The new group took the name European Conservatives and Reformists (a contradiction in terms even in the name) but no-one thought to register any domain name for the new group before its establishment. So on 22nd June I had a look around to see what I could find – ecrg.info was still available and I purchased it and registered it with Google. Now more than 3 months on there is still no official ECR Group website as far as I can see, and the single page of my website has risen slowly up the Google results, so much so that I’m starting to get mails via the website from all sorts of organisations asking for information about the ECR’s MEPs and positions and even asking for speakers for conferences.

• The hierarchical structure that relies on top-down decision processes often led to the Internet being used as a “bin” and even now, the institutions are still heavily reliant on this hierarchy, including many people at the top not recognising the value of online communication, or understanding the website as an archive and not a means for interaction. (…) Accordingly, higher-ranking officials do not usually attend usability workshops so that a top-down change in thinking cannot occur.
• While a willingness to change is apparent, the Internet strategy paper (2007) points out that the transformation has to occur in a “resource neutral scenario”, meaning that even though the importance of (online) communication is recognised, the budget is not increased.
• The majority of students found the site confusing or difficult to handle, independent of prior attitudes. While many students are positively surprised by the website – mostly in terms of language variety and amount of information – they all encountered problems.(…) While most of the German students held highly positive and uncritical views,the Danish students were the most critical and inquisitive, and the British students showed the greatest lack of interest and knowledge about the EU.

Read more about the findings here. Would be interesting to get hold of the recommendations…

• Some amendments could allow Member States to create “graduated responses” against unauthorized file sharing, which would have many harmful consequences for civil liberties
• The notion of “lawful content” is a threat for civil liberties and the socio-economic development of the Internet.
• Amendment 34, if voted, can allow to harm privacy in the name of unauthorized file sharing.

Feel free to join the campaign that lobbies for a more open internet. All updates can be found here and as a RSS feed here. (everything is also available in French, German and Spanish). They also provide you with important lobbying advices for the remaining 24 hours before the vote: a very helpful example of a phone conversation with an MEP, a list of ‘incorrect’ arguments, and obviously some nice blog banners: