Conference report "freedom of the media online"

On 27 and 28 August 2004, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Mr Miklos Haraszti, organised a conference on 'freedom of the media online' in the Amsterdam city hall.
Two panels focussed on the problematic definition of harmful content and self-regulation. Yaman Akdeniz (director of the UK NGO Cyberrights), Sandy Starr (editor of the e-zine Spiked) and Matthew Berry, senior counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice all gave strong arguments against global regulation of hatespeech, as suggested by the additional protocol to the Cybercrime Convention (signed by 23 countries, amongst which 15 EU member states, and only just ratified by Slovenia on 8 September 2004).
Conference website with papers from speakers (27/28-08-2004) http://www.osce.org/events/conferences/fom/2004amsterdam/
Cybercrime convention additional protocol - chart of signatures http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=189&CM=8&DF=9/9/04&CL=ENG