Topics Internet Law Update

Israeli Internet providers commit to minimum bitrates

The Israeli Ministry of Communications recently amended the operating licenses of two major Israeli telecom companies (Bezeq and HOT), regarding the provision of their broadband Internet service. Under the amended licenses, the companies are required from now on to include, in any publication or advertisement of the service, the guaranteed minimum bitrate, for both uploads and downloads. The step taken ...

Israeli Banks Receive Ransom Letters from Hackers

In the past several days, hackers sent fierce ransom letters to three banks in Israel. In the letters, the hackers threaten to turn over the personal details of the banks’ customers into hostile hands, unless the banks pay 30 Bitcoins (approx. 19,000 US Dollars) by the end of this week. The hackers claim to possess the personal details of over ...

Distributing intimate photos - now a sexual harassment crime in Israel

According to a new law recently enacted by the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), distributing sexual images of a person, either coercively or without his or her knowledge, will be considered sexual harassment, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. The perpetrator will be deemed a sexual offender and the victim will be recognized as a sexual harassment victim. The ...

Israeli National Cyber Bureau will Establish CERT

The Israeli National Cyber Bureau is working to establish an Israeli Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), as its first national initiative - announced Mr. Rami Efrati, the head of civil affairs at the Cyber Bureau. CERT is in charge, among other things, of information security incidents involving government or large scale organizations. According to the Israeli government's information security website ...

Unprecedented settlement in Israel clearly delineates fair digital use

For the first time in Israel, a settlement (a copy of which is available here, in Hebrew) enables institutions of higher education to use books and articles for teaching purposes without remuneration, and instantiates clear substantive rules for the ‘fair use’ doctrine specified in the Israeli Copyright Law. 
  
The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Schocken Publishing House and the ...

Security breaches in handling of Israeli biometric ID cards

The mechanism that serves to report the loss or theft of an Israeli biometric identification card suffers from significant security faults, reports Ha’aretz (in Hebrew, by Ido Keinan and Johnny Zilber). According to the regulations and procedures of the Israeli Population, Immigration and Border Authority (PIBA) at the Ministry of the Interior, in issuing biometric identity cards, citizens are asked ...

Israeli Ministry of Communications supports content filtering as default

The Israeli Ministry of Communications plans to highlight and expand the current measures to which Internet access providers are obligated, in order to enhance the public exposure to the free filtering services they offer their customers. The step comes after the Minister of Communications concluded that the main problem stems from the fact that parents are unaware of the services ...

Google settles auto-complete defamation suit in Israel

Internet entrepreneur Tzachi Rosenthal reached a settlement agreement with web giant Google, in a defamation lawsuit filed in Israel against the popular search engine. In the lawsuit, Rosenthal alleged that when Google's search engine is used to search for his name, the engine's Autocomplete function suggests defamatory phrase supplements such as “con man”, “cheat”, “fraud” and "ponzi".

During court proceedings, the ...
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