information about cenzorship in Slovenia

[Matej Kovacic <matej.kovacic@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I would just like to let you know that Slovenian government (Slovenia is 
a member of European Union since last year) a week ago decided to block 
two on-line gambling sites, because they do not have a licence to 
operate in Slovenia.

There are several problems with this, the major is that Office for 
Gaming Supervision sent a simple letter (not an official order!) to 
ISP's to block the site (what about "mere conduit" doctrine???) and 
major ISP's just did it. It is also funny, that European Court of 
Justice ruled in 2003 that across-border gambling like that is legal, 
because EU has free movement of services enacted (see case Gambelli). My 
personal opinion is that this cenzorship is illegal in many ways, but 
the problem is that ISP's dont want to oppose governemnt and they simply 
don't care about their users's rights.

But this also opened a great possibilities to inform people about Tor as 
an anti-cenzorship tool, and of course I did it. :-))

So I just wanted to let you know that illegal cenzorship is not just 
something which is happening in China. And I hope a lot of people in 
Slovenia know about Tor now and see it as good anti-cenzorship tool.

BTW, we had similar example of cenzorship before (see 
http://matej.owca.info/privacy/PHR04_slovenia.pdf, page 7 - udba.net case).

bye, Matej