Internet Governance Forum and censorship in Egypt

Interesting to see that the 4th annual United Nations meeting on Internet governance is taking place in the country which is 143rd on the list of media freedoms and with Reporters Without Frontiers formally protesting about the dictatorship's treatment of bloggers:

“Egypt’s legitimacy to host such a meeting is questionable as it has repeatedly been guilty of violations of online free expression,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is astonishing that a government that is openly hostile to Internet users is assigned the organisation of an international meeting on the Internet’s future. Egypt is one of the enemies of the Internet and if Internet governance requires a degree of regulation, it should be of a liberal nature and not the kind that the Egyptian government would like to impose.”

There have four reminders of Egypt’s readiness to censor the Internet in the past two weeks alone. Police arrested two young bloggers, Mohamed Adel, 20, and Amr Osama, 19, and their lawyer, Amr Ezz, in central Cairo on the night of 3 November on charges of “spreading false news and rumours liable to disturb the peace” and gave them a beating after escorting them to El-Azbakeya police station. They were released the next morning. Adel was previously detained for three months and tortured after being arrested in November 2008. At the end of October, the authorities abandoned an investigation into a police officer, Ashraf Aglan, and his brother, Ahmed Aglan, who attacked another blogger, Wael Abbas (see his blog http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com/). The prosecutor said it was dropped for lack of evidence although three medical reports confirm Abbas’ injuries. Ayman Nour, a human rights lawyer who defends freedom of expression, was forbidden to leave the country on 4 November, as he was about to fly to the United States. He was given no reason for the ban.

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Tribunal appeal: Wilders wins right to enter UK to show film

Unsurprisingly the politically-motivated decision by the now-former Home Secretary to ban a controversial Dutch politician from the UK has been overturned on appeal.

"Substantial evidence of actual harm would be needed before it would be proper for a government to prevent the expression and discussion of matters that might form the opinions of legislators, policy makers and voters,"Judge CMG Ockelton, who chaired the tribunal, said. The ruling said there had been no evidence of public order problems or damage to community relations as a result of a previous visit by Wilders to Britain.

"It was more important to allow free speech than to take restrictive action speculatively," said Ockelton. The judgment goes further, saying that even if there were evidence that Wilders posed a threat to public order it would still not have been necessary to ban him because the police would have been able to ensure no disorder took place and remove him if there was trouble.

Dutch court rules on privacy against international news agency

This case is interesting both for its definition of privacy within the activities covered, the decision to sue news agency rather than the newspapers in Netherlands, the Code of Conduct which Dutch media had signed, and for the implications for other countries, such as France with tighter privacy laws, and the US with almost none.

Geert Wilders wins 17% vote and 4 European seats in election

The anti-Islamic party has big wins, obviously not inconsiderably assisted by the UK Home Secretary's decision to resign - she has since left the British government to retire.

Is Times offset by Jameel?

The recent (March 2009) Times libel case before the ECHR may be offset by the reform of libel law in the Jameel case (2005) before the English Court of Appeal, in which the Chancellor of Essex University Lord Phillips gave judgment.

ECHR fails to prevent permanent liability for UK libel

This decision which effectively removes Internet archives from UK jurisdiction inspired Jack Straw to launch a consultation on Internet libel (partly in response to a Private Eye campaign and US Congressional condemnation of UK Libel law). More academic comment here.