As part of the annual Document Freedom Day, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) have presented their Freedom Germany Award to the German newspaper die tageszeitung (TAZ). Subscribers to the newspaper can receive its issues in a range of DRM-free, open formats. Explaining the motivation behind choosing the winner, Stephan Uhlmann of the FFII said: "we congratulate TAZ for their firm stance on the usage of Open Standards".

TAZ subscribers can choose to receive issues in HTML, PDF, ePub, and plain text, all of them open formats without DRM. Asked about the paper's motivation for offering open formats, its head of IT Ralf Klever said that by not restricting its readers, TAZ was able to spread its content as widely as possible. TAZ is a daily newspaper with a circulation of approximately 56,000 copies according to the German audit bureau of circulations (IVW). Its web site lists its current number of subscribers at 12,540.

The Document Freedom Awards are given out every year on Document Freedom Day. Previous winners of the German edition include the internet service provider 1&1, the news web site of the German Public Broadcaster ARD, and Deutschland Radio.

(fab)