EU Censorship News

Russia has accused Charlie Hebdo of mocking the Black Sea plane crash after publishing inhuman cartoons about the disaster.

In one reference to the crash, the French magazine depicted a jet hurtling downwards along with words translated as: Bad news... Putin wasn't on board .

The magazine also published a cartoon showing a choir member from the ensemble making a wailing sound aaaaaa . One caption reads: The repertoire of the army choir is expanding. A third cartoon shows bodies sinking in the sea with the caption: The Red Army conquers a new public .

The Russian Defence Ministry's spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov complained:

It is degrading for any human being to even pay attention to such a poorly-created abomination. If such, dare I say, "artistry" is the real manifestation of "Western values", then those who hold and support them are doomed - at least to loneliness in the future.

National Archives show minister for justice Alan Dukes clashed with attorney general John Rodgers over access to the film censor's historical files.

In 1986 Kevin Rockett, then academic and chairman of the Irish Film Institute , wrote to attorney general John Rogers to say he had been refused access to the film censor's files, even for films of the 1920s, by then minister for justice Alan Dukes .

Rogers wrote to Dukes saying that he did not see the legal basis on which access to the files, especially for films made 30 years or more previously, could be resisted or refused.

A month later, Dukes responded that over the years, censors and ministers for justice had always considered themselves precluded , on the basis of breach of confidence, from disclosure of information on films.

Further letters ensued and eventually the files were opened following a long struggle. Rockett told The Irish Times that a fter a long and frustrating campaign he eventually convinced the Official Film Censor in 1998 to transfer the more than 100 volumes of film censorship material to the National Archives.

Rockett wrote Irish Film Censorship: A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography in 2004, with the help of those files.

Users around the world have been outraged by the European Commission's proposal to require websites to enter into Shadow Regulation agreements with copyright holders concerning the automatic filtering of user-generated content . This proposal, which some are calling RoboCopyright and others Europe's #CensorshipMachine , would require many Internet platforms to integrate content scanning software into their websites to alert copyright holders every time it detected their content being uploaded by a user, without any consideration of the context.

People are right to be mad. This is going to result in the wrongful blocking of non-infringing content, such as the fair use dancing baby video . But that's only the start of it. The European proposal may also require images and text -- not just video -- to be automatically blocked on copyright grounds. Because automated scanning technologies are unable to evaluate the applicability of copyright exceptions, such as fair use or quotation, this could mean no more image macros , and no more reposting of song lyrics or excerpts from news articles to social media.

Once these scanning technologies are in place, it will also become far easier for repressive regimes around the world to demand that Internet platforms scan and filter content for purposes completely unrelated to copyright enforcement -- such as suppressing political dissent or enforcing anti-LGBT laws. Even when used as originally intended, these automated tools are also notoriously ineffective, often catching things they shouldn't, and failing to catch things they intend to. These are among the reasons why this new automatic censorship mechanism would be vulnerable to legal challenge under Europe's Charter of Fundamental Rights, as we explained in our last post on this topic .

A Filtering Mandate Infringes the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability

Two years ago, well before the current European proposal was placed on the table, EFF and our partners launched the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability . Despite not being a legal instrument, the Manila Principles have been tremendously influential. It has been endorsed by over 100 other organizations and referenced in international documents, such as reports by United Nations rapporteurs and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), along with the Global Commission on Internet Governance's One Internet report.

According to the Manila Principles (emphasis added):

Intermediaries should be shielded from liability for third-party content

• Any rules governing intermediary liability must be provided by laws, which must be precise, clear, and accessible.

• Intermediaries should be immune from liability for third-party content in circumstances where they have not been involved in modifying that content.

• Intermediaries must not be held liable for failing to restrict lawful content.

• Intermediaries must never be made strictly liable for hosting unlawful third-party content, nor should they ever be required to monitor content proactively as part of an intermediary liability regime .

Forcing Internet platforms ( i.e ., intermediaries) into private deals with copyright holders to automatically scan and filter user content is, effectively, a requirement to proactively monitor user content. Since sanctions would apply to intermediaries who refuse to enter into such deals, this amounts to an abridgment of the safe harbor protections that intermediaries otherwise enjoy under European law . This not only directly contravenes the Manila Principles, but also Europe's own E-Commerce Directive.

The Manila Principles don't ban proactive monitoring obligations for the sake of the Internet intermediaries; the ban is to protect users. When an Internet platform is required to vet user-generated content, it has incentive to do so in the cheapest manner possible, to ensure that its service remains viable. This means relying on error-prone automatic systems that place copyright holders in the position of Chief Censors of the Internet. The proposal also provides no recourse for users in the inevitable cases where automated scanning goes wrong.

That doesn't mean there should be no way to flag copyright-infringing content online. Most popular platforms already have systems in place that allow their users to flag content --for copyright infringement or terms of service or community standards violations. In Europe, the United States, and many other countries , the law also requires platform operators to address infringement notices from copyright owners; even this is the subject of considerable abuse by automated systems . We can expect to see far more abuse when automated copyright bots are also put in charge of vetting the content that users upload.

Europe's mandatory filtering plans would give far too much power to copyright holders and create onerous new barriers for Internet platforms that seek to operate in Europe. The automated upload filters would become magnets for abuse -- not only by copyright holders, but also governments and others seeking to inhibit what users create and share online.

If you're in Europe, you can rise up and take action using the write-in tool below, put together by the activists over at OpenMedia. This tool will allow you to send Members of the European Parliament your views on this repressive proposal, in order to help ensure that it never becomes law.

Take action: Save the Link

Germany's foreign ministry has cancelled a 13 November 2016 Dresden Symphony Orchestra performance of Aghet , commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the Armenian genocide, scheduled to take place at the German consulate in Istanbul. The ministry said that:

The whole consulate in Istanbul is not available on November 13 and that the invitations were sent out without State Department approval.

Orchestra director Markus Rindt told Reuters:

It's definitely been cancelled. They said they wanted to reschedule at a better time, but when would that be? This has been planned for years.

The Aghet project began in November 2015 when he conceived of the idea to bring together Armenian, Turkish and German musicians to play a concert together to remember the events that happened 101 years ago and to act a symbol of reconciliation.

In advance of the performance, the orchestra had invited Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu. But last April Turkey had demanded the European Commission pull its 200,000 Euros of funding from the symphony's project as the country takes offence at any mention of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Spain's ruling Popular Party (PP) has presented a censorship proposal to Congress that could result in the banning of memes, social network users' way of gaining comic revenge on the politicians that rule our lives.

The censorship law will target the spreading of images that infringe the honour of a person , by demanding that the butt of the joke gives permission for their images to be used in that way

The proposal is a disgraceful attack against the sometimes irreverent humour and political expression in memes, many of which have poked fun at the PP's leader and conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy.

Sources from the PP haves said that the proposal is merely an idea at this stage, and tries to deflect criticism by noting that it does not censor memes that are non-insulting.

So far the only impact of the reform proposal is to have sparked a fresh wave of memes aimed at Rajoy and the PP government, with dozens of social network users posting new gags accompanied by the hashtag #SinMemesNoHayDemocracia - no democracy without memes.

An 18-year-old broke France's anti-terror laws by naming his home Wi-Fi network Daesh 21 . The unnamed man was given a three-month jail sentence, suspended for now, after he was found guilty of essentially publicly condoning a terrorist act or group.

According to daily newspaper The Public Good, the man had chosen the name for his network as a joke. The 21 has no relevant significance.

A neighbor saw the network name and called the police, who arrested the man. After the police determined he did not pose a terrorism threat himself, they charged him with public support for terror acts.

The man was offered the opportunity to admit to the supposed 'crime' and accept 100 hours of community service punishment, but he declined and opted for a trial.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is at the centre of a criminal investigation in Germany into whether Facebook adequately censors Nazi-themed content posted on the social network.

Facebook's Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, and its European policy director, Richard Allan, are also under investigation, according to German newspaper Der Spiegel. All three have been accused by Chan-jo Jun, a Bavarian lawyer, of failing to ensure posts on Facebook containing racist abuse, threats of violence and Holocaust denial are removed.

Jun said he identified more than 430 posts on Facebook which he found offensive which were reported to Facebook but never deleted. Instead, he said Facebook sent him a generic response dismissing the posts as harmless.

According to Der Spiegel, prosecutors in Munich have now opened a preliminary investigation and are looking into whether there is enough evidence of a criminal offence. Under German law, Facebook is legally obliged to remove racist or Nazi-themed content as soon as it becomes aware of it.

Facebook has dismissed the allegations, saying they lack merit, and insists that none of its employees have broken any laws.

The blasphemy law in force in the region of Alsace-Moselle, France, has been repealed by the national Senate! It means that France is now free of blasphemy laws as such!, although there are plenty of modern day equivalents claiming insults and mockery to be incitement to hatred.

The law was a bit of an anomaly in France as it had been inherited from a historic period of German rule in the region.

Dutch anti-Islam opposition leader Geert Wilders has gone on trial for inciting hatred and discrimination, 18 months after he led a chant for fewer Moroccans in the country and called them scum during campaigning for local elections.

A verdict is due in December. The trial raise issues of free speech in the Netherlands particularly as Wilders' comments are supported by strong showings in the opinion polls, suggesting that the party could actually be vying for government in next year's election

The sport of mixed martial arts has been banned as a sport in France under new combat sport laws.

The CFMMA (French MMA Confederation) have announced they will make a legal challenge against the new laws put into place by the French Sport Ministry.

The official press release from the French Sport Ministry said it has banned the use of the Octagon cage, known best in the UFC. The statement read:

Fights will take place on a carpet or in a ring with three or four ropes. The corners of the ring will be protected.

The following techniques are strictly outlawed and will lead to immediate disqualification:

• Punches, kicks or strikes with the knees against a fighter on the ground;
• any strike with the elbow;
• headbutts;
• blows to the genitals, the spine, the back of the head or the throat;
• putting the fingers in the eyes, mouth or nose;
• Pulling the hair;
• biting;
• throwing (the opponent) intentionally onto the head or neck;
• throwing the opponent out of the ring.

Banning of any form of striking on the ground has been vetoed, essentially making any match-up a standing fight with the exclusion of elbows.

The Pirate Party in Iceland continues its shakeup of the local political arena. According to the latest polls the party now has a serious shot at taking part in the next Government coalition, with roughly 20% of all votes one week before the parliamentary elections.

The Pirate Party was founded in 2006 by Rick Falkvinge, and has scored some significant victories over the years including a continuing presence in the European Parliament.

Iceland's Pirates have a great track record already, with three members in the national Parliament. However, more may join in the future as the party has added many new supporters in recent months. The Pirates have been leading the polls for most of the year and are currently neck-and-neck with the Social Democratic Alliance to become the largest party in the country.

This brings the Pirates in an unusual position where they have to start thinking about possible partners to form a coalition Government, for the first time in history.

TorrentFreak spoke with Ásta Helgadóttir, Member of Parliament for the Icelandic Pirate Party, who says that the party is ready to bring the change many citizens are longing for. Despite the Pirate name, copyright issues are not central to their plans. That said, they have spoken out against recent web-blocking efforts.

Iceland's ISPs have been ordered to block access to 'infringing' sites such as The Pirate Bay, which the party sees as a step in the wrong direction. The party fears that these censorship efforts will lead to more stringent measures. Helgadóttir said:

These measures are not a solution and only exacerbate the problem. There needs to be a review of copyright law and how creators are compensated for their work.

Helgadóttir has also been speaking about the censorship of internet porn. She commented in an interview with grapevine.is :

In 2013 the Pirate Party came along. The freedom of information aspect attracted me--I'm very much against censorship.

One idea being mooted at the time was the blocking of porn sites in Iceland, which set alarm bells ringing for �sta. According to Icelandic law, pornography is illegal. It's a law from the 19th century, and it hasn't been enforced for fifteen years now. Then the idea of building a pornography shield around Iceland came up. And I thought, No, you can't do that! It's censorship! And they were like, No, it's not censorship, we're thinking about the children!'"

The Pirate Party is trying to infiltrate the system and change these 'heritage laws, because when you read a law, you have to understand the root of that law--when was it written, what was the context, and the culture. And now we're in the 21st century, with the internet, which changes everything.

The parliamentary elections will take place next week, October 29.

Germanpulse has published an interesting piece about German politicians expecting social media websites to pre-censors posts that the government doesn't like:

We have reported on the German government's war against social media giants Facebook, Twitter and Google many times over the last year as the country tries to rid the popular sites of any signs of hate speech. While the companies have made attempts to appease government officials with stricter enforcement, each move is said to still not be enough. The question is: is Germany taking the fight too far?

Volker Kauder, a member of the CDU, spoke with Der Spiegel this week to say the time for roundtables is over. I've run out of patience, and argues that Facebook, Twitter and Google have failed and should pay 50,000 euro ($54,865) fines for not providing a strict level of censorship.

All major social media sites do provide tools to report hate speech offenders, but Kauder isn't the only one to argue that the tool is ineffective.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas made a statement that only 46 percent of the comments were erased by Facebook, while a mere one percent were taken care of by Twitter.

Maas' solution is not much different from Kauder's, as he told Handelsblatt that the companies should face legal consequences.

...Read the full article from germanpulse.com

Der Spiegel has also published an opinion piece showing a little exasperation with trying to get comments censored by Facebook.

In June, the national body made up of justice ministers from the 16 federal states in Germany launched a legislative initiative to introduce a law which, if passed, would require operators of Internet platforms to immediately disclose the identity of users whose online actions are the subject of criminal proceedings. The law explicitly covers companies that are not based in Germany, but in fact do business here.

Justice Minister Maas must now introduce the draft law to Chancellor Merkel's cabinet, but he's hesitant out of fear of a backlash among a net community that still views Facebook as a symbol of Internet freedom. So far, he has done little that goes beyond appeals. If he wanted too, however, Maas could push for a further tightening of the country's telecommunications law. All that would be needed is a clause stipulating that every Internet company that does business in Germany would be required to name one person within the firm who is a resident in the country who could be held liable under German law.

...Read the full article from spiegel.de

The opening of Estonia's new National Museum has been overshadowed by protests from Church leaders and politicians over an exhibit they say mocks religion.

The exhibit is a virtual image of the Virgin Mary in a glass box. Visitors are invited to kick a spot on the plinth of the display, whereupon the image appears to fly into pieces and the word Reformation appears.

The Archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Urmas Viilma, said the image offends the feelings of believers. He wrote on Facebook:

I very seriously doubt that this exhibit is suitable for the permanent collection of the National Museum of Estonia, even if it is interesting from a technical point of view or from the perspective of modern approach to the depiction of historical events.

The virgin Mary for a huge number of believers is not some historical figure or event, gone into oblivion, but a reality today. The ridicule was an insult to the feelings of believers.

The chairman of the opposition Conservative People's Party, Mart Helme added:

The image should be removed as soon as possible because the virtual destruction the authors offer insults the feelings of religious Russian-speaking residents and hinders their integration.

Update: Backed down

21stOctober 2016. See article from christiantoday.com

The new National Museum in Estonia has backed down over a controversial display that allowed visitors to kick an exhibit which then showed an image of the Virgin Mary shattering, with the word Reformation appearing.

The holographic exhibit, which was criticised by church figures and politicians when it was unveiled earlier this month, will still appear to shatter at scheduled intervals but visitors will no longer be able to kick a spot on it.

The Council of Europe has called for news censorship of the press such that it is not allowed to report when terrorists are muslim. The recommendations came as part of a list of 23 censorial demands to Theresa May's government on how to run the media in an alarming threat to freedom speech.

The report, drawn up by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), blamed the recent increase in hate crimes and racism in the UK on the worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians , although the research was done before the Brexit campaign. Of course there was no apparent attribution of blame on the terrorists themselves for stirring up the hate.

The suggestions sent to Downing Street urging the UK Government to reform criminal law and freedom of the press and in a brutal criticism of the British press, the report recommends ministers give more rigorous training to journalists.

But UK ministers firmly rebutted the remarkable demands, telling the body:

The Government is committed to a free and open press and does not interfere with what the press does and does not publish, as long as the press abides by the law.

The report, from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) body, said there had been an increase in hate speech and racist violence in Britain between March 2009 and March 2016. The report recommends the British media be barred from reporting the Muslim background of terrorists. The report states:

ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fuelling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety.

In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations.

Of course the use of alternative explanations isn't likely to work very well in reality. It is perhaps already true that when news media speak of 'mentally disturbed' attackers, then this is simply a euphemism for 'muslim'. And equally if background details are omitted entirely, then it can be safely inferred that attackers are muslim.

A German TV comedian who was the centre of a major diplomatic row between Berlin and Ankara over a poem insulting the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been told he will not face prosecution.

German prosecutors said that they had dropped their investigation into Jan Böhmermann because of insufficient evidence he had committed a crime. The explained that the poem was protected by so-called Kunstfreiheit, or artistic freedom and said that criminal actions could not be proven with the necessary certainty .

In March Böhmermann had read a poem on state TV in which he lampooned the Turkish leader, arguing that he was doing so to test the boundaries of satire.

However, legal proceedings are still not over for Böhmermann. On 2 November, a Hamburg court will decide whether a private prosecution that Erdogan himself has brought against the comic can go ahead. In addition, laywers for Erdogan have reportedly lodged an appeal against the state prosecutor's decision to drop the case.

After the decision, Böhmermann lashed out at Merkel's government:

If a joke causes a constitutional crisis, it's not the joke that's the problem, it's the state

In a pre-recorded video statement which veered wildly in tone, he made light of the controversy and gave a bizarre rendition of the Monty Python song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life complete with a surprisingly convincing English accent. But he also signalled he was not prepared to back down and renewed his attack on Erdogan:

Compared to what critical journalists, satirists and opposition figures are going through in Turkey, all this fuss about the Böhmermann Affair is a big sad joke in itself. While you sit watch this video people are in prison in Turkey with no chance of a fair trial, their passports surrendered, their jobs lost, just because they took a critical look at their own country.

Meanwhile, their relatives in Germany are afraid to speak freely on the phone, because they fear reprisals against their loved ones in Turkey.