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Positive Rights News From Europe
Various readers are sending in good news from Europe on the rights front. First, at the EU level, Mark.J brings word that the European Parliament has canned a number of controversial amendments to its updated Telecoms Package, which could have resulted in ISPs being forced to disconnect customers for involvement in illegal file-sharing of copyrighted material. Next, SplatMan_DK writes from Denmark on a recent ruling by the Danish High Court that means that Danes are still innocent until proven guilty in copyright cases, even if their IP address has been confirmed as the origin of P2P traffic involving copyrighted music. Finally, from Sweden, an update on the draconian so-called Lex Orwell, which would have effectively resulted in the routine wiretapping of the entire nation. Eric Blair sends a link on an agreement reached between the Swedish parliament and the sitting government on a new form for the controversial signals intelligence law. Supposedly, the sting has been taken out of the law: only the department of defense and the cabinet may request data, and they'll have to get court approval for it.
Eric Blair was a visionary, but he is dead now.
It's not news about positive rights, it's positive news about rights.
The "critics" who are now stating that the law is now acceptable to all critics are mainly members and supporters of the current government who in many cases voted for the original law because they didn't want to go against the party line (of their party Folkpartiet).
Now they feel that they can "compromise" and seem like they're against the original law while still not going against the party. If you check the websites of Piratpartiet (The pirate party) and StoppaFRAlagen.nu then you'll see that they, the chief critics of the law, are still against the revised law.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Countries that aren't members of EU are usually trying to become more European so that they can join the European Union. In this sense to me it makes sense use Europe and European Union as synonyms as after all eventually all countries in Europe that are not part of EU will become part of it.
Switzerland is quite central within Europe, but dosn't show much interest in becoming part of the EU. Nor does the largest European country, Russia...
Uhm, no. Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, all countries that have elected to not be part of EU, but are still very much European countries, unless there was recent tectonic activity I was unaware of. If Europe is the trademark of the EU, nobody send that memo around Europe, that's for sure.
When the referenced site says that even the staunchest critics are now happy with the law, it is just not true.
The problem is still that the Swedish authorities will not just get the permission from this new special court to investigate "issues".
The Swedish government require that all ISP's provide the Swedish state with a copy of every single packet that crosses the Swedish border. They will not need permission from the special court to collect our traffic.