By Cory Doctorow
In September 2018, a key European vote brought the EU much closer to a system of universal mass censorship and surveillance, in the name of defending copyright.

by Jeremy Malcolm, EDRi member Electronic Frontier Foundation
The ruthless efficiency with which the Spanish government censored the internet ahead of the referendum on Catalonian independence foreshadowed the severity of its crackdown at polling places on 1 October. EDRi member Electronic Frontier Foundation previously wrote about one aspect of that censorship; the raid of the .cat top-level domain registry. But there was much more to it than that, and many of the more than 140 censored domains and internet services continue to be blocked today.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is calling on the Bangladeshi authorities to rescind the blocking of 35 news websites that RSF said the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) implemented today without giving any official reason. RSF also calls for the withdrawal of all charges against Probir Sikdar, the editor of the Daily Bangla 71 newspaper and the U71news.com website, who is accused of defaming government officials on Facebook in August 2015.

By Edri.org
Engelli Web is an independent monitoring website that lists websites blocked by the Turkish government. Currently it lists over 80 000 domains and the number keeps rising. The real figure is probably much higher, because the government does not disclose the exact list of banned sites.

by Christopher Talib, La Quadrature du Net, France
In recent years, France has increasingly tightened its laws on crimes committed on the Internet. From the LOPPSI law voted in 2012 to the latest anti-terror law voted in November 2014, the bill on Intelligence announced on 19 March by the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, is fully consistent with a history of repressive Internet legislation.

By EDRi
In recent years, online censorship and the deteriorating situation regarding the freedom of speech has raised serious concerns in Turkey. The large majority of the traditional mainstream media is either directly or indirectly under the government control, and the Internet remains one of the few channels for free speech. However, the government is repeatedly taking measures to control also the Internet. On 2 October 2014, the Turkish Constitutional Court overturned an amendment to the Internet law that would have given additional censorship powers to the Turkish Telecommunications Authority (TIB).

by Joe McNamee, EDRi
Following the European Court of Justice ruling on the UPC Telekabel v Constantin in April 2014, Austrian internet access providers have started “blocking” several websites. In the case in question, the Court established that an injunction may be imposed on an internet access provider (ISP) “prohibiting an internet service provider from allowing” its customers access to a website “when that injunction does not specify the measures which that access provider must take.”

by Kirsten Fiedler, EDRi
Despite many setbacks, bad publicity, budget cuts and a change of government, France is persisting with its Hadopi, a “three strikes law” and government agency to enforce copyright laws and fight online “piracy”. Even more worrying, the country's Minister of Culture is now making moves to curb online rights even further.

By Joe McNamee, EDRi
For the past number of years, Google has chosen to impose US copyright law on the world, completely de-indexing any website which fulfils the non-judicial criteria of a valid order under American law. Last year alone, it removed 222 000 000 links, which means 74 links per second. In addition to applying US copyright law globally, it also applies national law nationally. So, Google will also delete or de-index in any European country, on the basis of the national law of that country as well as deleting or de-indexing in any European country on the basis of US law.