Commissioner pours scorn on internet freedom law

New EU laws to protect freedom on the internet and force ISPs to stand up to authoritarian regimes are "unnecessary" and proposed penalties are "heavy", EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding told the European Parliament this week.
"We should not put European companies in an invidious position where their choice appears to be to break the law or leave the market to more unscrupulous operators," Reding argued. "Our goal should be to find ways to allow operators and service providers to respect human rights without doing either."
This is an important contribution to a debate that has been rumbling on since 2007, when the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA) was introduced to the US House of Representatives. After a preamble that makes much of the threat to freedom posed by censorship under authoritarian regimes in Belarus, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran and China, it asserts: "It shall be the policy of the United States to promote as a fundamental component of foreign policy the right of everyone to freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers".

More>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/06/eu_internet_freedom/