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On 20 February 2008 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a Declaration on protecting the dignity, security and privacy of children on the Internet. This Declaration focuses on the content that children can create about themselves on the Internet, including all forms of traces that they can leave online (logs, records and processing). "We are determined to ensure that our children can use the Internet safely, and that the Internet cannot be used against them", said Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The Committee is aware that children...

On 29 January 2008, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice issued its judgment in case C-275/06, Productores de Música de España (Promusicae) v. Telefónica de España SAU (Telefónica). Promusicae is a non-profit-making organisation of producers and publishers of musical and audiovisual recordings. It asked the Spanish Juzgado de lo Mercantil No. 5 de Madrid (Commercial Court No 5, Madrid) for Telefónica to be ordered to disclose the identities and physical addresses of certain persons whom it provided with Internet access services. According to Promusicae, those persons used the peer-to-peer...

Although the right of reply “for any person named or designated in an online communication service” was instituted by Article 6 IV of the Act on Trust in the Digital Economy of 21 June 2004, the method for its application needed to be set out in a decree. This has only been adopted on 24 October 2007. The text begins by defining the method whereby people can request to exercise their right of reply. Thus it is necessary for the applicant to indicate the references of the message, the conditions for public access to the online communication service, and - if it is mentioned - the name of the originator....

On 4 October 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted its Resolution 1577 (2007) and Recommendation 1814 (2007), both entitled, “Towards decriminalisation of defamation”. In Resolution 1577, the PACE reiterates the importance it has consistently attached to freedom of expression of journalists as an essential feature of democracy (see IRIS 2003-2/2 and IRIS 2007-5/102). The Resolution acknowledges the legitimate aim of anti-defamation laws (i.e., to protect the reputation and rights of others), but urges that they be applied “with the utmost restraint since they...

In a recently published ruling of 13 July 2007 (Az. 1 BvR 1783/05), the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) took a decision on the issue of the limits of artistic freedom, a right guaranteed under the constitution. In the case before the court, a novel (“Esra”) depicted intimate details of a love relationship between the Esra character and the first-person narrator, a writer, together with the associated family surroundings. The sometime girlfriend of the author and her mother have recognised themselves in the characters portrayed in the novel and instituted proceedings against the publication...