There is no censorship in Italy, but...

"Censorship" was abolished and outlawed in Italy sixtytwo years ago. Freedom of the press and of personal opinion is not only established by the Constitution, but also deeply rooted in custom and in all perceptions of civil society. There are, however, some worrying facts. The concentration in a few hands of a large part of the information system. A general, "centralized" myopia of the "dominant culture", that is partly deliberate manipulation and partly unintentional ignorance. A sly, apparently "benevolent", culture of superficiality and vagueness that tends to lull, confuse and subdue.

A disturbing maverick, in this context, is the internet. Originally feared, later ambiguously applauded, anyhow misunderstood, the net remains annoying for those who are in the habit of having control and are irritated,

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Russian and Ingush human rights organizations, as well as OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), are asking for an investigation into the circumstances of the murder of Magomed Yevloyev, the publisher of ingushetiya.ru, an independent news website in Ingushetia region.

Yevloyev was a strong critic of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov. His website had reported on alleged Russian security force brutality in Ingushetia, a poor Russian region of about half a million people, mostly Muslims. Yevloyev was detained on 31 August by local Interior Ministry officials at Magas airport as he was returning to Ingushetia from Moscow and, according to the police, he was accidentally shot in the head while driven in a police car.

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In an investigation started by the Bergamo Prosecutors, an Order of the Justice for preliminary investigation of the Court of Bergamo was issued on 1 August 2008, asking for the "seizure" of the PirateBay website, hosted outside Italy, for displaying a collection of links to allegedly illegal duplicated material. The order was implemented by 10 August 2008 by forcing Italian Internet providers to block the access to that site, both to its domain, as well as to its associated IP number.

The PirateBay owners quickly reacted and changed their IP address and set up a new website called labaia.org (La Baia means The Bay in Italian). They have also promoted measures to bypass the "blacklisting": "We have already

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On 7 July 2008, a Russian blogger was sentenced to one year suspended jail after having been found guilty of "inciting hatred and enmity" for a comment left on a LiveJournal weblog.

According to Kommersant newspaper, the young blogger Savva Terentiev was saying on the blog that "Those who become cops are scum," and calling for officers to be put on a bonfire. For his alleged offence, inciting hatred and denigrating the human dignity of a social group, the prosecutors were asking for a significant fine and two years behind bars, which seemed excessive. During the trial, Terentyev referred to his statements on the blog that corrupt cops should burned in Auschwitz-like ovens as "hyperbole

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On 6 June 2008, the blog of the Italian journalist Antonino Monteleone was closed, without notification, by the Polizia Postale of Calabria under accusations of defamation, but the journalist claims that this action came after having posted uncomfortable information on political figures.

The whole story started in 2006 after the elections, when the blogger posted extracts from a document containing CVs of candidates for the Italian Parliament. The document included information of certain names on the nomination list that had previous relations to cases of power abuse and manipulation of tenders or even with mafia activities. On 9 December 2006, Monteleone posted an article on Galati, member of UDP party then, undersecretary in the

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French Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced on 10 June 2008 that the French state had come to an agreement with the French ISPs to block sites carrying pedophilic content or content related to terrorism and racial hatred. "We can no longer tolerate the sexual exploitation of children in the form of cyber-pedophilia. We have come to an agreement: the access to child pornography sites will be blocked in France. Other democracies have done it. France could wait no longer" said the minister.

The plan will be put into force in September by the creation of a blacklist on the basis of information received from Internet users on sites that carry offensive material. Internet users will be able, via a platform, to signal

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Lex Orwell, a law proposal for total surveillance, is urgently being pushed to a vote on 17 June 2008 by national security hawks in the peaceful Kingdom of Sweden. It will mandate the "NSA franchise", the FRA, to turn its forest of parabola ears and world's 5th largest super computer to listen to you - or rather what you do, say and share on the Internet - would an information package pass the Swedish borders.

FRA is the Swedish shorthand for The National Defence Radio Establishment. An institution very active during the cold war but without a clear task or purpose today since material from satellite traffic from military activities the Baltics isn't particularly a la mode any more. To stay in business, FRA has therefore for years pursued

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Several Radio Free Europe websites were under a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in the past week. The attacks started on 26 April 2008, the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, primary targeted at the Belarus Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) service which was offering live coverage of a rally of protest organized in Minsk against the plight of uncompensated victims and a government decision to build a new nuclear plant.

Martins Zvaners, RFE spokesman, thinks that was the largest attack ever experienced by RFE. At its peak, the DDoS attack was sending more than 50000 requests to the RFE sites, flooding its servers' capacity and throwing them

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The Russian prosecutor's office wants to extend the anti-extremism laws to the Internet, proposing an amendment to the rules that presently govern printed media on the basis of which newspapers considered by the court to have published extremist material can be shut down.

In terms of the new proposal, which began circulating in the State Duma's Security Committee on 10 April 2008, any kind of material considered extremist or website deemed to have hosted extremist material should be blocked by ISPs. If found guilty of repeatedly hosting extremist materials, the website will be shut down. A list of extremist Internet-based materials and sites must be regularly made available and the ISPs will be bound to

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A French Parliamentary report suggests a change in the law (LCEN) that implements the European Directive on e-commerce in order to make clearer the distinction between editing and hosting activities in the new applications related to Web 2.0.

The report of the Deputy Jean Dionis du Séjour on the application of the LCEN was updated on 16 April 2008, after the first version was submitted to the Parliament on 23 January. The update concerns some of the latest court decisions in France that established the responsibility of some websites for others' RSS feeds or for user-generated content. The report specifies that the law has created a hosting status that is different from that of an