Behind the monetary lurks the fiscal; behind the fiscal, the economic; behind the economic, the political; and behind the political, the historical. The deepest reality underlying this crisis is that the personal experiences and memories that have pushed European integration ahead for 65 years, since 1945, are losing their force. The personal memory of war, occupation, humiliation, European barbarism; fear of Germany, including Germany's fear of itself; the Soviet threat, the cold war, the "return to Europe" as a guarantee of hard-won freedom; the hope of restored European greatness.

These were massive biographical motivators, which drove people like Mitterrand and Kohl even unto the euro. Can Europeans go on building Europe without such profound motivators? Are there new ones in sight?

EU-parlamentet röstade i dag ned det omstridda Swiftavtalet. Den konservativa gruppen försökte in i det sista få omröstningen uppskjuten – men nejsidan segrade. Välinformerade källor säger dock till DN.se att USA oavsett detta kommer att skaffa sig tillgång till sekretssbelagda uppgifter från europeiska banker.

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Men EU-parlamentets skepsis mot Swiftavtalet ingår också dragkampen med ministerrådet och kommissionen om hur makten ska fördelas nu när Lissabonfördragets nya regler trätt i kraft. Fördraget ger parlamentet väsentligt mer makt, men hur det kommer att se ut på detaljnivå är inte klart.

På denna blogg kommer juristerna på Antipiratbyrån; Henrik Pontén och Sara Lindbäck att i mån av tid och behov ge mer personliga kommenterar till händelser som berör oss. Detta är en sida som välkomnar alla som vill delta i en seriös debatt men man ska våga stå för sina åsikter och skriva under sina inlägg med sitt riktiga namn. För er som inte vill göra detta finns det ett otal andra forum på internet. Välkomna!

Members of a European Parliament subcommittee dealt a blow to US-EU relations by voting to reject a proposed bank data sharing deal between the US and Europe in a preliminary vote on Thursday.

The agreement allows the US to access information gathered by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) about bank transfers within Europe. SWIFT manages global transactions between thousands of financial institutions in over 200 countries.

Members of the parliament's civil liberties committee voted by 29 votes to 23 to reject the SWIFT deal, arguing that the deal fails to protect the privacy of EU citizens.

US authorities say access to bank details is vital to counterterrorism efforts, but many in Europe object to the widespread invasion of privacy.

[...] we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

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These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Proposals to suspend the internet connections of those who repeatedly share music and films online will leave consumers with a bill for £500 million, ministers have admitted.

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Ministers have not estimated the cost of the measures but say that the cost of the initial letter-writing campaign, estimated at an extra £1.40 per subscription, will lead to 40,000 households giving up their internet connections. Impact assessments published alongside the Bill predict that the measures will generate £1.7 billion in extra sales for the film and music industries over the next ten years, as well as £350 million for the Government in extra VAT.

A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence".

De förslag som USA lagt fram under Acta-förhandlingarna om upphovsrättsbrott på internet kräver ny svensk lagstiftning. ”Actaavtalet kommer att köra över ganska mycket om det går igenom som amerikanerna vill”, säger juridikprofessorn Marianne Levin.

Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies.

The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google's search indexes, including Google News.

Mr Murdoch's News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its websites.

He believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results.

The European Parliament appears to have surrendered to pressure from Member States by abandoning amendment 138, a provision adopted on two occasions by an 88% majority of the plenary assembly, and which aimed to protect citizens' right to Internet access. The move paves the way for an EU wide policy supporting arbitrary restrictions of Internet access, such as customers being cut-off from the Internet by their ISP.

Under the original amendment 138 text any restriction of an individual could only be taken following a prior judicial ruling. The new update has completely removed this, meaning that governments now have legal grounds to force UK ISPs into disconnecting their customers from the Internet (i.e. such as when "suspected" of illegal downloading).