Europe

Regional Overview: Europe
Note: a previous version of this profile is available at Europe, 2006-2007. Introduction The Internet in Europe is controlled predominantly through a combination of governments and information and communication technology (ICT) companies. Countries, whether members of the 27 member European Union (EU) or...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: July 27, 2012
The Beijing police have announced a successful "clean-up" of the web, in which ten thousand internet cafes were inspected, five thousand people were arrested for Internet crime, and seven thousand web site administrators were punished. The police described the clean-up as...
ONI Blog: Leaked CETA Draft Provokes ACTA Comparisons, Transparency Worries
Activists who have been rallying against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) saw the European Parliament rejection of the treaty earlier this month as a triumph over a piece of legislation they argued could have been used to censor content and silence...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: July 20, 2012
A controversial Russian piece of legislation that would give the government broad powers over the Internet was passed by the upper house of parliament. Opponents of this law fear that it could lead to an increase in online censorship. ...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: July 13, 2012
The Russian Duma, the lower house of Parliament, unanimously passed a controversial Internet bill after four amendments were inserted. While these amendments were inserted to substantially narrow the criteria under which the government could shut down a site deemed...
ONI Blog: FBI shuts down DNSChanger servers
The FBI shut down down all servers associated with the DNSChanger malware today, potentially cutting off hundreds of thousands of computers from the Internet. When discovered, the DNSChanger malware system was tied to an IT company in Estonia. ...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: July 6, 2012
Twitter unveiled its first Twitter Transparency Report, which will document the requests the microblogging service receives from governments and copyright holders asking Twitter to take down content or release user information. According to the first report, which covered the period...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: June 22, 2012
On Monday, Google released its bi-annual transparency report, documenting a drastic increase of takedown notices from around the globe. Highlights include a 49% increase in content censorship in India and a huge spike in requests from democratic regimes. The International...
ONI Blog: Threats to the Open Net: June 15, 2012
On Thursday, the UK Home Department released a draft of the Communications Bill. Home Secretary Theresa May defended the bill saying, “If we stand by as technology changes, we will leave police officers fighting crime with one hand tied behind...
ONI Blog: Public WiFi Filtering on the Rise
The London summer Olympic games are readily approaching, and Internet Service Providers are responding to the expected dramatic rise in the London population in the coming months by increasing their free public WiFi service offerings. Virgin is rolling out...

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