EC to censor Internet by mandating filtering: 'Cleanternet'?

To illustrate just how good intentions can lead to censorship and encourage others to follow our lead, here's what the naive newbie Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom intends to do - divert resources from removing child porn websites by mandating a pan-European filtering system.
First, it was child porn, then extreme porn, then suicide sites, then terrorist support, then racism, then xenophobia, then gender discrimination, then libel, then they took your children away...this video nicely shows how it works.
It fits with a broader consumer rights agenda for Europe (the 'Stockholm' syndrome?) that is led by Viviane Reding and generally looks pro-freedom and privacy (p11-Reding) and scary censoring (p35/36 Malmstrom):

• Communication on new legal framework for data protection after entry into force of Lisbon Treaty;
• New comprehensive legal framework for data protection (but note pp29-30);
• Communication on 'Privacy and Trust in Digital Europe': ensuring citizens’ confidence in new services;
• Recommendation to authorise the negotiation of a personal data protection agreement with US;
• Communication on core elements for data protection in EU-3rd country agreements for law enforcement purposes. I hope the EC uses the study I worked on in 2007 - I was responsible for the India bit!

20 Years of Solicitude, and Commissioner Kroes, An Apology

As HPL points out in the comment on my previous post, I intimated too much credit to Commissioner Kroes, she merely appended some words to the June 2009 mobile roaming regulation. I look forward to giving her more credit when prices are reduced from 20,000%+ above wholesale cost, in the near future.
But lets give her credit where its due. In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission began its inquiry into Microsoft Windows pricing/bundling policies. In 1997, the great State of Texas (full disclosure: I am an honorary citizen), began its landmark antitrust action against Microsoft for bundling Internet Explorer into Windows95 -  which it fought to the bitter end in 2004, even though Dubya's DoJ spat the dummy.
Today marks the day that Microsoft finally is giving consumers a (somewhat redundant and almost mandatory) choice of browser under settlement of the EC case which began in 1993 (Novell) and again 1998 (Sun). Its in your Update - I keep having to stop it happening as I use Chrome - that address/search bar is bundled genius.
And just as the Roaming Regulation is carried over from Commissioner Reding, so this remedy is carried over from Commissioner Kroes. So well done!
That brings me to the complaint against Google. I am expecting 20 years of activity on this, too - though as with Microsoft and its Passport/.NET case, I expect Google to find its relations with privacy law - yes, Mme Reding - to become sticky long before any antitrust action. I have a research student engaged in research in this field, and its only tangentially relevant to net neutrality (its a counter-attack aided by Vodafone and Microsoft if you believe the rumours and of course the Barcelona speeches at the Congress).
Gloves are off, battle will commence.

FacelessBook and Safer Internet Day

Yesterday was Safer Internet Day, apparently - and the head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (coppers, since you ask, devoted to stranger danger', instead of stepdads, priests, Scout leaders and the usual suspects) suggested you'll be safer with...Internet Explorer 8.
Ok, pick yourself up off the floor, it wasn't meant to be THAT funny.
More pertinently, co-regulation of social networking raised its European head, and one of Mme Reding's last acts as INFSO Commissioner featured the Safer Social Networking Principles with a signing ceremony in Luxembourg. 
Now co-regulation normally means legislation, which she is threatening to inflict on Facebook: “If it’s not done by self-regulation, then regulation has to come in,” Reding said in an interview in her office in Brussels. “I wouldn’t like to do it; I will do it if necessary.”
In the case of the Principles - which are mainly about stopping cyberbullying and the proliferation of kids on Facebook, the Commission did not introduce legislation but softer measures - a Taskforce and its position as broker.
Which brings me to my beef about Facelessbook - which I shall reproduce in the vain hope that they actually employ customer services people:
'Dear sirs

Last Thursday my Facebook account was disabled for breaking terms of use 
- particularly ironic as I was sending a message to a friend who has 
just joined Facebook, when I realized his 9-year-old son had an account 
with 70 friends. Pasting your terms of use into the message resulted in 
it being flagged for abuse - I suspect a child had rather cleverly 
flagged your exact warnings about under-age users as abuse!

I am interested to see whether any of these email addresses produces an 
answer as the email I first used resulted in no response over this 5-day 
period, no matter which account I emailed from.

Sincerely...'

I think I'll have to contact Richard Allan, formerly MP for Sheffield Hallam, then at Cisco, now Facebook Europe - who is definitely one of the good guys in public policy for the Internet. Richard also spent time at the Oxford Internet Institute when I was there in 2004. Richard reported on Facebook's policies to the EC recently.

P.S. It gets worse - 6 weeks and no answer from a human (1 automated email asking if I had solved the problem!), and Facebook's delightful founder's ethics come fully into the spotlight.

Reding v. Kroes, round one

Viviane Reding may be on her way out of DG Info Society, but it seems like she'll be bringing along some pet projects to her new Fundamental Rights Directorate. EurActiv reports today that Reding's personal priority will be updating the outdated Data Protection Directive, and sources close to Reding insinuate that her focus shall be on online privacy. Never mind that much of online privacy is being dealt with in the ePrivacy Directive, for which Reding's former Directorate is responsible.

Not coincidentally, Reding and the new commissioner at Information Society—Neelie Kroes—reportedly do not get along well. The heated debate between Kroes and Reding over functional separation of telecom operators of 2007 most clearly testified to their icy relationship.

So is a turf war to follow? Reding's approach seems to suggest that she already fired the first shot. After all, while she stresses that the Data Protection Directive has not been revised in 15 years, she does nowhere mention the 'particularizing and complementing' role of the ePrivacy Directive alongside the Data Protection laws. Moreover, the ePrivacy Directive has officially been revised only a month ago—which took place under Reding's watch.

I'm curious to see if and how Neelie Kroes will respond. Only then it can be determined whether we've got a fight on our hands...