Legislation

ONI Blog: South African politician wants to ban online porn
As China unblocks a wave of pornographic sites, South Africa's Deputy Minister of Home Affairs has declared his intent to ban all digital pornography in the country. The stated goal of the draft bill (PDF), developed in conjunction with...
ONI Blog: German President Köhler signed Internet filter law
After having refused to pass the Internet filter law for the last eight months, German President Köhler agreed to do so by signing it on 17 February 2010. The law is expected to be officially published in the middle of March 2010. Köhler's...
ONI Blog: Jordan to Apply Press Law to Digital Content
Jordan has long stood out as a beacon in a region of heavy Internet filtering. Bordered by--among others--Syria and Saudi Arabia, two of the Middle East's worst offenders, Jordan has filtered only one Web site, arabtimes.com, for the past decade. That...
ONI Blog: Malaysia considers, backs down from national Internet filter
Last week Malaysia's Information, Communications and Culture Minister Dr. Rais Yatim announced that the country would consider implementing a nationwide Internet filtering plan similar to China's Green Dam. This week, the Prime Minister pulled an about face, claiming there...
ONI Blog: Australia's Conroy named Internet Villain of the Year
Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has come under fire from Australian citizens and digital activists around the world for his attempts to increase Internet filtering in Australia. This week, the UK Internet Service Providers'...
ONI Blog: French Constitutional Court declares "three strikes" law unconstitutional
Today the French Constitutional Council declared France's "three strikes" law unconstitutional. The Council ruled that HADOPI, the agency in charge of administering the law, has the authority to warn Internet users who are caught violating the law, but not to...
ONI Blog: Is Internet Use a Superfluous Expense?
By Renata Ávila and Firuzeh Shokooh Valle On March 25, 2009 the Government of Venezuela issued a decree (Decree 6649) that implements measures to reduce the superfluous or luxurious expenses of the government. The decree establishes that “superfluous or luxury spending is...
ONI Blog: Can they hear me now? (On ICT regulations, governments, and transparency)
On February 11, Vodafone's global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, revealed that Vodafone handed over communications data to the Egyptian authorities in response to government demands. This data may have been used to help identify rioters who were...
ONI Blog: India: Petition to block Google Earth
According to reports published in The Register and The Times of London, an Indian court has been called to ban Google Earth in response to intelligence indicating that the satellite imaging was used in planning November’s terrorist attack’s...

Pages