). Strictly speaking the Spread Factor isn't necessary, but it provides a strong incentive to give out points generously to many different users - and to get a meaningful representation of relative prestige. I really tried to make my system as simple as possible and as complex as necessary to avoid (almost) obvious failure modes of the system - and to make the system comfortable for the users, because otherwise it won't become popular. And a reputation/money system that's not popular isn't very useful. > > 5) Will ordinary users with low prestige find it easy or difficult to > "get in at the ground floor" and be able to use this system to help > build their prestige? Or will these methods only be more accessible > to people who already have large networks of people? > Having large networks of people may be useful, but their usefulness is limited if the Esteem Trust system is used, because it makes Esteem from an independent individual much more valuable than Esteem from a cluster of people that all know each other. The system should work fine if new uses do anything cool or useful that catches some attention by many users. It's supposed to encourage creating and doing publicly useful stuff. > > > This is really great. Just be careful because widespread adoption of > systems like this can easily have negative effects in addition to > positive effects. You want to reward people for "doing the right > thing" and not necessarily for doing what is popular. > In principle, I totally agree with you here. But how do you make a clear distinction between what's right and what's popular? Who is supposed to judge that? I mean, that's exactly the problem of democracy: It can't distinguish between good (and popular) parties and bad, but popular parties. However we haven't found a system yet that works better than democracy when nobody has the clear authority to judge what's good and what's bad. Anyway, thanks for the great feedback! It's really helpful! :) -- -- Zero State mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/DoctrineZero ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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CDR: Re: Inferno: The Constitution & Gun Rights: It's bigger than the 2nd alone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

> Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 17:04:05 -0500 > From: Sean Roach > Subject: CDR: Re: Inferno: The Constitution & Gun Rights: It's bigger than > the 2nd alone (fwd) > I was under the impression that that applied only to the army. I > thought that it was the intention to keep the navy going full time. There was no intent not to keep the army going full-time. The intent was to keep them from getting funding for long periods of time. In other words to make it harder for them to build a long-term command structure and weapons cache's (ie hide trusted soldiers away for rainy days). The army is intended for repelling invasions and insurrections, how often do those happen and how many last more than two years? If an actual invasion were to take place martial law would be invoked and the budget limits would be irrelevant at that point. But your point is true enough, and I was hoping somebody would bring this aspect up. It has some interesting points that don't seem to have been discussed. If you or others know of references I'd appreciate a vector. If we accept this view (which I have no problem with, it'd be hard for a Navy to invade Kansas - navies are self limiting) we are left with joint-contracts that involve the army and navy are unconstitutional. The other side would be that the navy must accept the more strict contractual limitations imposed on the army by the Constitution (what I actualy prefer because of new weapons systems). The intent is to keep the army on a short leash and to be able to simply bypass this by working with other arms of the military would be contrary to the Constitutions intent. One could transfer all the army soldiers to navy command and impliment an oppressive regime that way. I don't believe that was what was intended. It also raises the fact that since the Army Air Corp was turned into the Air Force (and this applies to the Navy and Marine Corp. as well) and no specific guidance was made via constitutional amendment as to its budget constraints it may be unconstitutional as currently implimented. Per the 10th there is nothing that gives Congress the authority to create new military forces outside of the army and navy. This should be done via a constitutional amendment. What we have today is a joint command that integrates all the various military forces under one umbrella. That joint command is an arm of the executive branch and not Congress, that may be unconstitutional itself. This raises the question of how seperate they are now and how congruent with the Constitution it actualy is. So, because of this the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon may be unconstitutional as currently implimented, or one could argue that all budgets must be limited to 2 years. Since the Constitution requires such budgets to be reviewed from time to time it implies that a full budget review of the military is required every two years. > However, it is not my place to say that they would have done this had > they had the chance. If you're a citizen of the US not only is it your place it's your duty. > Too many of our regulations are based on this belief that our founding > fathers would have seen things "my" way. I hate that the intent of the > constitution is ignored so blatently, but judging intent is like proving > opinion. To quote Jefferson: The earth belonds to the living, not the dead. The founding fathers wanted Americans to be free peoples pursuing their own individual life, liberty, and happiness. It is the duty of all Americans to protect those rights, even from other Americans. We have to decide the way *we* want to live and the kind of world our children will inheret. The kind of world our forefathers had and the decisions they made within that milieu are good for exemplary review only. Santyana is a good guide. If nothing else it is clear the fight is never over. No matter what we do our children will have to fight it all over again on different ground and different issues. We should at least give them a fighting chance. I don't believe for a moment the founding fathers felt they had created a once-and-for-all document. Nor do I believe they felt they were living at the epitome of technical and social achievement within the total history of mankind. Part of Jeffersons stock and trade was advancement, it's why he created the University of Virginia. They knew they couldn't predict the future and the best peoples to judge it were the ones living it. What they wanted was a mechanism that would guarantee that the poeple had a say and were not ruled over by a despot or tyranny. They hoped to give us a good chance at reaching our individual and social goals, what those goals were are for us to decide. We, not the founding fathers, have to live with them after all. They were, if nothing else, simply trying to be good parents (both to a country and to their biological children) and teach us basic principles. > I'd like to see something more like the swiss have. Everyone gets > basic. Perhaps as part of grades 11-12. Some few can stay on in > administrative roles throughout. And rely entirely on the draft, but > only for threats on home ground. I don't believe in the draft, it is coersion and is contrary to the tenets of the Constitution. An army made of people who don't *want* to fight for their country will lose. An army of peoples who will die rather than surrender their liberty will always win, even if they are all killed they deny the oppressor their goals. One does not give up democracy to protect democracy. This does point up one aspect of nuclear defence that has also seldome been discussed, nuclear suicide. Instead of pointing weapons at other countries one points the weapons (lot's of them) at oneself. If another country begins a nuclear conflict (which is inherently unwinnable) the Earth as we know it will become uninhabitable. Who wants to subject their peoples to the starvation and other privations that will bring on. It is better to kill oneself quickly and humanely and in that act poison the well so the enemy suffers at their own hands and in the worst way. I believe we will never get rid of nuclear weapons, and shouldn't, and this is the only sane way to control their use. [1]

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CDR: Re: An immediate way to end federal gun control? (fwd)
by Jim Choate 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

----- Forwarded message from Steve Schear -----

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CDR: Constitution, gun rights, et al (fwd)
by Jim Choate 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

----- Forwarded message from Sean Roach -----

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<nettime> Farah Stockman: Foreign activists stay covered online (Boston Globe)
by Patrice Riemens 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

bwo Michael Polman/ Antenna original at: http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2011/01/30/mass_groups_sof… (http://bit.ly/hbeghy) Foreign activists stay covered online Mass group's software helps avoid censorship A Walpole-based group of Internet activists known as Tor is playing a key role in helping Egyptians get around Internet censorship during this current political turmoil. Over the last three days, 120,000 people - most of them Egyptian - have downloaded Tor software, which helps activists protect their identity from surveillance by repressive regimes and get around blocked sites, according to Andrew Lewman, executive director of Tor, which provides the software for free. "We saw this huge amount of traffic,44 said Lewman, who said the group normally gets about 20,000 downloads a day worldwide. "We started looking at what was going on and the Internet service provider called us and said, `You are getting a huge amount of requests from Egypt.4 It didn4t look like an attack. It looked like a flash crowd.44 Most of the downloads occurred just before the Egyptian government ordered a near-total block of the Internet on Thursday night, but usage remains high through the few pathways to the Internet that remain. It is not the first time that Tor, which was formed in 2001 after two MIT students developed the anonymity software with a US Navy laboratory, has found itself in the center of a political uprising. Iranian activists downloaded its software en masse during the massive protests after the contested 2009 presidential elections, and China has repeatedly tried to block Tor downloads and denied visas to Tor4s activists, who have trained people from over 20 countries, including China, at workshops in Hong Kong and Europe. "It is plain that tools like Tor can be enormously value,44 said John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, who did a study of software that activists use, including Tor. Since only the most tech-savvy know how to use such software, "there is enormous value in trainings and they pay dividends in crisis moments like this,44 he said. The group, which employs about 10 people, runs a network of about 2,500 computers around the world manned by volunteers who help the anonymous network run. It registered as a nonprofit in 2006 and receives about 75 percent of its funding from the US government. About a year ago, Tor set up a special system just for Tunisian activists to protect their identity. So when the Tunisian government began monitoring Facebook pages and Twitter accounts during the recent uprising in Tunisia, "those people were already protected,44 Lewman said. In December 2009, Jacob Appelbaum, one of Tor4s main software developers, traveled to Cairo and held workshops for human rights activists on how to use the software to avoid surveillance on the Internet. The workshop appears to have paid off. As protests swelled in Egypt in recent days, so many people rushed to download Tor that one of its servers crashed on Thursday. They managed to keep their service up and running, but the downloads from Egypt plummeted Thursday night after the government apparently ordered a near-total block on Internet service. An estimated 91 percent of routes to the Internet in Egypt were down in a matter of hours, according to Andree Toonk, the Dutch founder and lead developer of BGPMon.net, which monitors the Internet and routing. But a few paths to the Internet have remained, and those who use them are continuing to use Tor, creating a spike in use despite the near-blackout in online communication. One Internet service provider, a company called Noor, was left unaffected perhaps because it services banks or the Egyptian stock market, Toonk said. That means that it is probably being closely scrutinized by the Egyptian intelligence service, making anonymity software all the more crucial, Tor activists said. "People in Egypt right now that are using the Internet really need to cover their tracks,44 said Appelbaum by telephone from Seattle. "Let4s pretend that the government doesn4t fall. . . . We don4t know if they have analysts working in real time to try to find activists, and we are trying to make sure that people have access to Tor, so that people aren4t hunted down in the streets.44 Appelbaum, who also works with WikiLeaks, suggested that the Internet activists in Egypt who are using Tor to conceal their identities are not merely organizing meetings in the streets, but may also be engaging in on-line resistance activities, such as disrupting the Egyptian stock market or banking activities. "One of the ways to hit the Egyptian government where it hurts . . . is to target the stock exchange, knock it off line or disrupt its activities, as a method of protest,44 he said. He said he is not involved in such activities, but that he witnessed online discussions among Egyptian activists talking about taking such actions. Appelbaum is also part of a separate group of activists that is trying to establish a satellite link to Egypt. Steven A. Cook, a specialist on democracy movements in the Middle East who just returned from Cairo, said that the Egyptian government4s unprecedented attempt to shut off the Internet had done little to quell the protests. "Shutting off the Internet has done nothing to prevent the world from seeing what is going on,44 he said. "It didn4t matter anymore because people were coming out into the streets regardless.44 # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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EDRi-gram newsletter - Number 9.4, 23 February 2011
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRi-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 9.4, 23 February 2011 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. Hungary amends its controversial Media Law 2. EESC condemns body scanners as a breach of fundamental rights 3. The French supreme court recognizes hosting status of Web 2.0 services 4. The US pressures the EU to pass ACTA before the end of 2011 5. German law on Internet blocking challenged in Constitutional Court 6. Polish civil society stirs up debate on Internet freedom 7. France: Loppsi 2 adopted - Internet filtering without court order 8. Is the EU going to have a new common patent law? 9. European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 10. ENDitorial: Internet blocking - EP opts for leadership over populism 11. Recommended Action 12. Recommended Reading 13. Agenda 14. About ============================================================ 1. Hungary amends its controversial Media Law ============================================================ As a result of the concern expressed by the European Commission and following the meetings with the Commission's experts on 7 and 15 February 2011, the Hungarian authorities have decided to amend their new controversial media legislation. The main issues of concern were related to four issues: 1. The disproportionate application of rules on balanced information due to the lack of limiting criteria, which was considered a breach of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS), the EU Treaty rules on the establishment and provision of services and of Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights concerning the fundamental freedom of expression and information. The amendment brought by the Hungarian government is that requirements regarding balanced information will be limited to broadcasting, being no longer applied for on-demand media services. 2. The application of fines to broadcasters legally established and authorised in other Member States which could breach the "country of origin" principle established by the AVMS Directive, according to which, audiovisual media service providers are subject to the regulations in their country of origin only. The Hungarian authorities agreed to amend this by removing the ability to fine legally established broadcasters in other EU countries. 3. The rules on registration and authorisation of media service providers which apply to on-demand media services, press products and ancillary media services could imply that they are required to register before they are allowed to provide services in Hungary and are thus subject to an authorisation scheme. These provisions could create an unjustified restriction of the Treaty rules on freedom of establishment. The amendment agreed upon clarifies that on-demand audiovisual media service providers, media product publishers and ancillary media service providers would have to register within 60 days after having begun providing their services, meaning that these providers established in Hungary and in other Member States would no longer be subject to prior authorisation by the Hungarian authorities. 4. The law dictated that media content may not "cause offence", even by implication, to individuals, minorities or majorities and which apply to all media content providers, including those established in other EU countries. These provisions have been limited, for all media content providers, to situations of incitement to hatred or discrimination. "I am very pleased that the Hungarian authorities have agreed to amend their Media Law to ensure that it complies with the aspects of EU law that we have raised, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights", stated Neelie Kroes, EC Vice-President and European Digital Agenda Commissioner who added that the European Commission will continue to closely monitor the adoption and implementation of the amendments. However, the opponents of the Hungarian media law are still sceptical and the debate in the European Parliament on 16 February also raised issues that had not been addressed by of the Hungarian authorities, such as the political control over the country's media authority. According to Martin Schulz EMP (Germany), the Socialists & Democrats group leader, "At first glance, a series of changes, some of technical nature have taken place. But other important matters, such as the composition of Media Council, are outstanding. (...) We still need to analyse the text carefully. Media freedom is an issue of central importance to the S&D group and we will do everything in our power to protect it." During the meeting of the European Parliament's group leaders (with exception of the EPP) on 17 February, the decision was taken to postpone the vote on the Hungarian media law but not withdraw a resolution on the matter. "Whilst it is a positive sign that the Hungarian Government have indicated a willingness to modify the four areas of concern outlined by the Commission, Liberals and Democrats remain concerned about other aspects of the Hungarian law which place huge powers of censorship in the hands of governing party appointees and reveal a lack of adequate protection for journalists' sources as well as insufficient provision for judicial review or appeal," said Renate Weber (PNL, Romania) ALDE coordinator in the Civil Liberties committee and spokesperson on the Hungarian media law who added that the Hungarian Government "should consider a more fundamental overhaul of the law in line with the recommendations of the OSCE." Media: Commission Vice-President Kroes welcomes amendments to Hungarian Media Law (16.02.2011) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/11/89&format=H… Brussels happy with Hungary's pledges on media law (17.02.2011) http://www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/brussels-happy-hungarys-pledges-media-… Press Release Changes by Hungarian Parliament to media law must be closely monitored (17.02.2011) http://www.alde.eu/press/press-and-release-news/press-release/article/chang… Hungarian media law: Proposed amendments ignore core provisions restricting media freedom (16.02.2011) http://www.greens-efa.eu/cms/pressreleases/dok/371/371430.hungarian_media_l… EDRi-gram: EU institutions want clarifications form Hungary on its media legislation (26.01.2011) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.2/hungary-media-legislation-2010 ============================================================ 2. EESC condemns body scanners as a breach of fundamental rights ============================================================ On 16 February 2011, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) issued its opinion on the use of body scanners in EU airports. The EESC has opposed the eventual adoption of any measures that would introduce body scanners on an EU-wide level, and feel that the Commission Communication on the use of security scanners does not respect three basic criteria: necessity, proportionality and legality. The document also criticises the Commission for changing the term "body scanners" to "security scanners", and outlines four central critiques with regard to the Commission Communication, namely, proportionality, fundamental rights, health risks and passenger rights . The document urges the Commission to produce a thorough proportionality test in order to determine the necessity of their implementation versus alternative measures. The EESC suggests that the Commission seriously consider alternatives and that it might be better to wait for more precise and less intrusive technology which can recognise security hazards. The EESC objects to the infringement of fundamental rights as a trade-off for public security. The costs to fundamental rights are three fold: personal privacy, data privacy and the right to human dignity. To further underline the inherent risks, the document cites a case in a Florida airport where 35 000 naked scans were recorded by officers and distributed on the Internet. As there exists no code of best practices or conclusive proof that these scanners do not pose health risks to individuals, the EESC requests that the Commission provide a thorough scientific examination proving that passengers and personnel who frequently fly will not be exposed to any health risks. The Committee also reminded the Commission that its Communication did not include guarantees of effective recourse for passengers and personnel undergoing the scans, and also failed to include guarantees that passengers will not obliged to undergo body scanning, ensuring individuals reserve the right to 'opt out' while not suffering longer wait times, more intrusive pat-downs, or be prevented from flying. Body scanners are currently in a trial period in the EU, where approximately 5 or 6 Member States have deployed the technology, including the UK, Finland, the Netherlands, France and Italy (according to a press release from 15 June 2010). The Commission is convinced that a more harmonised approach to body scanners is needed throughout the EU, thus it is likely that an EU legal framework on the use of "security scanners" at EU airports will be produced sometime in the near future. EESC Opinion on Use of Security Scanners at EU airports (16-17.02.2011) http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.opinions.15111 Body scanners? Not yet, says the EESC (17.02.2011) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=CES/11/20&format=HT… Commission communication on body scanners (15.06.2010) http://ec.europa.eu/transport/air/security/doc/com2010_311_security_scanner… Commission Q&A on "security scanners" (15.06.2010) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/261&format=… EU aviation security FAQ (15.02.2010) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/34 Technologies for the Use of Images: Automated Processes of Identification, Behavioural Analysis and Risk Detection Control at the Airports by Douwe Korff (06.2010) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1673772 Presentation by Douwe Korff (EDRi-member FIPR), at EESC Hearing "Use of Security Scanners at EU Airports" (11.01.2011) http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/korff_20110111_security-scanners.p… (Contribution by Raegan MacDonald - EDRi) ============================================================ 3. The French supreme court recognizes hosting status of Web 2.0 services ============================================================ On 17 February 2011 the French Court of Cassation recognized the hosting status of Dailymotion and Fuzz.fr. The court also confirmed, in relation to the Amen website case, that the judges had to verify that the content withdrawal requests observed the requirements of LCEN (loi pour la confiance dans l'iconomie numirique - French implementation of the EU E-commerce Directive) before condemning a hosting site that had not withdrawn promptly the notified content. The decisions of the Court of Cassation establish clearly the boundary between a content hosting site and a web service editor. In the Dailymotion case, it comes to confirm the decision of the French Court of Appeal of May 2009 which overturned a 2007 court decision that considered the hosting site liable for the content posted online on its platform. Moreover, the site had responded immediately after having been notified that it was hosting illegal content. The Court of Cassation also overturned the decision against Fuzz.fr in the case introduced by actor Olivier Martinez. In 2008, a French court decided that the owner of the website had an editorial responsibility, even if the website was a digg-like service (where the users can vote which news comes on first) and forced him to pay 1000 euro in damages for infringing the actor's privacy and an additional 1500 euro in legal fees. The Court of Cassation considered fuzz.fr a hosting site in terms of LCEN and therefore not liable for the content posted on it. An important clarification in relation both to Dailymotion and the Amen hosting site is the necessity to correctly formulate the requests for content withdrawal by taking all actions stipulated by the law. According to LCEN, the request to withdraw content must cover a series of elements including the notification date, the identification data of the notifying person (either natural or legal), the identification data of the addressee, the description of the litigious facts and precise location, the reasons for the withdrawal, including legal basis and justification, , a copy of the correspondence addressed to the author or editor of the litigious actions asking for their interruption, withdrawal or modification, or the justification of the fact that the author or editor could not be contacted. The subsidiarity principle is thus observed, meaning that a hosting site cannot be required to withdraw content before proving that the author of the content has been first contacted and required to withdraw the respective content. This could be the end of mass withdrawals of files without any previous procedure. However, the Legal Commission of the Senate seems to want to change the rules and on 15 February 2011 it proposed the creation of a new status between hoster and editor that will have filtering and surveillance obligations. Dailymotion and Fuzz recognised as hosters by the Cassation Court (only in French, 17.02.2011) http://www.01net.com/www.01net.com/editorial/528466/dailymotion-et-fuzz-rec… The Cassation Court saves Fuzz.fr service as well (only in French, 18.02.2011) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/18104-la-cour-de-cassation-sauve-aussi-le-… The Cassation Court protects the hosting status of Dailymotion. Thanks Hadopi ? (only in French, 17.02.2011) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/18099-la-cour-de-cassation-protege-le-stat… The assignees will not be able to withdraw mass contents (only in French, 17.02.2011) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/18098-les-ayants-droit-ne-pourront-plus-fa… The Senate proposes the creation of web service editor status (only in French, (16.02.2011) http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/statut-d-editeur-de-services-w… EDRi-gram: French courts give clear decisions for hosted content (20.05.2009) http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.10/france-decisions-hosting ============================================================ 4. The US pressures the EU to pass ACTA before the end of 2011 ============================================================ The US government has expressed its eagerness to see ACTA passed by the European Parliament this year. The controversial treaty allows governments to "order an online service provider to disclose (...) information sufficient to identify a subscriber whose account was allegedly used for infringement (...) of trademark or copyright or related rights infringement." Pressures from the US are expected to increase in the next months, having in view that there is the possibility that the European Parliament strikes down the agreement which means that talks would start again from the beginning. Based on a recent study issued by legal informatics experts from the German University in Hannover, ACTA raises a series of problems in complying with EU legislation and therefore the report advises MEPs to strike the act down or significantly change it. Hence, four MEPs sent on 15 February 2011 written questions to the EU Commission asking whether it was aware of the negative legal opinion and how it intended to deal with it. One of the issues raised by the MEPs was the different formulations on the level of damages for intellectual property infringements. Another aspect is related to how the new measures targeting counterfeit products, but also copyright and trademark infringements, will avoid impeding the legal movement of medicines. The atmosphere is already tense as recently, La Quadrature du Net has obtained from WikiLeaks exclusive access to diplomatic cables revealing pressure put by the US government on several European governments, especially in Spain, for the adoption of harsh copyright enforcement laws. The US Embassy cables refer to the EU Telecoms Package in the context of copyright, expressing its approval for cutting off Internet access without the necessity of a court order, as well as for the French three-strikes system and similar measures adopted in the UK. They also show the main role of the US in the initiation of ACTA, the stakes involved, the debates related to the participation of developing countries, as well as the evolution of the position of the European Union during the negotiations. Although the EU Commission has strongly criticised ACTA, several EU national governments have negotiated the treaty behind closed doors. On the other hand, the European Parliament has, in its turn, concluded a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea that is not far off from ACTA, including strong provisions on intellectual property rights protection. The FTA with Korea, which will come into effect on 1 July 2011, includes, just like ACTA, excessive criminal liability provisions for online intellectual property infringements. As the rapporteur for the Industry Committee of the Parliament, Daniel Caspary pointed out, the level of IP protection standards in the EU-Korea FTA includes not only copyright, related rights and trademarks, but also designs, services marks, layout designs of integrated circuits, geographical indications, plant varieties and the "protection of undisclosed information". The treaty stipulates other measures including searches and seizures at the request of rights holders and gives broadcasters the right to prohibit re-broadcasting, fixation, and communication to the public of their TV broadcasts for a fee. According to Green party member Jan Philipp Albrecht, the FTA is similar to ACTA as the information about the provisions of the agreement were kept secret before the it was signed by the parties involved. US keen for EU to adopt controversial anti-counterfeiting treaty (17.02.2011) http://euobserver.com/9/31827/?rk=1 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (3.12.2010) http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/Final-ACTA-text-following-legal-verificat… Stronger IP Rights In EU-Korea FTA: Precedent For Future FTAs? (20.02.2011) http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/02/20/stronger-ip-rights-granted-in-eu-… WikiLeaks Cables Shine Light on ACTA History (3.02.2010) http://www.laquadrature.net/en/wikileaks-cables-shine-light-on-acta-history Wikileaks publishes Acta cables (4.02.2011) http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/wikileaks-pub… Opinion of European Academics on ACTA (11.02.2011) http://www.iri.uni-hannover.de/tl_files/pdf/ACTA_opinion_110211_DH2.pdf EDRi-gram: ENDitorial: ACTA endgame - The devil is in the detail (8.09.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.17/acta-devil--in-details ============================================================ 5. German law on Internet blocking challenged in Constitutional Court ============================================================ On 22 February 2011 the German Working Group against Internet Blocking and Censorship (AK Zensur) submitted their complaint against the German law on Internet blocking to Germany's Constitutional Court. The law is directed against online child abuse material and had come into force on 23 February 2010, setting a one-year deadline for the complaint. AK Zensur and many others had fiercely opposed the law and announced that a complaint would be filed when the law was enacted by Parliament in June 2009. An online petition against the law collected 134 000 signatures in May and June, the highest number ever achieved at the German Parliament's online petitions system. A curious situation emerged when the government changed after the elections in September 2009, taking the liberal party FDP into power in a coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU. The FDP had opposed the blocking law in their election campaign, and before the law came into force, it was agreed that it would not be fully implemented. In a legally dubious move, a "non-application directive" by the Interior minister stipulated that initially, only take-down was to be attempted, and the governing parties agreed that a review would be held about a year later. This created something of a legal absurdity as the consequences of the law are not fully felt at the moment when the deadline to complain is expiring. But AK Zensur and its lawyers are confident that even now, many aspects of the law are in clear violation of the German Constitution, and several experts had voiced similar concerns at a parliamentary hearing before the law was enacted. While political support for the ill-fated law has widely diminished, the governing parties have not found the will to abolish it in a new Parliamentary act. AK Zensur is hopeful that with its complaint, it will be able to do the politicians' homework for them. A website collecting signatures to support the complaint in the political debate will be started soon. German press release: German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against censorship law (only in German, 23.02.2011) http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/verfassungsbeschwerde.html German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against censorship law (23.02.2011) http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/constitutional-complaint.html EDRi-gram: Germany's President signs an Internet bill against his own government (24.02.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/german-president-adopts-internet-chi… (Contribution by Sebastian Lisken) ============================================================ 6. Polish civil society stirs up debate on Internet freedom ============================================================ The Polish chapter in the European debate on whether Internet blocking can be conceived as a measure in fighting the dissemination of child abuse images has finally been opened. This is due to the quite successful campaign that EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation, supported by the open source movement and Internet Society Poland, has been running over last few weeks. It has long been unclear what position the government will take with regard to the Directive on combating sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. The Polish representative in the Council refrained from taking a firm standpoint, which made us believe that the government - mindful of civil society's likely outrage - is playing hide and seek, hoping that the Directive will be adopted with the silent approval of Poland. Provoked by this game, back in November, we managed to trigger some interest in this topic in two leading daily newspapers. Right after the first article describing the alleged tactic of the Polish government was published, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Justice confirmed that the government "of course, supports the Directive", including the concept of obligatory Internet blocking. This position was made very clear at the JHA meeting on 3 December 2010. To us it clearly meant that the government was trying to do some policy laundering. Almost exactly a year ago, - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a public debate with NGOs and Internet activists, acknowledged that blocking Internet sites is a flawed measure and should not be applied. Moreover, he promised that any future plans to introduce legal measures affecting Internet freedom would involve consultation with civil society. The present policy and the way it has been carried out so far clearly contradicts both promises. In an attempt to draw more attention to what is happening in Brussels with the support of our government, Panoptykon organised a public debate under the auspices of Polish Ombudsman, Prof. Irena Lipowicz which took place on 10 February 2011. The discussion panel was composed of representatives of the Ministry of Justice and four foundations representing both sides of the debate: Panoptykon, Kidprotect.pl, Safe Cyberspace and Nobody's Children. The audience consisted mainly of journalists, academic society representatives and technologically minded individuals. While Panoptykon argued that there was no collision between protecting children and Internet freedom because child abuse images can be effectively removed and therefore do not need to be blocked, our opponents claimed the opposite, on the grounds that international cooperation did not function well enough. The debate revolved around the following issues: what are the technical possibilities of removing illegal content; how to ensure both fast reaction and due process; what are the challenges of international cooperation; how can we prove that blocking tends to be used instead of and not in addition to fighting crimes against children; how blocking can disturb pending police investigations; how big the problem of child abuse images on-line really is; and what role can the Internet community play in addressing the problem. The Government's representative, Tomasz Darkowski, argued in favour of web blocking. Mr Darkowski stressed that the Directive should, in the first place, prevent Internet users from accidental and unwanted contact with child abuse images. He also expressed a strong belief that web blocking would remain strictly to child abuse images and there were no reasons to worry about possibilities of extending blocking to other types of content. This claim is all the more astonishing when one can already hear some politicians suggesting that hate speech and illegal gambling sites should be blocked. Polish experience clearly shows that it does not take a lot to change an existing law, especially in order to make it more radical. In the end, the Ombudsman had a voice. She expressed her astonishment with the hot atmosphere of the meeting caused by the huge societal interest in the issue of website blocking. Prof. Lipowicz called in for more evidence and analysis to support our claims. It was also clear that further discussions are needed - first to explain the technical aspects of blocking and the second to analyse the risk of extending blocking to other types of "unwanted" content. The office of the Ombudsman is committed to helping us continue the debate. In the meantime, we are collecting evidence and analyses requested by the Ombudsman (the action called "Respond the Ombudsman") and preparing an electronic publication that will summarise the debate. It will be published on 10 March 2011. Finally, together with five other organisations, Panoptykon has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for a meeting "a year after". We want a serious discussion on the future of Internet freedom in Poland, which seems threatened not only by the blocking proposal. There are at least four other controversial and pending areas of regulation, which need to be explored: data retention, content liability, nonlinear audiovisual services and the implementation of the Telecoms Package. We hope that the Prime Minister will accept our invitation and a working meeting with the government will happen before 15 March. With regard to Internet blocking, we hope to hear from the Prime Minister the same words we heard from Woody Allen's character, quantum physics genius Boris Yellnikoff: "However, as only a great mind can do, I've reassessed... my... position, and uh, changed my mind." Open letter of Polish NGOs to the Prime Minister(only in Polish) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/rok-po-nadal-chcemy-rozmawia-na-temat-wol… Report on the position of Polish government in the Council (only in Polish, 03.12.2010) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/polska-popiera-dyrektyw-otwieraj-c-drog-d… Reports from the public debate on Internet blocking (+video)(only in Polish) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/relacje-z-debaty-blokowanie-stron-interne… Action "Respond the Ombudsman" (only in Polish) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/odpowiadamy-rzecznik-praw-obywatelskich-p… (Contribution by Katarzyna Szymielewicz - EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation, Poland) ============================================================ 7. France: Loppsi 2 adopted - Internet filtering without court order ============================================================ The French so-called Loppsi 2 draft law was adopted on 8 February 2011 by the National Assembly as well as by the Senate without modifications, thus allowing for the blocking of Internet access of a site deemed as having "obvious" child pornographic content, without a court order. The text is challenged by the Constitutional Court that will to decide whether the new provisions are constitutional or not. The draft law also allows for the installation of spyware by the police and reinforces video-surveillance by the use of electronic bracelets. Following its adoption, the opposition has filed an appeal against the law to the Constitutional Council, showing concerns that the draft law gives authorities "obvious inappropriate means" without "providing enough guarantees against the eventual damages to the freedom of expression". La Quadrature du Net has recently sent a memo to the Council asking for the rejection of the Internet filtering as being against the Constitution, inefficient and disproportionate. The group believes the law is a Trojan horse which, under false pretences, will legitimise Internet censorship. There will be no control over the way the filtering techniques will be set up and, as the blacklist of websites to be filtered will be kept secret, it will also be impossible to file complaints against filtering actions. CFE-CGC professional unions as well as Unsa-Tilicoms union from France Tilicom-Orange believe this is "a festival of incompetence, where, in the name of overall security, this mixing-all text undermines fundamental principles, especially in relation to the Internet, with the announced blocking of the sites in the name of the fight against child pornography". The opposition refers Loppsi 2 to the Constitutional Council (only in French, 15.02.2011) http://www.01net.com/www.01net.com/editorial/528388/lopposition-saisit-le-c… French LOPPSI Bill Adopted: The Internet under Control? (9.02.2011) http://www.laquadrature.net/en/french-loppsi-bill-adopted-the-internet-unde… The administrative filtering of the net is contrary to the French Constitution (only in French, 02.2011) http://www.laquadrature.net/files/20110214_La%20Quadrature%20du%20Net_Amicu… EDRi-gram: French law Loppsi 2 adopted by the General Assembly (12.01.2011) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.1/loppsi-2-adopted-assembly ============================================================ 8. Is the EU going to have a new common patent law? ============================================================ Based on a recommendation of the Committee on Legal Affairs, the European Parliament approved on 15 February 2011 the use of the enhanced co-operation procedure to create a unitary patent system in the EU, following the request made by 12 Member States in December 2010. Presently, there are national patents coexisting with a European patent in a complicated and fragmented system which implies that the patent holders must choose the countries where they want patent protection. Also, Member States may impose additional requirements and the European patents are only enforced by national laws. The expenses involved are also very high because the current system requires the translation into the official language of every country in which patent protection is sought. According to the European Commission, a European patent validated in 13 countries can cost up to 18 000 euro, more than half of which on translation fees. Attempts have been made during the last year to get a unified system but they have failed mostly due to translation issues. In 2010, Spain and Italy raised objections to the EU plans to allow EU patents to be printed in any of the three EU official languages: English, French or German. The enhanced co-operation procedure allows a group of EU nations to use EU government bodies to create a new system when unanimous agreement cannot be found. Other countries can opt-in to the new rules later on. Under the Lisbon Treaty a minimum of nine Member States is enough for this procedure. The Member States, having initiated the proposal, believe a unitary patent system in EU will make things cheaper and easier, will ensure equal access to all inventors within the EU and will simplify the handling of infringements. . The enhanced co-operation proposal is still to be examined by the Competitiveness Council on 10 March 2011. If approved by the Council as well, the Commission will have to present two proposals, one on the language regime (consultation procedure) and the other establishing the single patent (co-decision procedure). However, a key legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is expected at the end of this month regarding the proposed "enhanced cooperation". According to documents published until now, the Court might find the proposal in conflict with the EU treaties, which will delay the process and require changes to the proposal. Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has expressed concerns that the European Parliament might lose its legislative competence regarding patents, which will be controlled by the European Patent Organisation (EPO). A conflict of interest would then be created, the EPO being responsible both for awarding patents and for defining what is patentable. FSFE also believes that "software patents hurt innovation and are an unnecessary burden on European software developers. (...) Legislators need to take charge and make sure the patent system contributes to the public good. As the European Patent Organisation has acknowledged, this is a decision that cannot be left to bureaucrats and the judiciary." Spain and Italy might also use the courts to further postpone the process. Single patent co-operation plan gets committee go-ahead (27.01.2011) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/en/pressroom/content/20110124IPR12359/html/Si… MEPs support vanguard group on EU patent (15.02.2011) http://euobserver.com/19/31809/?rk=1 New pan-EU patent plan will be adopted by 25 of EU's 27 countries, says Commission (16.02.2011) http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=11782 European Patent: FSFE urges European Parliament to wait for legal advice (9.02.2011) http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110209-01.en.html Draft European Parliament Legislative Resolution on the proposal for a Council decision authorising enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection (2.02.2011) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-2011… ============================================================ 9. European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 ============================================================ On Data Protection Day, 28 January 2011, Privacy International, the Center for Media and Communication Studies of the Central European University and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, released the European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 (EPHR) report. The survey reviews the landscape of national privacy and data protection laws and regulations, in addition to other laws, cases and recent developments, such as European NGOs' advocacy activities, that have had an impact on privacy in Europe in the last two years. The research field covers jurisdictions of all 27 EU Member States, two EFTA countries (Norway and Switzerland), three EU accession candidate states (Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey), and the EU itself as a jurisdiction. Apart from the country-by-country analysis in 33 reports, the survey also provides a comparative legal and policy analysis of major privacy topics and a section on key developments country by country. A privacy ranking offers a bird's-eye view of all major developments, and summarizes them by grading the state of privacy in each state, from the ones which "consistently uphold human rights standards" (best grade) to the ones where "endemic surveillance" prevails (lowest grade), going through the states that have "adequate safeguards against abuse" (satisfactory mark), present a "systemic failure to uphold safeguards" (insufficient mark), or show signs of "extensive surveillance" (very poor grade). Key findings then list countries on a grading scale, such as the "good" ones ("European democracies (...) in good health", with a "majority of countries having constitutional protections") or the ones where "heroic" policy advocacy, campaigns or protests that took place that slowed down or prevented privacy intrusions or government surveillance. A special section in the report outlines European NGOs' advocacy work in each country. Several of EDRi's NGO members have directly contributed to the success of those advocacy efforts in their respective countries. Each country report is available in English and translated into the country's official language(s). Another section provides an extensive list of privacy resources, country by country. The EPHR report builds upon the legacy of EPIC & Privacy International's Privacy & Human Rights survey, in which more than 300 privacy experts from all over the world have already participated for over a decade, making this survey one of the world's most comprehensive report on privacy and data protection. The "EPHR 2010" report is part of a broader project that comprises, apart from the publication of the report itself, two other action areas that will be fully developed over the next six months: the dissemination of the report on various online platforms, in particular mobile phones, so that people around Europe can learn, in their own national language, about privacy developments in their country; but also the development of awareness-raising campaigns, including three "games" that teach people how to decode web access logs and IP addresses and tie them to a unique individual, or figure out which countries' servers their e-mails may have gone through, and may possibly have been intercepted. In addition to the research and production team, made up of people from the Center for Media and Communication Studies at the Central European University and Privacy International, more than 90 privacy and data protection experts (privacy advocates, academics, lawyers and policy experts) from 32 countries all over Europe, contributed with updates from their respective countires. The European Commission funded the EPHR project through its "Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Program (2007-2013)". The European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 report https://www.privacyinternational.org/ephr/ The introductory video https://www.privacyinternational.org/data/ The "EPHR" project http://www.cmcs.ceu.hu/research/privacy-and-freedoms Short presentation of the survey (31.01.2011) http://blog.cedriclaurant.org/2011/01/31/european_privacy_and_human_rights/ (Contribution by Cedric Laurant - observer at EDRi) ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: Internet blocking - EP opts for leadership over populism ============================================================ On 14 February 2011, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament (EP) voted on the European Commission's proposal on web blocking. The European Commission had proposed mandatory EU-wide blocking and limited safeguards. The approach is populist, simplistic and, by giving Member States the option to take cosmetic measures to hide their inaction, profoundly dangerous and counterproductive. The Committee addressed the issue in numerous debates, from September 2009 until now and held a two-day hearing on the subject to get views from international institutions, police and law enforcement bodies, child rights organisations and EDRi, as the sole digital rights voice in the event. As a result of this extensive analysis, Parliamentarians increasing came to the conclusion that the issue was more complex and sensitive than it first appeared. As a result, under the leadership of rapporteur Roberta Angelilli (EPP, Italy), the Parliament voted for a text which moved the focus away from technically inefficient measures and towards concrete tools to fight crimes against children. Despite bizarre and desperate claims from some quarters that this approach was somehow paedophile-friendly, the Committee courageously rejected simplistic lobbying and took a leadership role - pushing for effective policy across the European Union. The text also harmonises the approach to existing European Union and European Convention on Human Rights obligations with regard to restrictions on communication. This will enable more coherent, predictable and proportionate approaches in the future on a European level. The Parliament text of Article 21 and Recital 13 prioritises concrete measures aimed at addressing the existence of the illegal content on websites, investigating the actual crimes and the criminals committing them, as well as rescuing the victims. It does this specifically by placing the emphasis on: - removal at source: This measure undermines the same existence of illegal material, avoiding "all" risks of re-victimisation, while allowing Internet providers to keep record of content to facilitate police's criminal investigation and victim identification; - international cooperation: It is particularly important to remove the systemic problems in communication and cooperation with third countries' authorities that lead to illegal content in websites hosted abroad not being dealt with expeditiously (this cooperation could include, for example, the setting up of single points of contact for competent authorities); - European annual reporting on removal activities: This will help identify individual success and failures of Member States at a national and international level, to disseminate best practices and ensure maximum efforts to prosecute criminals and identify victims. The Parliament's text will serve to clarify and harmonise the EU's approach to existing legal obligations on restrictions to communications. In particular: - The least restrictive alternative is prioritised, namely, the deletion of websites. Only when this is impossible can a more restrictive method (such as blocking) be considered. - In line with the European Convention on Human Rights, alternative measures for removal at source (such as blocking) must be "necessary" (ie, the measure must be effective and no other measure can be reasonably available taking into account technical and economic feasibility) - Respecting existing case law of the European Court of Human Rights, restrictions must be imposed in a predictable (according to law), transparent (ie, the measure should be based on relevant factors or sufficient evidence) and proportionate (ie, the negative effects of a measure should be counter-balanced by its benefits in terms of a legitimate public policy objective) manner. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:0094:FIN:EN:… "Impact assessment": Accompanying document to the Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA - Impact assessment {COM(2009)135} {SEC(2009)356} http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52009SC0355:EN:… Commission official explains the Commission's research http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFpoXIdRQc EDRi's blocking booklet http://www.edri.org/files/blocking_booklet.pdf EDRi-gram: Web blocking discussions in European Parliament reach critical stage (12.01.2011) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.1/web-blocking-campaign (contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi) ============================================================ 11. Recommended Action ============================================================ The Council of Europe's Expert Committee on New Media launched a consultation on its draft recommendations on search engines and social networking services, including guidelines Deadline for sending your comments:18 March 2011 http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/media/ Privacy International: Petition to Council of Europe on government use of citizens biometrics https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/petition-council-europe-govern… ============================================================ 12. Recommended Reading ============================================================ European DPAs adopt opinion on RFID Privacy Impact Assessment Framework http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/workinggroup/wpdocs/2011_en.htm ENISA Report: 'Bittersweet cookies': new types of 'cookies' raise online security & privacy concerns http://www.enisa.europa.eu/media/press-releases/2018bittersweet-cookies2019… Freedom in the days of the Internet http://www.thinkingeurope.eu/images/dbimages/docs/CESFreedominDaysofInterne… ============================================================ 13. Agenda ============================================================ 23-28 February 2011, Gosier, Guadeloupe, France ICDS 2011- 5th International Conference on Digital Society http://www.iaria.org/conferences2011/ICDS11.html 24-25 February 2011, Berlin, Germany The First OAPEN Conference http://meetings.copernicus.org/oapen2011/ 9 March 2011, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Big Brother Awards NL https://www.bigbrotherawards.nl 11-12 March 2011, Ankara, Turkey ICEGEG-2011- 3rd International Conference on E-Government and E-Governance http://www.icegeg.com/index.html 27-29 March 2011, Ghent, Belgium Online content: policy and regulation for a global market http://www.eurocpr.org/ 28 March 2011, Paris, France 5th European eAccessbility Forum: Benefits and costs of e-accessibility http://inova.snv.jussieu.fr/evenements/colloques/colloques/70_index_en.html 1 April 2011, Bielefeld, Germany Big Brother Awards Germany http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/index_html-en 15-17 April 2011, Berlin, Germany Re:publica XI: Conference about blogs, social media and the digital society http://re-publica.de/11/en/ 17-18 May 2011, Berlin Germany European Data Protection Reform & International Data Protection Compliance http://www.edpd-conference.com 12-15 June 2011, Bled, Slovenia 24th Bled eConference, eFuture: Creating Solutions for the Individual, Organisations and Society http://www.bledconference.org/index.php/eConference/2011 14-16 June 2011, Washington DC, USA CFP 2011 - Computers, Freedom & Privacy "The Future is Now" http://www.cfp.org/2011/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 11-12 July 2011, Barcelona, Spain 7th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics (IDP 2011): Net Neutrality and other challenges for the future of the Internet http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/7th-international-conference ============================================================ 14. About ============================================================ EDRi-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRi has 29 members based or with offices in 18 different countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRi-grams. All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and are visible on the EDRi website. Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram(a)edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring - EDRI-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. Unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: unsubscribe - EDRI-gram in Macedonian EDRI-gram is also available partly in Macedonian, with delay. Translations are provided by Metamorphosis http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/edri/2.html - EDRI-gram in German EDRI-gram is also available in German, with delay. Translations are provided Andreas Krisch from the EDRI-member VIBE!AT - Austrian Association for Internet Users http://www.unwatched.org/ - Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram - Help Please ask <edrigram(a)edri.org> if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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<nettime> Farah Stockman: Foreign activists stay covered online (Boston Globe)
by Patrice Riemens 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

bwo Michael Polman/ Antenna original at: http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2011/01/30/mass_groups_sof… (http://bit.ly/hbeghy) Foreign activists stay covered online Mass group's software helps avoid censorship A Walpole-based group of Internet activists known as Tor is playing a key role in helping Egyptians get around Internet censorship during this current political turmoil. Over the last three days, 120,000 people - most of them Egyptian - have downloaded Tor software, which helps activists protect their identity from surveillance by repressive regimes and get around blocked sites, according to Andrew Lewman, executive director of Tor, which provides the software for free. "We saw this huge amount of traffic,44 said Lewman, who said the group normally gets about 20,000 downloads a day worldwide. "We started looking at what was going on and the Internet service provider called us and said, `You are getting a huge amount of requests from Egypt.4 It didn4t look like an attack. It looked like a flash crowd.44 Most of the downloads occurred just before the Egyptian government ordered a near-total block of the Internet on Thursday night, but usage remains high through the few pathways to the Internet that remain. It is not the first time that Tor, which was formed in 2001 after two MIT students developed the anonymity software with a US Navy laboratory, has found itself in the center of a political uprising. Iranian activists downloaded its software en masse during the massive protests after the contested 2009 presidential elections, and China has repeatedly tried to block Tor downloads and denied visas to Tor4s activists, who have trained people from over 20 countries, including China, at workshops in Hong Kong and Europe. "It is plain that tools like Tor can be enormously value,44 said John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, who did a study of software that activists use, including Tor. Since only the most tech-savvy know how to use such software, "there is enormous value in trainings and they pay dividends in crisis moments like this,44 he said. The group, which employs about 10 people, runs a network of about 2,500 computers around the world manned by volunteers who help the anonymous network run. It registered as a nonprofit in 2006 and receives about 75 percent of its funding from the US government. About a year ago, Tor set up a special system just for Tunisian activists to protect their identity. So when the Tunisian government began monitoring Facebook pages and Twitter accounts during the recent uprising in Tunisia, "those people were already protected,44 Lewman said. In December 2009, Jacob Appelbaum, one of Tor4s main software developers, traveled to Cairo and held workshops for human rights activists on how to use the software to avoid surveillance on the Internet. The workshop appears to have paid off. As protests swelled in Egypt in recent days, so many people rushed to download Tor that one of its servers crashed on Thursday. They managed to keep their service up and running, but the downloads from Egypt plummeted Thursday night after the government apparently ordered a near-total block on Internet service. An estimated 91 percent of routes to the Internet in Egypt were down in a matter of hours, according to Andree Toonk, the Dutch founder and lead developer of BGPMon.net, which monitors the Internet and routing. But a few paths to the Internet have remained, and those who use them are continuing to use Tor, creating a spike in use despite the near-blackout in online communication. One Internet service provider, a company called Noor, was left unaffected perhaps because it services banks or the Egyptian stock market, Toonk said. That means that it is probably being closely scrutinized by the Egyptian intelligence service, making anonymity software all the more crucial, Tor activists said. "People in Egypt right now that are using the Internet really need to cover their tracks,44 said Appelbaum by telephone from Seattle. "Let4s pretend that the government doesn4t fall. . . . We don4t know if they have analysts working in real time to try to find activists, and we are trying to make sure that people have access to Tor, so that people aren4t hunted down in the streets.44 Appelbaum, who also works with WikiLeaks, suggested that the Internet activists in Egypt who are using Tor to conceal their identities are not merely organizing meetings in the streets, but may also be engaging in on-line resistance activities, such as disrupting the Egyptian stock market or banking activities. "One of the ways to hit the Egyptian government where it hurts . . . is to target the stock exchange, knock it off line or disrupt its activities, as a method of protest,44 he said. He said he is not involved in such activities, but that he witnessed online discussions among Egyptian activists talking about taking such actions. Appelbaum is also part of a separate group of activists that is trying to establish a satellite link to Egypt. Steven A. Cook, a specialist on democracy movements in the Middle East who just returned from Cairo, said that the Egyptian government4s unprecedented attempt to shut off the Internet had done little to quell the protests. "Shutting off the Internet has done nothing to prevent the world from seeing what is going on,44 he said. "It didn4t matter anymore because people were coming out into the streets regardless.44 # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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EDRi-gram newsletter - Number 9.4, 23 February 2011
by EDRI-gram newsletter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

============================================================ EDRi-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 9.4, 23 February 2011 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. Hungary amends its controversial Media Law 2. EESC condemns body scanners as a breach of fundamental rights 3. The French supreme court recognizes hosting status of Web 2.0 services 4. The US pressures the EU to pass ACTA before the end of 2011 5. German law on Internet blocking challenged in Constitutional Court 6. Polish civil society stirs up debate on Internet freedom 7. France: Loppsi 2 adopted - Internet filtering without court order 8. Is the EU going to have a new common patent law? 9. European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 10. ENDitorial: Internet blocking - EP opts for leadership over populism 11. Recommended Action 12. Recommended Reading 13. Agenda 14. About ============================================================ 1. Hungary amends its controversial Media Law ============================================================ As a result of the concern expressed by the European Commission and following the meetings with the Commission's experts on 7 and 15 February 2011, the Hungarian authorities have decided to amend their new controversial media legislation. The main issues of concern were related to four issues: 1. The disproportionate application of rules on balanced information due to the lack of limiting criteria, which was considered a breach of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS), the EU Treaty rules on the establishment and provision of services and of Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights concerning the fundamental freedom of expression and information. The amendment brought by the Hungarian government is that requirements regarding balanced information will be limited to broadcasting, being no longer applied for on-demand media services. 2. The application of fines to broadcasters legally established and authorised in other Member States which could breach the "country of origin" principle established by the AVMS Directive, according to which, audiovisual media service providers are subject to the regulations in their country of origin only. The Hungarian authorities agreed to amend this by removing the ability to fine legally established broadcasters in other EU countries. 3. The rules on registration and authorisation of media service providers which apply to on-demand media services, press products and ancillary media services could imply that they are required to register before they are allowed to provide services in Hungary and are thus subject to an authorisation scheme. These provisions could create an unjustified restriction of the Treaty rules on freedom of establishment. The amendment agreed upon clarifies that on-demand audiovisual media service providers, media product publishers and ancillary media service providers would have to register within 60 days after having begun providing their services, meaning that these providers established in Hungary and in other Member States would no longer be subject to prior authorisation by the Hungarian authorities. 4. The law dictated that media content may not "cause offence", even by implication, to individuals, minorities or majorities and which apply to all media content providers, including those established in other EU countries. These provisions have been limited, for all media content providers, to situations of incitement to hatred or discrimination. "I am very pleased that the Hungarian authorities have agreed to amend their Media Law to ensure that it complies with the aspects of EU law that we have raised, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights", stated Neelie Kroes, EC Vice-President and European Digital Agenda Commissioner who added that the European Commission will continue to closely monitor the adoption and implementation of the amendments. However, the opponents of the Hungarian media law are still sceptical and the debate in the European Parliament on 16 February also raised issues that had not been addressed by of the Hungarian authorities, such as the political control over the country's media authority. According to Martin Schulz EMP (Germany), the Socialists & Democrats group leader, "At first glance, a series of changes, some of technical nature have taken place. But other important matters, such as the composition of Media Council, are outstanding. (...) We still need to analyse the text carefully. Media freedom is an issue of central importance to the S&D group and we will do everything in our power to protect it." During the meeting of the European Parliament's group leaders (with exception of the EPP) on 17 February, the decision was taken to postpone the vote on the Hungarian media law but not withdraw a resolution on the matter. "Whilst it is a positive sign that the Hungarian Government have indicated a willingness to modify the four areas of concern outlined by the Commission, Liberals and Democrats remain concerned about other aspects of the Hungarian law which place huge powers of censorship in the hands of governing party appointees and reveal a lack of adequate protection for journalists' sources as well as insufficient provision for judicial review or appeal," said Renate Weber (PNL, Romania) ALDE coordinator in the Civil Liberties committee and spokesperson on the Hungarian media law who added that the Hungarian Government "should consider a more fundamental overhaul of the law in line with the recommendations of the OSCE." Media: Commission Vice-President Kroes welcomes amendments to Hungarian Media Law (16.02.2011) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/11/89&format=H… Brussels happy with Hungary's pledges on media law (17.02.2011) http://www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/brussels-happy-hungarys-pledges-media-… Press Release Changes by Hungarian Parliament to media law must be closely monitored (17.02.2011) http://www.alde.eu/press/press-and-release-news/press-release/article/chang… Hungarian media law: Proposed amendments ignore core provisions restricting media freedom (16.02.2011) http://www.greens-efa.eu/cms/pressreleases/dok/371/371430.hungarian_media_l… EDRi-gram: EU institutions want clarifications form Hungary on its media legislation (26.01.2011) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.2/hungary-media-legislation-2010 ============================================================ 2. EESC condemns body scanners as a breach of fundamental rights ============================================================ On 16 February 2011, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) issued its opinion on the use of body scanners in EU airports. The EESC has opposed the eventual adoption of any measures that would introduce body scanners on an EU-wide level, and feel that the Commission Communication on the use of security scanners does not respect three basic criteria: necessity, proportionality and legality. The document also criticises the Commission for changing the term "body scanners" to "security scanners", and outlines four central critiques with regard to the Commission Communication, namely, proportionality, fundamental rights, health risks and passenger rights . The document urges the Commission to produce a thorough proportionality test in order to determine the necessity of their implementation versus alternative measures. The EESC suggests that the Commission seriously consider alternatives and that it might be better to wait for more precise and less intrusive technology which can recognise security hazards. The EESC objects to the infringement of fundamental rights as a trade-off for public security. The costs to fundamental rights are three fold: personal privacy, data privacy and the right to human dignity. To further underline the inherent risks, the document cites a case in a Florida airport where 35 000 naked scans were recorded by officers and distributed on the Internet. As there exists no code of best practices or conclusive proof that these scanners do not pose health risks to individuals, the EESC requests that the Commission provide a thorough scientific examination proving that passengers and personnel who frequently fly will not be exposed to any health risks. The Committee also reminded the Commission that its Communication did not include guarantees of effective recourse for passengers and personnel undergoing the scans, and also failed to include guarantees that passengers will not obliged to undergo body scanning, ensuring individuals reserve the right to 'opt out' while not suffering longer wait times, more intrusive pat-downs, or be prevented from flying. Body scanners are currently in a trial period in the EU, where approximately 5 or 6 Member States have deployed the technology, including the UK, Finland, the Netherlands, France and Italy (according to a press release from 15 June 2010). The Commission is convinced that a more harmonised approach to body scanners is needed throughout the EU, thus it is likely that an EU legal framework on the use of "security scanners" at EU airports will be produced sometime in the near future. EESC Opinion on Use of Security Scanners at EU airports (16-17.02.2011) http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.opinions.15111 Body scanners? Not yet, says the EESC (17.02.2011) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=CES/11/20&format=HT… Commission communication on body scanners (15.06.2010) http://ec.europa.eu/transport/air/security/doc/com2010_311_security_scanner… Commission Q&A on "security scanners" (15.06.2010) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/261&format=… EU aviation security FAQ (15.02.2010) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/34 Technologies for the Use of Images: Automated Processes of Identification, Behavioural Analysis and Risk Detection Control at the Airports by Douwe Korff (06.2010) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1673772 Presentation by Douwe Korff (EDRi-member FIPR), at EESC Hearing "Use of Security Scanners at EU Airports" (11.01.2011) http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/korff_20110111_security-scanners.p… (Contribution by Raegan MacDonald - EDRi) ============================================================ 3. The French supreme court recognizes hosting status of Web 2.0 services ============================================================ On 17 February 2011 the French Court of Cassation recognized the hosting status of Dailymotion and Fuzz.fr. The court also confirmed, in relation to the Amen website case, that the judges had to verify that the content withdrawal requests observed the requirements of LCEN (loi pour la confiance dans l'iconomie numirique - French implementation of the EU E-commerce Directive) before condemning a hosting site that had not withdrawn promptly the notified content. The decisions of the Court of Cassation establish clearly the boundary between a content hosting site and a web service editor. In the Dailymotion case, it comes to confirm the decision of the French Court of Appeal of May 2009 which overturned a 2007 court decision that considered the hosting site liable for the content posted online on its platform. Moreover, the site had responded immediately after having been notified that it was hosting illegal content. The Court of Cassation also overturned the decision against Fuzz.fr in the case introduced by actor Olivier Martinez. In 2008, a French court decided that the owner of the website had an editorial responsibility, even if the website was a digg-like service (where the users can vote which news comes on first) and forced him to pay 1000 euro in damages for infringing the actor's privacy and an additional 1500 euro in legal fees. The Court of Cassation considered fuzz.fr a hosting site in terms of LCEN and therefore not liable for the content posted on it. An important clarification in relation both to Dailymotion and the Amen hosting site is the necessity to correctly formulate the requests for content withdrawal by taking all actions stipulated by the law. According to LCEN, the request to withdraw content must cover a series of elements including the notification date, the identification data of the notifying person (either natural or legal), the identification data of the addressee, the description of the litigious facts and precise location, the reasons for the withdrawal, including legal basis and justification, , a copy of the correspondence addressed to the author or editor of the litigious actions asking for their interruption, withdrawal or modification, or the justification of the fact that the author or editor could not be contacted. The subsidiarity principle is thus observed, meaning that a hosting site cannot be required to withdraw content before proving that the author of the content has been first contacted and required to withdraw the respective content. This could be the end of mass withdrawals of files without any previous procedure. However, the Legal Commission of the Senate seems to want to change the rules and on 15 February 2011 it proposed the creation of a new status between hoster and editor that will have filtering and surveillance obligations. Dailymotion and Fuzz recognised as hosters by the Cassation Court (only in French, 17.02.2011) http://www.01net.com/www.01net.com/editorial/528466/dailymotion-et-fuzz-rec… The Cassation Court saves Fuzz.fr service as well (only in French, 18.02.2011) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/18104-la-cour-de-cassation-sauve-aussi-le-… The Cassation Court protects the hosting status of Dailymotion. Thanks Hadopi ? (only in French, 17.02.2011) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/18099-la-cour-de-cassation-protege-le-stat… The assignees will not be able to withdraw mass contents (only in French, 17.02.2011) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/18098-les-ayants-droit-ne-pourront-plus-fa… The Senate proposes the creation of web service editor status (only in French, (16.02.2011) http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/le-net/statut-d-editeur-de-services-w… EDRi-gram: French courts give clear decisions for hosted content (20.05.2009) http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.10/france-decisions-hosting ============================================================ 4. The US pressures the EU to pass ACTA before the end of 2011 ============================================================ The US government has expressed its eagerness to see ACTA passed by the European Parliament this year. The controversial treaty allows governments to "order an online service provider to disclose (...) information sufficient to identify a subscriber whose account was allegedly used for infringement (...) of trademark or copyright or related rights infringement." Pressures from the US are expected to increase in the next months, having in view that there is the possibility that the European Parliament strikes down the agreement which means that talks would start again from the beginning. Based on a recent study issued by legal informatics experts from the German University in Hannover, ACTA raises a series of problems in complying with EU legislation and therefore the report advises MEPs to strike the act down or significantly change it. Hence, four MEPs sent on 15 February 2011 written questions to the EU Commission asking whether it was aware of the negative legal opinion and how it intended to deal with it. One of the issues raised by the MEPs was the different formulations on the level of damages for intellectual property infringements. Another aspect is related to how the new measures targeting counterfeit products, but also copyright and trademark infringements, will avoid impeding the legal movement of medicines. The atmosphere is already tense as recently, La Quadrature du Net has obtained from WikiLeaks exclusive access to diplomatic cables revealing pressure put by the US government on several European governments, especially in Spain, for the adoption of harsh copyright enforcement laws. The US Embassy cables refer to the EU Telecoms Package in the context of copyright, expressing its approval for cutting off Internet access without the necessity of a court order, as well as for the French three-strikes system and similar measures adopted in the UK. They also show the main role of the US in the initiation of ACTA, the stakes involved, the debates related to the participation of developing countries, as well as the evolution of the position of the European Union during the negotiations. Although the EU Commission has strongly criticised ACTA, several EU national governments have negotiated the treaty behind closed doors. On the other hand, the European Parliament has, in its turn, concluded a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea that is not far off from ACTA, including strong provisions on intellectual property rights protection. The FTA with Korea, which will come into effect on 1 July 2011, includes, just like ACTA, excessive criminal liability provisions for online intellectual property infringements. As the rapporteur for the Industry Committee of the Parliament, Daniel Caspary pointed out, the level of IP protection standards in the EU-Korea FTA includes not only copyright, related rights and trademarks, but also designs, services marks, layout designs of integrated circuits, geographical indications, plant varieties and the "protection of undisclosed information". The treaty stipulates other measures including searches and seizures at the request of rights holders and gives broadcasters the right to prohibit re-broadcasting, fixation, and communication to the public of their TV broadcasts for a fee. According to Green party member Jan Philipp Albrecht, the FTA is similar to ACTA as the information about the provisions of the agreement were kept secret before the it was signed by the parties involved. US keen for EU to adopt controversial anti-counterfeiting treaty (17.02.2011) http://euobserver.com/9/31827/?rk=1 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (3.12.2010) http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/Final-ACTA-text-following-legal-verificat… Stronger IP Rights In EU-Korea FTA: Precedent For Future FTAs? (20.02.2011) http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/02/20/stronger-ip-rights-granted-in-eu-… WikiLeaks Cables Shine Light on ACTA History (3.02.2010) http://www.laquadrature.net/en/wikileaks-cables-shine-light-on-acta-history Wikileaks publishes Acta cables (4.02.2011) http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication-breakdown-10000030/wikileaks-pub… Opinion of European Academics on ACTA (11.02.2011) http://www.iri.uni-hannover.de/tl_files/pdf/ACTA_opinion_110211_DH2.pdf EDRi-gram: ENDitorial: ACTA endgame - The devil is in the detail (8.09.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.17/acta-devil--in-details ============================================================ 5. German law on Internet blocking challenged in Constitutional Court ============================================================ On 22 February 2011 the German Working Group against Internet Blocking and Censorship (AK Zensur) submitted their complaint against the German law on Internet blocking to Germany's Constitutional Court. The law is directed against online child abuse material and had come into force on 23 February 2010, setting a one-year deadline for the complaint. AK Zensur and many others had fiercely opposed the law and announced that a complaint would be filed when the law was enacted by Parliament in June 2009. An online petition against the law collected 134 000 signatures in May and June, the highest number ever achieved at the German Parliament's online petitions system. A curious situation emerged when the government changed after the elections in September 2009, taking the liberal party FDP into power in a coalition with the conservative CDU/CSU. The FDP had opposed the blocking law in their election campaign, and before the law came into force, it was agreed that it would not be fully implemented. In a legally dubious move, a "non-application directive" by the Interior minister stipulated that initially, only take-down was to be attempted, and the governing parties agreed that a review would be held about a year later. This created something of a legal absurdity as the consequences of the law are not fully felt at the moment when the deadline to complain is expiring. But AK Zensur and its lawyers are confident that even now, many aspects of the law are in clear violation of the German Constitution, and several experts had voiced similar concerns at a parliamentary hearing before the law was enacted. While political support for the ill-fated law has widely diminished, the governing parties have not found the will to abolish it in a new Parliamentary act. AK Zensur is hopeful that with its complaint, it will be able to do the politicians' homework for them. A website collecting signatures to support the complaint in the political debate will be started soon. German press release: German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against censorship law (only in German, 23.02.2011) http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/verfassungsbeschwerde.html German Free Speech Working Party issues constitutional complaint against censorship law (23.02.2011) http://ak-zensur.de/2011/02/constitutional-complaint.html EDRi-gram: Germany's President signs an Internet bill against his own government (24.02.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.4/german-president-adopts-internet-chi… (Contribution by Sebastian Lisken) ============================================================ 6. Polish civil society stirs up debate on Internet freedom ============================================================ The Polish chapter in the European debate on whether Internet blocking can be conceived as a measure in fighting the dissemination of child abuse images has finally been opened. This is due to the quite successful campaign that EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation, supported by the open source movement and Internet Society Poland, has been running over last few weeks. It has long been unclear what position the government will take with regard to the Directive on combating sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. The Polish representative in the Council refrained from taking a firm standpoint, which made us believe that the government - mindful of civil society's likely outrage - is playing hide and seek, hoping that the Directive will be adopted with the silent approval of Poland. Provoked by this game, back in November, we managed to trigger some interest in this topic in two leading daily newspapers. Right after the first article describing the alleged tactic of the Polish government was published, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Justice confirmed that the government "of course, supports the Directive", including the concept of obligatory Internet blocking. This position was made very clear at the JHA meeting on 3 December 2010. To us it clearly meant that the government was trying to do some policy laundering. Almost exactly a year ago, - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a public debate with NGOs and Internet activists, acknowledged that blocking Internet sites is a flawed measure and should not be applied. Moreover, he promised that any future plans to introduce legal measures affecting Internet freedom would involve consultation with civil society. The present policy and the way it has been carried out so far clearly contradicts both promises. In an attempt to draw more attention to what is happening in Brussels with the support of our government, Panoptykon organised a public debate under the auspices of Polish Ombudsman, Prof. Irena Lipowicz which took place on 10 February 2011. The discussion panel was composed of representatives of the Ministry of Justice and four foundations representing both sides of the debate: Panoptykon, Kidprotect.pl, Safe Cyberspace and Nobody's Children. The audience consisted mainly of journalists, academic society representatives and technologically minded individuals. While Panoptykon argued that there was no collision between protecting children and Internet freedom because child abuse images can be effectively removed and therefore do not need to be blocked, our opponents claimed the opposite, on the grounds that international cooperation did not function well enough. The debate revolved around the following issues: what are the technical possibilities of removing illegal content; how to ensure both fast reaction and due process; what are the challenges of international cooperation; how can we prove that blocking tends to be used instead of and not in addition to fighting crimes against children; how blocking can disturb pending police investigations; how big the problem of child abuse images on-line really is; and what role can the Internet community play in addressing the problem. The Government's representative, Tomasz Darkowski, argued in favour of web blocking. Mr Darkowski stressed that the Directive should, in the first place, prevent Internet users from accidental and unwanted contact with child abuse images. He also expressed a strong belief that web blocking would remain strictly to child abuse images and there were no reasons to worry about possibilities of extending blocking to other types of content. This claim is all the more astonishing when one can already hear some politicians suggesting that hate speech and illegal gambling sites should be blocked. Polish experience clearly shows that it does not take a lot to change an existing law, especially in order to make it more radical. In the end, the Ombudsman had a voice. She expressed her astonishment with the hot atmosphere of the meeting caused by the huge societal interest in the issue of website blocking. Prof. Lipowicz called in for more evidence and analysis to support our claims. It was also clear that further discussions are needed - first to explain the technical aspects of blocking and the second to analyse the risk of extending blocking to other types of "unwanted" content. The office of the Ombudsman is committed to helping us continue the debate. In the meantime, we are collecting evidence and analyses requested by the Ombudsman (the action called "Respond the Ombudsman") and preparing an electronic publication that will summarise the debate. It will be published on 10 March 2011. Finally, together with five other organisations, Panoptykon has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for a meeting "a year after". We want a serious discussion on the future of Internet freedom in Poland, which seems threatened not only by the blocking proposal. There are at least four other controversial and pending areas of regulation, which need to be explored: data retention, content liability, nonlinear audiovisual services and the implementation of the Telecoms Package. We hope that the Prime Minister will accept our invitation and a working meeting with the government will happen before 15 March. With regard to Internet blocking, we hope to hear from the Prime Minister the same words we heard from Woody Allen's character, quantum physics genius Boris Yellnikoff: "However, as only a great mind can do, I've reassessed... my... position, and uh, changed my mind." Open letter of Polish NGOs to the Prime Minister(only in Polish) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/rok-po-nadal-chcemy-rozmawia-na-temat-wol… Report on the position of Polish government in the Council (only in Polish, 03.12.2010) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/polska-popiera-dyrektyw-otwieraj-c-drog-d… Reports from the public debate on Internet blocking (+video)(only in Polish) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/relacje-z-debaty-blokowanie-stron-interne… Action "Respond the Ombudsman" (only in Polish) http://www.panoptykon.org/content/odpowiadamy-rzecznik-praw-obywatelskich-p… (Contribution by Katarzyna Szymielewicz - EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation, Poland) ============================================================ 7. France: Loppsi 2 adopted - Internet filtering without court order ============================================================ The French so-called Loppsi 2 draft law was adopted on 8 February 2011 by the National Assembly as well as by the Senate without modifications, thus allowing for the blocking of Internet access of a site deemed as having "obvious" child pornographic content, without a court order. The text is challenged by the Constitutional Court that will to decide whether the new provisions are constitutional or not. The draft law also allows for the installation of spyware by the police and reinforces video-surveillance by the use of electronic bracelets. Following its adoption, the opposition has filed an appeal against the law to the Constitutional Council, showing concerns that the draft law gives authorities "obvious inappropriate means" without "providing enough guarantees against the eventual damages to the freedom of expression". La Quadrature du Net has recently sent a memo to the Council asking for the rejection of the Internet filtering as being against the Constitution, inefficient and disproportionate. The group believes the law is a Trojan horse which, under false pretences, will legitimise Internet censorship. There will be no control over the way the filtering techniques will be set up and, as the blacklist of websites to be filtered will be kept secret, it will also be impossible to file complaints against filtering actions. CFE-CGC professional unions as well as Unsa-Tilicoms union from France Tilicom-Orange believe this is "a festival of incompetence, where, in the name of overall security, this mixing-all text undermines fundamental principles, especially in relation to the Internet, with the announced blocking of the sites in the name of the fight against child pornography". The opposition refers Loppsi 2 to the Constitutional Council (only in French, 15.02.2011) http://www.01net.com/www.01net.com/editorial/528388/lopposition-saisit-le-c… French LOPPSI Bill Adopted: The Internet under Control? (9.02.2011) http://www.laquadrature.net/en/french-loppsi-bill-adopted-the-internet-unde… The administrative filtering of the net is contrary to the French Constitution (only in French, 02.2011) http://www.laquadrature.net/files/20110214_La%20Quadrature%20du%20Net_Amicu… EDRi-gram: French law Loppsi 2 adopted by the General Assembly (12.01.2011) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.1/loppsi-2-adopted-assembly ============================================================ 8. Is the EU going to have a new common patent law? ============================================================ Based on a recommendation of the Committee on Legal Affairs, the European Parliament approved on 15 February 2011 the use of the enhanced co-operation procedure to create a unitary patent system in the EU, following the request made by 12 Member States in December 2010. Presently, there are national patents coexisting with a European patent in a complicated and fragmented system which implies that the patent holders must choose the countries where they want patent protection. Also, Member States may impose additional requirements and the European patents are only enforced by national laws. The expenses involved are also very high because the current system requires the translation into the official language of every country in which patent protection is sought. According to the European Commission, a European patent validated in 13 countries can cost up to 18 000 euro, more than half of which on translation fees. Attempts have been made during the last year to get a unified system but they have failed mostly due to translation issues. In 2010, Spain and Italy raised objections to the EU plans to allow EU patents to be printed in any of the three EU official languages: English, French or German. The enhanced co-operation procedure allows a group of EU nations to use EU government bodies to create a new system when unanimous agreement cannot be found. Other countries can opt-in to the new rules later on. Under the Lisbon Treaty a minimum of nine Member States is enough for this procedure. The Member States, having initiated the proposal, believe a unitary patent system in EU will make things cheaper and easier, will ensure equal access to all inventors within the EU and will simplify the handling of infringements. . The enhanced co-operation proposal is still to be examined by the Competitiveness Council on 10 March 2011. If approved by the Council as well, the Commission will have to present two proposals, one on the language regime (consultation procedure) and the other establishing the single patent (co-decision procedure). However, a key legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is expected at the end of this month regarding the proposed "enhanced cooperation". According to documents published until now, the Court might find the proposal in conflict with the EU treaties, which will delay the process and require changes to the proposal. Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has expressed concerns that the European Parliament might lose its legislative competence regarding patents, which will be controlled by the European Patent Organisation (EPO). A conflict of interest would then be created, the EPO being responsible both for awarding patents and for defining what is patentable. FSFE also believes that "software patents hurt innovation and are an unnecessary burden on European software developers. (...) Legislators need to take charge and make sure the patent system contributes to the public good. As the European Patent Organisation has acknowledged, this is a decision that cannot be left to bureaucrats and the judiciary." Spain and Italy might also use the courts to further postpone the process. Single patent co-operation plan gets committee go-ahead (27.01.2011) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/en/pressroom/content/20110124IPR12359/html/Si… MEPs support vanguard group on EU patent (15.02.2011) http://euobserver.com/19/31809/?rk=1 New pan-EU patent plan will be adopted by 25 of EU's 27 countries, says Commission (16.02.2011) http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=11782 European Patent: FSFE urges European Parliament to wait for legal advice (9.02.2011) http://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110209-01.en.html Draft European Parliament Legislative Resolution on the proposal for a Council decision authorising enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection (2.02.2011) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A7-2011… ============================================================ 9. European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 ============================================================ On Data Protection Day, 28 January 2011, Privacy International, the Center for Media and Communication Studies of the Central European University and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, released the European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 (EPHR) report. The survey reviews the landscape of national privacy and data protection laws and regulations, in addition to other laws, cases and recent developments, such as European NGOs' advocacy activities, that have had an impact on privacy in Europe in the last two years. The research field covers jurisdictions of all 27 EU Member States, two EFTA countries (Norway and Switzerland), three EU accession candidate states (Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey), and the EU itself as a jurisdiction. Apart from the country-by-country analysis in 33 reports, the survey also provides a comparative legal and policy analysis of major privacy topics and a section on key developments country by country. A privacy ranking offers a bird's-eye view of all major developments, and summarizes them by grading the state of privacy in each state, from the ones which "consistently uphold human rights standards" (best grade) to the ones where "endemic surveillance" prevails (lowest grade), going through the states that have "adequate safeguards against abuse" (satisfactory mark), present a "systemic failure to uphold safeguards" (insufficient mark), or show signs of "extensive surveillance" (very poor grade). Key findings then list countries on a grading scale, such as the "good" ones ("European democracies (...) in good health", with a "majority of countries having constitutional protections") or the ones where "heroic" policy advocacy, campaigns or protests that took place that slowed down or prevented privacy intrusions or government surveillance. A special section in the report outlines European NGOs' advocacy work in each country. Several of EDRi's NGO members have directly contributed to the success of those advocacy efforts in their respective countries. Each country report is available in English and translated into the country's official language(s). Another section provides an extensive list of privacy resources, country by country. The EPHR report builds upon the legacy of EPIC & Privacy International's Privacy & Human Rights survey, in which more than 300 privacy experts from all over the world have already participated for over a decade, making this survey one of the world's most comprehensive report on privacy and data protection. The "EPHR 2010" report is part of a broader project that comprises, apart from the publication of the report itself, two other action areas that will be fully developed over the next six months: the dissemination of the report on various online platforms, in particular mobile phones, so that people around Europe can learn, in their own national language, about privacy developments in their country; but also the development of awareness-raising campaigns, including three "games" that teach people how to decode web access logs and IP addresses and tie them to a unique individual, or figure out which countries' servers their e-mails may have gone through, and may possibly have been intercepted. In addition to the research and production team, made up of people from the Center for Media and Communication Studies at the Central European University and Privacy International, more than 90 privacy and data protection experts (privacy advocates, academics, lawyers and policy experts) from 32 countries all over Europe, contributed with updates from their respective countires. The European Commission funded the EPHR project through its "Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Program (2007-2013)". The European Privacy & Human Rights 2010 report https://www.privacyinternational.org/ephr/ The introductory video https://www.privacyinternational.org/data/ The "EPHR" project http://www.cmcs.ceu.hu/research/privacy-and-freedoms Short presentation of the survey (31.01.2011) http://blog.cedriclaurant.org/2011/01/31/european_privacy_and_human_rights/ (Contribution by Cedric Laurant - observer at EDRi) ============================================================ 10. ENDitorial: Internet blocking - EP opts for leadership over populism ============================================================ On 14 February 2011, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament (EP) voted on the European Commission's proposal on web blocking. The European Commission had proposed mandatory EU-wide blocking and limited safeguards. The approach is populist, simplistic and, by giving Member States the option to take cosmetic measures to hide their inaction, profoundly dangerous and counterproductive. The Committee addressed the issue in numerous debates, from September 2009 until now and held a two-day hearing on the subject to get views from international institutions, police and law enforcement bodies, child rights organisations and EDRi, as the sole digital rights voice in the event. As a result of this extensive analysis, Parliamentarians increasing came to the conclusion that the issue was more complex and sensitive than it first appeared. As a result, under the leadership of rapporteur Roberta Angelilli (EPP, Italy), the Parliament voted for a text which moved the focus away from technically inefficient measures and towards concrete tools to fight crimes against children. Despite bizarre and desperate claims from some quarters that this approach was somehow paedophile-friendly, the Committee courageously rejected simplistic lobbying and took a leadership role - pushing for effective policy across the European Union. The text also harmonises the approach to existing European Union and European Convention on Human Rights obligations with regard to restrictions on communication. This will enable more coherent, predictable and proportionate approaches in the future on a European level. The Parliament text of Article 21 and Recital 13 prioritises concrete measures aimed at addressing the existence of the illegal content on websites, investigating the actual crimes and the criminals committing them, as well as rescuing the victims. It does this specifically by placing the emphasis on: - removal at source: This measure undermines the same existence of illegal material, avoiding "all" risks of re-victimisation, while allowing Internet providers to keep record of content to facilitate police's criminal investigation and victim identification; - international cooperation: It is particularly important to remove the systemic problems in communication and cooperation with third countries' authorities that lead to illegal content in websites hosted abroad not being dealt with expeditiously (this cooperation could include, for example, the setting up of single points of contact for competent authorities); - European annual reporting on removal activities: This will help identify individual success and failures of Member States at a national and international level, to disseminate best practices and ensure maximum efforts to prosecute criminals and identify victims. The Parliament's text will serve to clarify and harmonise the EU's approach to existing legal obligations on restrictions to communications. In particular: - The least restrictive alternative is prioritised, namely, the deletion of websites. Only when this is impossible can a more restrictive method (such as blocking) be considered. - In line with the European Convention on Human Rights, alternative measures for removal at source (such as blocking) must be "necessary" (ie, the measure must be effective and no other measure can be reasonably available taking into account technical and economic feasibility) - Respecting existing case law of the European Court of Human Rights, restrictions must be imposed in a predictable (according to law), transparent (ie, the measure should be based on relevant factors or sufficient evidence) and proportionate (ie, the negative effects of a measure should be counter-balanced by its benefits in terms of a legitimate public policy objective) manner. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2010:0094:FIN:EN:… "Impact assessment": Accompanying document to the Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, repealing Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA - Impact assessment {COM(2009)135} {SEC(2009)356} http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52009SC0355:EN:… Commission official explains the Commission's research http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFpoXIdRQc EDRi's blocking booklet http://www.edri.org/files/blocking_booklet.pdf EDRi-gram: Web blocking discussions in European Parliament reach critical stage (12.01.2011) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.1/web-blocking-campaign (contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi) ============================================================ 11. Recommended Action ============================================================ The Council of Europe's Expert Committee on New Media launched a consultation on its draft recommendations on search engines and social networking services, including guidelines Deadline for sending your comments:18 March 2011 http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/media/ Privacy International: Petition to Council of Europe on government use of citizens biometrics https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/petition-council-europe-govern… ============================================================ 12. Recommended Reading ============================================================ European DPAs adopt opinion on RFID Privacy Impact Assessment Framework http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/workinggroup/wpdocs/2011_en.htm ENISA Report: 'Bittersweet cookies': new types of 'cookies' raise online security & privacy concerns http://www.enisa.europa.eu/media/press-releases/2018bittersweet-cookies2019… Freedom in the days of the Internet http://www.thinkingeurope.eu/images/dbimages/docs/CESFreedominDaysofInterne… ============================================================ 13. Agenda ============================================================ 23-28 February 2011, Gosier, Guadeloupe, France ICDS 2011- 5th International Conference on Digital Society http://www.iaria.org/conferences2011/ICDS11.html 24-25 February 2011, Berlin, Germany The First OAPEN Conference http://meetings.copernicus.org/oapen2011/ 9 March 2011, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Big Brother Awards NL https://www.bigbrotherawards.nl 11-12 March 2011, Ankara, Turkey ICEGEG-2011- 3rd International Conference on E-Government and E-Governance http://www.icegeg.com/index.html 27-29 March 2011, Ghent, Belgium Online content: policy and regulation for a global market http://www.eurocpr.org/ 28 March 2011, Paris, France 5th European eAccessbility Forum: Benefits and costs of e-accessibility http://inova.snv.jussieu.fr/evenements/colloques/colloques/70_index_en.html 1 April 2011, Bielefeld, Germany Big Brother Awards Germany http://www.bigbrotherawards.de/index_html-en 15-17 April 2011, Berlin, Germany Re:publica XI: Conference about blogs, social media and the digital society http://re-publica.de/11/en/ 17-18 May 2011, Berlin Germany European Data Protection Reform & International Data Protection Compliance http://www.edpd-conference.com 12-15 June 2011, Bled, Slovenia 24th Bled eConference, eFuture: Creating Solutions for the Individual, Organisations and Society http://www.bledconference.org/index.php/eConference/2011 14-16 June 2011, Washington DC, USA CFP 2011 - Computers, Freedom & Privacy "The Future is Now" http://www.cfp.org/2011/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 11-12 July 2011, Barcelona, Spain 7th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics (IDP 2011): Net Neutrality and other challenges for the future of the Internet http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/7th-international-conference ============================================================ 14. About ============================================================ EDRi-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRi has 29 members based or with offices in 18 different countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRi-grams. All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and are visible on the EDRi website. Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram(a)edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring - EDRI-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. Unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request(a)edri.org Subject: unsubscribe - EDRI-gram in Macedonian EDRI-gram is also available partly in Macedonian, with delay. Translations are provided by Metamorphosis http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/edri/2.html - EDRI-gram in German EDRI-gram is also available in German, with delay. Translations are provided Andreas Krisch from the EDRI-member VIBE!AT - Austrian Association for Internet Users http://www.unwatched.org/ - Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram - Help Please ask <edrigram(a)edri.org> if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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