As students returned to their places of education after the long summer vacation last autumn, some of them must have been pleasantly surprised to be presented with a useful gift to help organise both their studies and their social life during the coming academic year: an attractive, pocket sized “Student's diary”. The donor, a company called DownTown based in the capital, Prague, had organised the production of the free diary, a previously unknown concept to Czech students, whose requirements are normally met by a publication prepared and sold every year by each faculty.

But despite DownTown's intentions, not all students received the gift. Members of staff at Masaryk University in the southern city of Brno noticed that the top of all the right-hand pages of the diary was adorned with a coloured band showing the logo of the French cigarette brand Gauloises Blondes. In addition, each coloured band …