Is the CoE Convention on Cybercrime binding? (Was: Re: [governance] IP Addresses Are Personal Data, E.U. Regulator Says)

[Andrea Glorioso]

Dear McTim, dear all,

>>>>> "McTim" == McTim  <dogwallah at gmail.com> writes:

    > IANAL, so is this "binding"?

    > http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/HTML/185.htm

    > Article 18

This particular Convention of the Council of Europe [1] enters into
force after 5 ratifications, of which at least 3 must be of Member
States of the Council of Europe.

This already happened on 1/7/2004, therefore the CoE Convention 185,
a.k.a. the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, is binding on Member
States which ratified it.  The actual process of ratification varies
From state to state.  Italy, for example, needs only a parliamentary
vote; other states might need an affirmative referendum; others might
need something else.

The current status of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime can be
seen at:

  http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=185&CM=8&DF=1/24/2008&CL=ENG

Hope this answers your question!

Andrea

[1] For those who are not inside "eurojargon": the Council of Europe
    does not have anything to do with the European Union or the
    European Communities (sometimes referred to as the European
    Community, but actually it's more than one) even though the
    European Union has a Council of the European Union and a European
    Council.  Many members of the Council of Europe are also member
    states of the European Union, and there is in general a certain
    respect and deference towards each other's legal acts and
    policies, but nothing more than that.

    If you think that's confusing, you are not alone.. There must be a
    reason why Manuel Castells took Europe as one shining example of
    the new "network model" of policy making - no clear center of
    power.  Of course, the fact that Castells is spanish might have
    had a role. :)

--
      Andrea Glorioso || http://people.digitalpolicy.it/sama/cv/
          M: +32-488-409-055         F: +39-051-930-31-133
   "Every honest researcher I know admits he's just a professional
   amateur. He's doing whatever he's doing for the first time. That
  makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he's going
     to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional."
		Charles Franklin Kettering (1876-1958)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20080124/152a76c6/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: message-footer.txt
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20080124/152a76c6/attachment.txt>