EDRI-gram newsletter - Number 5.24, 19 December 2007

[EDRI-gram newsletter]

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           EDRI-gram

biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe

    Number 5.24, 19 December 2007


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Contents
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1. Filtering the Internet - new request of music and film industry
2. Creative content online - main topic in new EC documents
3. Online media regulation in Ukraine
4. No decision yet from the EC on the status of the online music market
5. The broadcasting treaty resuscitated by the Council of Europe
6. Czech Big Brother Awards 2007
7. Opera complains to the EC on Microsoft's Internet Explorer
8. ENDitorial : "No Swiss DMCA" Referendum campaign
9. Recommended Reading
10. Agenda
11. About

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1. Filtering the Internet - new request of music and film industry
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Concern has been raised by a memo sent to European policy-makers by the
International Federation of Phonographic Industries asking European ISPs to
filter the content transferred by their networks. The music and film
industry continues to pressure from the EU regulators for control on the
Internet, through ISPs.

The issue raises even more concern as some European politicians seem
comfortable to consumer's communications being interfered with and
controlled by ISPs on behalf of rightholders. In November 2007, the
European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE)
handed to the Parliament a report amending a previous Culture and Education
Committee report, calling ISPs "to apply filtering measures to prevent
copyright infringements" with the purpose to "rethink the critical issue of
intellectual property".

Following this ITRE report, the EDRi-member Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) Europe has sent a letter to the members of the Culture and Education
Committee, showing how damaging Internet filtering would be from several
points of view.

EFF points out that filtering by ISPs is inefficient, doing very little to
address the rightsholders' concerns while affecting artists, researcher or
teachers, as filtering devices would be unable to evaluate the exceptions or
limitations of the copyright that these categories benefit of.

Internet content filtering will bring significant damages to the citizens'
individual rights "in their roles as consumers, artists and educators" as
well as additional costs for network reconfigurations that will be borne by
ISPs and therefore passed on to their consumers.

EFF believes that:" Any country that has a centralized system in place to
pry into all its citizen's private communications, and then pre-emptively
sever those which it deems "unsuitable", creates both a very disturbing
precedent, and a dangerously powerful tool vulnerable to misuse."

The vote on the final document will take place on the 21 January 2008 in the
Culture and Education Committee.

Music Industry Pressures EU Politicians for Filtered Internet (7.12.2007)
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/music-industry-europe-filter-pressure

EFF Europe letter to the Culture and Education Committee
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/effeurope/CULT-filtering-letter.pdf

ISPs - Technical options for addressing online copyright infringement
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/effeurope/ifpi_filtering_memo.pdf

Network Filtering: Limiting Cultural Industries, Damaging the Internet
(12.12.2007)
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/effeurope/NetworkFiltering.pdf

Draft report on cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy -
Committee on Culture and Education (18.09.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5498632

Draft Opinion of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy for the
Committee on Culture and Education on Cultural industries in Europe
(20.09.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/pa/685/685557/685557en.pdf

Amendements to the opinion - ITRE Committee (31.10.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/am/692/692488/692488en.pdf

Draft report - Guy Bono - Cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon
Strategy (26.11.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/registre/recherche/NoticeDetaillee.cfm?docid=254872&doclang=EN

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2. Creative content online - main topic in new EC documents
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A new policy paper drafted by the European Commission (EC) shows its
intention to promote new measures to fight against illegal file-sharing,
taking as a positive example the French agreement between ISPs and the
record industries already presented in EDRI-gram.

The policy paper obtained by EurActiv and entitled "Creative content online
in the Single Market" wants to involve all the stakeholders in the
activities against piracy: "It seems appropriate to instigate co-operation
procedures between access and service providers, right holders and
consumers".

The Commission communication also talks about the development of new legal
offers of digital content available for consumers, educational programs to
raise awareness on the copyright issues and availability of the digital
content in a single market, suggesting multi-national copyright licences and
the interoperability of platforms offering legal content.

The digital content market is estimated to reach 8.3 billion euros by 2010
in the EU 25 and this is why the EC sees as a real concern the "piracy and
unauthorised up- and downloading of copyrighted content". Therefore the
Commission has started a public debate by "asking the sector's stakeholders
whether they are ready to consider the French way, based on enforcement, and
whether they consider applying filtering measures to be an effective means
of preventing online copyright infringements."

The position of the EC is not a surprise, if we take into consideration the
statement of the European Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding at
the European Publishers' Forum on 6 December 2007. She emphasised her
efforts to promote a new law on digital publishing copyrights, explaining
that : "With the telecom package, I want to support competitiveness,
innovation and creativity. It is the first time that an electronic
communications package includes specific requirements for network operators
and users to respect copyright law."

Reading added: "People don't buy technology, they acquire contents and
services. Therefore, the new rules contain references concerning compliance
with national measures implementing the Copyright Directive and the
Enforcement Directive. Moreover, the Universal Service Directive says that
member states shall ensure that subscribers to electronic communications
services or networks are clearly informed in advance of their obligations to
respect copyright and related rights and of the most common acts of
infringements and their legal consequences."

The commissioner also pointed out the new role of the EC in this domain - a
catalyst through a "communication on creative content online in the single
market, which will generate business negotiations and improve legal
certainty."

But the publishers were also criticised, the European official considering
they didn't adapt their business modes to the new dynamics asked by the
raise of the Internet. According to Reading the publishers "face a big
challenge in determining how to generate revenues in the digital age, and
that most news and magazine publishers still earn less than 5 percent of
revenues from new media, though this should double in the next year."

EU plans new measures to curb online piracy (10.12.2007)
http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/eu-plans-new-measures-curb-online-piracy/article-168984

EU Online Copyright Bill Coming; Publishers Debate DRMs (9.12.2007)
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=861

EDRi-gram: New agreement between the French ISPs and record industries
(5.12.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.23/french-agreement-piracy

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3. Online media regulation in Ukraine
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A public workshop held in Ukraine on 12 December 2007 was aimed to discuss
the issues regarding the regulation of the new online media. The workshop
was organised by Internews Ukraine together with the Council of Europe and
the National Commission on Freedom of Speech and Development of the
Information Sphere under the President of Ukraine.

Besides the Ukrainian participants - from online and offline media - from
Kiev and other important cities in Ukraine, the Council of Europe invited
two experts - Thomas Schneider, Chairman of the Council of Europe Group of
Specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society and Bogdan Manolea
from EDRi as observer in the same Group mentioned above.

The present law on media in Ukraine requires the offline media to register
with a special office within the Ministry of Justice in order to be
recognised as a journalist and have access to press conferences and have
other rights, such as the protection of sources used in their journalistic
activities. Although from the Ukrainian participants' interventions this
process resulted to be more a notification than a registration, the main
question of the seminar was whether the online media should be the subject
of the same rules.

The two Ukrainian speakers that were supposed to speak pro and against the
regulation of the online media (Mr. Roman Skrypin , Media director,
"RBK-Ukraine" independent Ukrainian information agency and Ms. Tetyana
Popova, Board Chairman, The Ukrainian Internet Association respectively)
reached similar conclusions - that a general obligation of the registration
of online media is not possible and therefore such an obligation can't be
put in the legislation. But they both agreed that a voluntary registration
should be possible for any online media. Mr.Skrypin was even more trenchant
in declaring that in order to be called online media, one should register
with the Ministry of Justice, thus having the same rights and obligations as
the other professional journalists. He also added that blogs of other
websites can still exist with no problem, but they wouldn't be trusted as
the other registered media. Ms. Popova also explained that three years ago
the Ukrainian authorities were looking into regulating the Internet as much
as possible, but now the situation has changed.

Mr.Manolea intervened in pointing out that the discussion should also
consider whether the mandatory registration with a state institution
for offline media can be considered legal, especially under art.10 of
the European Convention of Human Rights. He also asked for some
clarifications regarding the advantages of registering as an online media
with the Ukrainian authorities. From the later-on discussions, no specific
advantages arose and the fact that almost all of the online media
representatives at the seminar were not registered proved that the
registration as such is doubtfully useful in any case. In fact, it appears
that some of the online media representatives present saw the registration
as a potential problem, since they could have been more easily dragged into
defamation law-suits by the local oligarchs.

Thomas Schneider's presentation focused on the definition of media and media
regulation, as seen through the standards developed by the Council of Europe
(CoE). He also underlined that "Any requirement to register online media may
qualify as a prior restraint on freedom of expression that may contravene
Art 10", presenting the ECHR decision in the case Gaweda vs. Poland on
registration requirements for print media. Also he discussed the CoE
experience in trying to identify what is online media and the difficulty to
find a comprehensive definition in this respect.

He emphasised that there should be no stricter regulation for online media
than for offline media, according to the CoE Declaration on freedom of
communication on the Internet from 2003 "Member states should not subject
content on the Internet to restrictions which go further than those applied
to other means of content delivery." But there could be an obligation to
publish information of editorial responsibility and possibilities of contact
("Impressum"). However a distinction should be made between professional and
individual websites and between those of relevance for public opinion
shaping and others, respecting though the principle of secrecy of source of
information.

Pavlo Moiseev, Chief of Law Service from Internews Ukraine explained the
legal details of the online media regulation, starting with the freedom of
expression principle in the Ukraine's Constitution and the fact that the
present laws do not foresee an obligatory registration for online media.

Bogdan Manolea entitled his presentation "The limits of freedom of speech
and the no-limits of the Internet" and he presented the European legislation
on the limits to the freedom of speech, but also the practical problems the
states face when they try to enforce these rules on the Internet content.
The speech concentrated on the specific cases - most of them already
reported in the EDRI-gram - that prove the Internet content faces tremendous
difficulties to regulate, although if there are some national regulations on
online content that may be considered illegal, harmful or infringing third
parties' rights. He also explained by practical cases that any solution of
filtering by governments can't be efficient and creates more problems than
it solves.Therefore as a practical recommendation before taking into
consideration any kind of regulation regarding the Internet content should
look if the specific norms will not endanger the freedom of expression, if
they can be realistically implemented and if the result will not be just to
move the content unde the jusrisdiction of other countries, but still
online.

There was a lot of discussion about whether and how online media could and
should be sued by the government or private persons for content that was not
true or harmful in some way. In that respect, Thomas Schneider argued that,
although there should be clear legal procedures about how to sue media that
abuse their freedom of expression, going to court should in a democratic
society only be the very last remedy. Sometimes, he said, things can be
viewed from different angles and there might not be only one single truth.
So people who do not agree with some media statement should make use of
their right to reply and other ways to assure the diversity of opinions on
an issue, before going to court too often.

In its closing statement, Andriy Kulakov, Director of Internews Ukraine
summarised some of the key aspects of the seminar including that the
registration of the online media is not obligatory in Ukraine and that the
online media should look more into self-regulation, like the off-line media.
He also concluded that the most efficient way forward in talking about
Internet content is to use awareness raising and educational programs.

Bogdan Manolea - The limits of freedom of speech and the no-limits of the
Internet (12.12.2007)
http://www.edri.org/files/no-limits-internet.pdf

Thomas Schneider - Regulation of online media:europe's experience
(12.12.2007)
http://www.internews.ua/sm/site/news/uploads/2007/12/14/345_av.ppt

Seminar Regulation of on-line media: boundaries of freedom and willfulness
(only in Ukrainian, 14.12.2007)
http://www.internews.ua/ukraine/events/2007/12/14/1247.html

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4. No decision yet from the EC on the status of the online music market
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During a conference on creative rights and cultural diversity organised by
EUobserver on 6 December 2007, Josi Manuel Barroso, the President of the
European Commission, stated the European Commission (EC) was not yet ready
to take any short-term decision related to the management of the online
music market.

Despite new calls at the conference to review the voluntary guidelines on
the collective management of online music rights issued in 2005 by the EC
and supported by collective rights managers (CRMs), Barroso said the EC
needed some time to find the right solutions based on a balanced,
sustainable consensus of all the involved stakeholders.

The guidelines are not legally binding for the EU states and, according to
the music industry, about 21 out of the 27 members refuse to apply them. The
European collecting societies also argue that the present guidelines favour
big Anglo-American music publishers.

However, as Jorgen Holmquist, director general of the European Union
executive's internal market unit stated, a public consultation this year has
shown a lack of broad support for this kind of legislation. Yet, he agreed
that the system for managing online music rights was unsatisfactory.

Mr Barroso stated he wanted to ensure that cultural diversity was properly
represented on the Internet. "It's clear for me that we should not allow
monopolistic licensing structures to emerge in the internet. The repertoire
available in the internet must adequately reflect Europe's cultural
diversity," he said.

The EC guidelines presently give authors and composers the right to choose
the collecting society they want to use and also encourage collecting
societies to offer a pan-EU license to music distributors.

Artists, supported by most MEPs, ask from the EC to regulate the online
music market ensuring that CRMs provide a diversified range of music
products, arguing that the present approach does not encourage niche and
local markets. In their opinion, big CRMs will withdraw the successful
international music products from the national CRMs which would therefore
lose audience and which have a significant role in promoting and developing
local talents. Already, some publishers such as EMI have started withdrawing
the repertoires in English from some smaller CRMs.

Industry officials also say that the guidelines could become useless in
case Universal Music Group which is the world's biggest music publisher
decides to use only one collective society or even none at all.

In this sense, Universal's general counsel, Richard Constant said: "As we
try to move into a digital world, we are held back by antiquated licensing
practices. Europe is lagging behind (...) The recommendation is
fundamentally flawed. We are still having to go to each society in each
country for overpriced licenses."

Barroso rules out quick decision on online music market (9.12.2007)
http://euobserver.com/9/25302/?rk=1

EU exec stays above online music rights fray (7.12.2007)
http://www.news.com/2100-1028_3-6221934.html

EDRI-gram: Music: commission wants 1 internet clearing house (14.07.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.14/music

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5. The broadcasting treaty resuscitated by the Council of Europe
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Pending the approval of its Committee of Ministers, the Council of Europe
will try to promote a new broadcasting international document, building on
the failed convention for the protection of broadcasting signals of the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

As WIPO's 184 members have failed in agreeing upon a text for the treaty and
as the conference for a full negotiation planned for November 2007 was
postponed at the request of several member states and the European
Broadcasting Union, the Council of Europe intends to proceed on reinforcing
the initial WIPO recommendations on the matter. "I suspect that Council of
Europe member states would be very happy if the WIPO deadlock were overcome
and revert to WIPO negotiations," Jan Malinowski, head of the Council's
Media and Information Society Division, told Intellectual Property Watch.
"However, at present many feel that progress at the Council of Europe level
is desirable."

According to Malinowski, the Council would deal with the issue "by
establishing a stronger legal basis in international law [to] provide
guidance to states as to how to regulate the matter." He stated that during
the last 20 years the Council has already "elaborated other instruments
designed to enhance the protection of broadcasters neighbouring rights" such
as the "Convention on the legal protection of services based on, or
consisting of, conditional access adopted in 2001" and the "2002
Recommendation on measures to enhance the protection of the neighbouring
rights of broadcasting organisations."

IP issues have been also tackled by the Council's Convention on Cybercrime,
by dealing in a more general sense with the infringement of copyright and
related rights online or through computer systems. Also, regarding the
concerns expressed by civil rights organisations and developing countries
related to the fair access rules, Malinowski said: "A human rights-centred
approach is also necessary when examining access to education, to knowledge,
research, and I would add, also as regards cultural and artistic expression
and scientific development." He also added that "Article 10 of the European
Convention on Human Rights consecrates the right to freedom of expression
and information without interference by public authority and regardless of
frontiers".

A group of specialists of the Council of Europe has the task to prepare a
report on the trends and issues related to the protection of intellectual
property rights as well as "the fundamental right to freedom of expression
and free flow of information, access to knowledge and education, the
promoting of research and scientific development and the protection and
promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions and artistic creation"
and to make concrete proposals for actions to be taken in this area.

Broadcasting Treaty: Council of Europe Picks Up Where WIPO Left Off
(10.12.2007)
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=864

EDRI-gram: The broadcast treaty stalled by WIPO General Assembly
(11.10.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.19/broadcast

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6. Czech Big Brother Awards 2007
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A panel of nine experts including journalists and civic associations'
members chose the awards for this year BBA winners at the ceremony on 13
November 2007 in Prague, from more than 70 nominations.

The Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic received the award in the
category Lifetime Menace for having ignored basic citizen privacy protection
rights in elaborating the National Action Plan of Fighting Terrorism (NAP).
During the elaboration process of NAP the Private Data Protection Office was
not invited for discussion in issues. The Convention for the Protection of
Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data No. 108 of
the Council of Europe, adopted by the Czech Republic is not mentioned
in the National Action Plans for particular periods. The NAP also
contains concepts with significant negative impact to privacy of persons -
e.g. the plan for making of national database of biometric data for
verification of travel documents (in NAP 2005-2007, item 10.3). The NAP for
2007-2009 period again contains concepts for further spreading of camera
systems, for wider access to bank data, for access to location and further
telecommunication data.

The award in the category Greatest Corporate Invader was granted
collectively to the clients misusing the services or products of T-Mobile
service "Where is .?", Cuckoldry test from DNAtest.cz, Mobile Bug from
Goldsilver company and products of Odposlechy.com. The mentioned
technologies or services allow intrusion to privacy unknown to the involved
citizens.

The Board decided to give the Worst Public Agency or Official Award to Plzen
city, as the trustee of the municipal camera system operator (Plzen City
Municipal Property Administration) and as the trustee of Municipal Police,
for invading of citizen's privacy with camera systems and the absurd plan to
fit municipal policemen with candid cameras for revealing of serving alcohol
to teenagers (especially when uselessness of such clips as evidence is
notorious) and for misuse of the municipal camera system on 2 August 2007,
when it was used for spying of private flat either deliberately or due to
operator's failure. The Plzen city was called "the biggest administrative
snooper".

USA Government, called "the biggest international snooper", won the Award in
the category International Privacy Invader for running of a large network of
technical spying and monitoring devices called Echelon. The system monitors
electronic communication and infringes the privacy right. Moreover, the U.S.
Government refuses to publish any information that could rule out the
suspicion that the system is misused for industrial espionage and for
groundless monitoring of honest people communication.

In the category Dangerous New Technology, Martin Pegner, chief of the
DNAtest.cz project was awarded for the so called Cuckoldry test.
Promotion of this service stimulates spying of relatives. Making of DNA
tests unknown to the persons whose biological samples are concerned, is
considered by the board to be unacceptable. Absence of Ethic Code in DNA
testing which should contain requirement for the consent of the tested
persons is criticised as well.

JUDr. Stanislav Gross of JUDr. Eduard Bruna Law Office was awarded in the
category Boot in the Mouth. The Price was given for the statements in the
article published on 13 December 2006 in Lidovi Noviny, in the Horizont
section, under the title "Let us not to demonise wiretapping". The
statements "Protection of the basic values of our society in the
contemporary turbulent world will unfortunately require enlarging of state
competences having features of exceptions from the rights guaranteed by the
Constitution" and "That is why I would intercede against demonising of the
official wiretapping and for acknowledgement of their necessity in the
contemporary turbulent world" express, according to the board, unilateral
effort for strengthening repressive and monitoring activities of the state ,
with no respect to basic rights, especially privacy.

In the category Big Brother's Legal Rule the Award was given to Law No.
321/2006, which amends Law no.141/1961 about the criminal trial proceedings
(Code of Criminal Proceedings) as amended by the subsequent laws and Law no.
283/1991 about Police of the Czech Republic, so called "DNA Amendment of the
Code of Criminal Proceedings and of the Police Law". According to the
Amendment, Police is allowed to take DNA sample not only from the accused
person but also from suspected persons but it goes even further on - they
can require the sample from the "concerned" person, i.e. de facto from
anybody according to own discretion. The Amendment also smuggled this
unprecedented measure into the Police Law - the possibility of broad DNA
sampling of almost the whole imprisoned population - from the persons
serving jail sentence for premeditated criminal offence to persons subjected
to protective therapy. Finally, the Amendment introduces the possibility  to
forcefully collect DNA samples.

The Smith positive Award for privacy defenders was given to Josef Skvoreck}
Private Grammar School student representatives for their active intervention
against monitoring of students and teachers in the classrooms of the Josef
Skvoreck} Private Grammar School in 2006.

Interior Ministry, Gross win 'Big Brother' prizes (14.11.2007)
http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/212/czech_national_news/14629/

BBA 2007 press release (only in Czech, 13.11.2007)
http://www.slidilove.cz/nejvetsi_slidilove_opet_odhaleni

Video reportage of the Czech BBA 2007 (13.11.2007)
http://video.respekt.cz/Big-Brother-Awards.html

(contribution by Filip Pospisil - EDRI-member Iure Remedium - Czech
Republik)

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7. Opera complains to the EC on Microsoft's Internet Explorer
============================================================

As a result of a complaint made by the Norwegian web browser developer Opera
Software ASA, the European Commission will examine under the antitrust
regulation Microsoft's abuse in distributing the browser Internet Explorer
with the Windows operating system.

Opera Software states that Microsoft does not follow accepted web standards
and therefore hinders programme developers in making programs that work with
each other. In spite its many innovations in the field, the Norwegian
company, although successful in making browsers for mobile phones, has
failed to gain a share of the browser market on the Internet which is
dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "Microsoft's unilateral control
over standards in some markets creates a de facto standard that is more
costly to support, harder to maintain, and technologically inferior and that
can even expose users to security risks," argued Opera.

This action follows the sucessfull one taken by EU antitrust authorities
which determined the unbundling of Media Player from Windows operating
system, in October this year.

The complaint issued by Opera is supported by ICT software and hardware
providers such as Oracle, Nokia, Adobe, IBM and by the European Committee
for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). Thomas Vinje, ECIS spokesman and legal
councillor stated in a press release on 13 December 2007: "By tying its
Internet Explorer product to its monopoly Windows operating system and
refusing to faithfully implement industry-accepted open standards, Microsoft
deprives consumers of a real choice in internet browsers".

Related to this complaint, Microsoft commented: "We will, of course,
cooperate with any inquiries into these issues, but we believe the inclusion
of the browser into the operating system benefits consumers, and that
consumers and PC manufacturers already are free to choose any browsers they
wish".

During a press briefing on 12 December 2007, Jonathan Todd, the spokesman
for Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes stated that the Commission would
examine the complaint but that it was too early to make any "intelligent
comment".

Opera complains to EU about Microsoft's IE bundling (13.12.2007)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_7712063?nclick_check=1

A new EU competition case looms for Microsoft (14.12.2007)
http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/new-eu-competition-case-looms-microsoft/article-169118

EDRi-gram: EU court confirms the 497 million euro fine against Microsoft
(26.09.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.18/microsoft-decision-tpi

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8. ENDitorial : "No Swiss DMCA" Referendum campaign
============================================================

Like everywhere else, DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) systems
which impose technical restrictions on what end users can do with
texts and multimedia content are highly unpopular also in Switzerland.

At the same time, the representatives of the entertainment industry
claim that this technology is necessary, and politicians are inclined
to believe their view that there should be a law against circumvention
of DRM system. The main difference from most other countries is that
Swiss citizens are able to force a national vote about the change of
the law by collecting 50 000 signatures.

Of course the politicians know this and take it into account already
when discussing legal proposals in the commissions of the Parliament.  As
a result, even though the copyright law revision adds a prohibition
against breaking DRM systems and against marketing computer programs
which have this purpose, this prohibition is significantly restricted
by a clause which says that it cannot be enforced against anyone who
circumvents DRM systems only for purposes that are explicitly allowed
by the law, such as making a small number of copies of music or video
CDs for friends, or reverse engineering. In this regard, the Swiss
copyright law allows more than the corresponding laws of many other
countries.

The big question is of course whether these restrictions of the
prohibition against breaking DRM systems are sufficient to prevent
DRM systems from having a severe negative impact on society.  There
are serious doubts about that and, while the draft law was under
consideration in the two chambers of the Parliament and their legal
affairs commissions, these concerns have been pointed out by various
organizations representing Swiss consumers and business interests
which are opposed to DRM.  Nevertheless, in the judgement of these
organizations, the revision that the Swiss Parliament decided on is not
such a bad compromise to make them want to organize or support a
referendum campaign against it.

In spite of this, someone has now announced a referendum campaign
against the revision of copyright law.  Since the organizations which
have so far been active in this political process are not supporting
it, no-one expects the campaign to have much success, but of course
surprises are always possible in politics.

Campaign website
http://www.no-dmca.ch

Swiss DADVSI : a petition for a referendum is launched (only in French,
4.12.2007)
http://www.ratiatum.com/breve6160_DADVSI_suisse_une_petition_pour_un_referendum_est_lancee.html

(Contribution by Norbert Bollow - EDRI-member Swiss Internet User Group)

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9. Recommended Reading
============================================================

HuriSearch - Developed by HURIDOCS, HuriSearch is the first and only
comprehensive search engine specialized in human rights.  It provides direct
full text search of over 4 000 human rights websites. Currently over 3 100
000 pages are indexed.
http://www.hurisearch.org

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10. Agenda
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27-30 December, Berlin, Germany
24th Chaos Communication Congress
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Main_Page

17 January 2008, London, UK
Nanotechnology for security and the crime prevention III
http://www.nano.org.uk/events/ionevents.htm#security

18 January 2008, Torino, Italy
COMMUNIA Workshop: "Technology and the public domain"
http://ws1-2008.communia-project.eu

22 January 2008, London, UK
Gov 2.0, or Truly Transformative Government
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=169

12 February 2008, Brussels, Belgium
European ICT standardisation policy at a crossroad: A new direction for
global success
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/standards/cf2008_en.htm

10-12 March 2008, Geneva, Switzerland
WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights: Sixteenth Session
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=14502

17-18 June 2008, Seoul, Korea
The Future of the Internet Economy - OECD Ministerial Meeting
http://www.oecd.org/FutureInternet

23-25 July 2008, Leuven, Belgium
The 8th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2008)
http://petsymposium.org/2008/

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11. About
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EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe.
Currently EDRI has 28 members based or with offices in 17 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 visibly on the
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Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram at edri.org>

Information about EDRI and its members:
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