2 links on proposed new legislations

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

Hi. Just wanted to let you know of a couple of things.
Tell me if this is off-topic.

1.- Hague convention.
http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/whatyoushouldknow.html
I've been sent this. It seems that they are planning an 
agreement among 49 countries so that the jurisdictions are 
blurred and software patents, reverse engineering 
prohibitions, etc. legal in one country may be inforced in another.

2.- Spanish LSSI / European directive 2000/31
A proposed law in Spain (Ley de los Servicios de la 
Sociedad de la Información, LSSI) would allow the goverment 
to censor content in Internet (without asking a judge) 
and require registration prior to publication, 
forcing ISPs to keep historical logs and police the net.
At lest according to the analysis of some people this vulnerates 
basic freedoms of speech, etc. This would
probably make it more difficult to publish anything on the 
web, including free software. The uproar against this law 
is more about freedom of speech than free software, but 
free software is about freedom of speech, too. 
I've heard that there are similar laws in France and Italy
(is this the same as the one forcing sottware distribution 
media to bear goverment produced identification labels?).
They're all implementations of the 2000/31 directive, but 
the Spanish LSSI seems to go much further than the directive 
requires. Not that everybody likes the directive, either, 
but I'm told it is somewhat less serious than the LSSI.
One of the groups against the proposed law is Kriptopolis:
http://www.kriptopolis.com/lssi/index.html
Others, like AI, propose modifications.

-- 
Xavier Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org