FULOG

The blocking of access to users Italians adopted through the seizure of the the Italian providers’s  IP and DNS, in case of alleged defamation, must be considered excessive in relation to the legal right to be protected.

The seizure of a website should be  solely on one or more offensive phrases and only if the sentences haven’t  been deleted in the meantime (which in the case had already been made by the owner of the site, as certified by fax sent to the provider by the police post on March 9 the same note).

This was decided by the Court of the Freedom of Belluno, Italy, chaired by the President of the Court Sergio Trentanovi (Judge Antonella Coniglio and Elizabeth Scolozzi) ,  on March 9.

The site Vajont.info, except one  ironic phrase against an Italian Silvio Berlusconi Party Mps, On. Maurizio Paniz, must then return in its entirety on the web.

The Court therefore accepts the claim of the 200 Internet Service  Provider of  Confcommercio,  belonging to the Association “Assoprovider”, proposed by the lawyer Fulvio Sarzana di S.Ippolito, who, immediately protested to the amplitude of the measure imposed by the judge for preliminary investigations of Belluno Sergio Giancotti.
The provider had complained about the serious risks to the constitutional rights of free expression and the right to information related to execution of the measure.
The lawyer had argued the measure in front of  the Board chaired by the President of the Court on March 9.
The Court established two principles:
1) The Judge of preliminary investigations  would only order the seizure of the alleged defamatory words and not the entire site, arguing that otherwise would place serious  risks  to the protection of freedom of thought, freedom of speech and press as protected by Article 21 of the italian Constitution.
2) The measure of inhibition to the Italian surfers through the ISP’s DNS and IP covered by the order of execution signed by the prosecutor are too high in order to the good to  be protected, in this case the reputation of  Hon Maurizio Paniz.

An enourmous error led to two Danish ISPs mistakenly blocking around 8,000 websites, including Google and Facebook, for several hours on the grounds of containing child pornography. Customers of the Siminn ISP who tried to access the affected pages were greeted with the following message:

“The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police [NITEC], who assist in investigations into crime on the internet, has informed Siminn Denmark A/S, that the internet page which your browser has tried to get in contact with may contain material which could be regarded as child pornography. Upon the request of The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police, Siminn Denmark A/S has blocked the access to the internet page.”

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) introduced two days ago at the USA Senat,  the Strengthening and Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information, and Technology Act of 2012 (SECURE IT Act).

The bill’s cosponsors include Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Dan Coats (R-IN), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Richard Burr (R-NC).

In a hearing in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last month, Senator McCain expressed procedural and substantive concerns about the “Cybersecurity Act of 2012,” S. 2105, which was sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV), and he announced his intention to put forward a competing cybersecurity bill

Trade commissioner Karel De Gucht announced the move on Wednesday, saying he shared protestors’ concerns about freedoms and rights. He said the referral to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) would cut through the “fog of uncertainty” surrounding the pact.

”I am glad to say that this morning my fellow commissioners have discussed and agreed in general with my proposal to refer the ACTA agreement to the European Court of Justice,” De Gucht said in a statement. “We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible — in any way — with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information, or data protection and the right to property, in case of intellectual property.”

source: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/intellectual-property/2012/02/22/acta-to-be-examined-by-top-eu-court-40095104/

The Judge of the preliminary investigations of Belluno, Italy,  on  request of local Prosecutor, has ordered the seizure of www.Vajont.info portal, the website that told with pictures and articles, the story of the massacre following the collapse of the dam Vajont of 1963, that claimed the death of 1910 people, for a sentence considered offensive to the reputation of Mr Domenico  Scilipoti and Maurizio Paniz,  two MPs from the majority of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

On 12 February 2008, while launching the International Year of Planet Earth, UNESCO cited the Vajont Dam tragedy as one of five “cautionary tales”, caused by “the failure of engineers and geologists”
The measure requested by the prosecutor  however, has been adopted not only for a page containing the sentence or   the whole portal, but also against 226 internet service providers Italians, who were ordered to “restraining the respective users access to the web www.vajont.info, with aliases and domain names present and future, returning to that site, the static IP address that at the time of seizure is associated the said domain name, and any additional static IP address that will be associated in the future (interdiction to address resolution via DNS). “

The European Court of Justice has issued a ruling today in the case SABAM v Netlog NV where it confirms its prior decision in the Scarlet case.

The Court first ruled that the implementation of general filtering systems collides with the prohibition contained in the E-Commerce Directive to Member States to impose a general obligation to monitor on service providers conducting activities of mere conduit, caching and hosting.

On 10 July 2010, the Brussels Court of First Instance denied the penalty payment request and submitted a question for preliminary ruling. The Court of First Instance asked the European Court whether or not a national judge may issue an injunction against a hosting service provider to filter most of the information stored on its servers in order to identify electronic files containing musical, cinematographic or audio-visual work, and subsequently to block the exchange of such files. The injunction that SABAM requested covered all Netlog customers, in abstracto and as a preventive measure.

 In today’s decision, the Court decided that it is against European law to order such a measure. The generality and broadness of such an injunction is against freedom of communication, privacy rights and freedom to conduct business.

Spain’s Supreme Court has agreed to consider a complaint brought by a group representing web users against the government’s so-called ‘ley Sinde’ anti-download law that aims to protect copyright material.

The appeal also requested an injunction of the codes, which will be enforced starting March 1.

The Supreme Court gave the government 10 days to address the request. Regardless of the injunction, any move to shut down web pages will eventually be conditioned by the court’s ruling.