A few days ago in Peru, the news broke of a bill that had been approved by the Justice Commission in Congress, proposing an amendment to section 183-B of the Penal Code, which sanctions the media publication of obscene and pornographic displays. As a result, the banners of Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech were raised by opponents.

The bill's main section says the following: shall be punished with deprivation of liberty of not less than two years nor more than six years, the Director, Editor or person responsible for publications or editions, transmitted through media such as newspapers, magazines, posters, panels, leaflets, radio, television or any other means of communication that produces a similar communication effect, who publicize images, messages or audio that is obscene or pornographic.

Those who are leading the opposition to this bill are the media and journalists, who were the most affected. Some bloggers, especially those who are journalists and are also linked to the media, have also argued against this bill. For example, in the blog Blawyer.org Miguel Morachimo who is against the project, publishes [es] a series of points he has identified as problems in the bill:

1. The article does not define what is meant by obscene or pornographic.
2. There is an identical item in the Law on Radio and Television.
3. The rule is not aimed at protecting minors.
4. The rule aims to be applied to any means of communication.
5. The rule may be used as a tool of censorship.

The popular ZNS TV news show Press Pass has been pulled off the air, reportedly because management of the state-run channel objected to criticism of the government's budget cuts as it related to ZNS.

The pre-taped 30-minute programme - which is hosted by ZNS senior reporter Shenique Miller and is a discussion between journalists from various media houses - was supposed to feature a debate this week about the recent Budget Communication, with particular emphasis on the 50% cut to ZNS' allocation.

Following the taping, ZNS was reportedly all abuzz, with many staff members being urged to tune-in to the show. However, this show was abruptly pulled without explanation.

When contacted by The Tribune yesterday for the reason behind this decision, the Senior Deputy General Manager of Radio and Television Kaylessa Deveaux-Isaacs said that the corporation has a system whereby they are given a list of the topics that would be discussed in advance of any taping. According to Mrs Deveaux-Isaacs, the topics that were approved were not the ones discussed during the show.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has banned Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head vodka, deeming the bottle to be in poor taste. LCBO is the only legal source of distilled spirits in Ontario.

Aykroyd, an Ontario native, is unperturbed by the ban, which he says kind of makes the product more appealing.

A spokesman explains the LCBO's concerns:

The image of the human skull is the thing that's really problematic for us. That's an image that's commonly associated with death. It's especially problematic at a time when there are concerns around binge drinking by younger adults, which in some cases unfortunately has resulted in alcohol poisoning.

Whatever the merits of that argument, it's highly improbable that binge-drinkers will want to lay out $60 for a bottle of Aykroyd's super-premium vodka in the first place.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has re-iterated its stance that Canadian broadcasters must censor 'fuck' if it airs prior to 9pm.

The decision was in response to a viewer complaint about the Gordon Ramsay cooking program The F-Word broadcast on BBC Canada on April 9th 2009 at 8:00 pm.

During the program, Ramsay used the word fuck or fucking on numerous occasions. Some instances reflected his frustration with the cooking team, while other uses were of a more good-natured tone.

After almost a year of investigation, the CSBC confirmed that the show did indeed violate the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' (CAB) Code of Ethics for broadcasting which prohibits coarse or offensive language intended for adult audiences before 9pm.

Interestingly, if BBC Canada was an American station, the use of the word fuck would have resulted in a $250,000 fine by the FCC. Because BBC Canada is Canadian and because such violations are investigated by an industry trade group comprised of broadcasters, there will be no fine. The penalty for violating the CAB Code of Ethics is for the station to make a public announcement of the CBSC decision on air and write a letter to the offended viewer letting him or her know that the announcement has been made.

What was supposed to be images celebrating pregnancy and motherhood created by a Courtenay artist are now considered hateful, threatening or obscene by one of largest social networking sites in the world.

Mother and artist Kate Hansen recently created a series of portraits called The Madonna Child Project — images which feature different mothers and babies cuddling their babies while breastfeeding and bottle feeding.

Hansen posted some of the images in a figurative art group on Facebook and discovered the portraits were being deleted around late March.

Hansen noted she initially posted images in groups of three, and all images got deleted. She inquired with the Facebook group administrator, who assured her she had no reason to delete the images. Hansen continued to repost the images, and soon after, found they were being continually deleted from the site.

Last week, she received an e-mail from The Facebook Team noting: you posted an item that violated our terms of use, and this item has been removed. Among other things, content that is hateful, threatening or obscene is not allowed, nor is content that attacks an individual or group. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled.

During a recent interview with CBC Radio, which contacted a Facebook representative, Hansen said the social networking site representative noted they supposedly do not delete breastfeeding images.

She said the entire incident has made her question the overall topic of breastfeeding in society, and the public perception of the act. At least it's gotten people talking about it, noted Hansen: I will continue to post images and risk my account being deleted; the risk is worth it, she added.

A Toronto Police officer, who has written a fictional mystery novel inspired by his 15 years in 51 Division, finds himself in a spot of censorial bother.

Constable Brent Pilkey either has to follow orders from his Toronto Police superiors and abandon his dream of becoming a published author, or buck the brass and face potential police act charges.

Stephen King had obstacles on the way to the literary penthouse, but never this.

For 22 years, Pilkey has followed the rules to the letter of the law. This could change because Pilkey will draw the line at not being allowed to publish his first novel for ECW Press called Lethal Rage, scheduled to be in stores May 1.

As of right now Toronto Police is telling him he can't do that.

It remains the position of the Service that this activity contravenes Section 49(1) of the Police Services Act, says a March 15 memo to Pilkey from Aillen Ashman, Toronto Police's director of Human Resources Management: Moreover, it effects a conflict of interest between your duties and position as a police officer in Toronto and your portrayal of individuals and incidents, notwithstanding that it is stated to be a work of fiction.

The staging of locations and events may be viewed by individuals resident in the area as disparaging and disrespectful, including suggestions of differential policing in the area, such that it reflects badly on the reputation of TPS, Ashman continues, adding your request for approval of secondary activities related to authoring, publishing and advertising fictional police novel(s) is hereby denied.

Despite facing potential charges, he still plans to invite Chief Bill Blair and other senior officers to his launch party because he has so much respect for them. I have had the dream of being published since university, the cop said, adding he will explain if sanctioned. I will be disappointed if they take that approach but I am not going to give up on the book.

The Barbados Minister of Education and Human Resource Development, Ronald Jones, has publicly thrown his support behind the decision to ban controversial Jamaican artistes Vybz Kartel and Mavado from performing in Barbados.

He noted that children needed positive influences in their lives that could be celebrated and not exposure to negatives cultures.

I am glad for that decision. We will only allow persons to come to Barbados whose work we can celebrate.

Jones added that similar censorship needed to be placed on calypsonians who wrote rubbish and trash during the Crop Over season: I have no problem with music, but we need musicians to write good lyrics. Society demands an expression of beautiful talent that reinforces our values.

The owner of Venezuela's only television channel that remains critical of President Hugo Chavez has been arrested. Attorney General Luisa Ortega said a warrant was issued for the arrest of Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of the TV channel Globovision, for remarks that were deemed offensive to the president.

Zuloaga said that military intelligence agents detained him at an airport.

Ortega said pro-Chavez MPs requested the probe, arguing that Zuloaga should be prosecuted for offensive and disrespectful comments during a meeting of the Inter American Press Association.

Google is on the receiving end of ire of Brazilian authorities over pages containing supposedly 'dirty' jokes on the social networking site Orkut.

On the 23rd March, a Brazilian court in the northern state of Rondonia slapped Google with a fine of 2,700 dollars for each day that the pages remained up on the site.

The court also ordered Google to stop sipposedly sleazy material from being posted on its social networking site, brushing aside the Google argument that it did not have the technical means or workforce required to police or censor pages on Orkut.

The lawsuit reportedly arose after two teenagers complained that the jokes on Orkut pages offended them.

Venezuela is not planning to censor the web or to shut down social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, officials said, after President Hugo Chavez called for regulation of the Internet.

Opposition leaders, bloggers and media freedom groups are worried Chavez's socialist government is preparing to clamp down on the networking sites or install tight controls such as those used by Cuba, Iran and China.

Chavez last week said authorities should act against news and opinion site Noticerodigital after it published user comments claiming that a senior minister had been assassinated. He said the nation's laws must apply to the Internet.

The government is also planning to change the structure of the Internet in Venezuela by installing a unique connection point. It says such a system is more efficient and provides faster access, but critics worry it will lead to censorship.

A law introduced last year that would ban violent videogames and toys in Venezuela has now been enacted.

Under the law, importers, producers, distributors or sellers of the banned toys and games could face fines and jail time ranging from two to five years. In a story dated March 3, Prensa Latina reported that the law had been passed.

The law, when initially proposed to Venezuela's National Assembly, proposed that the country's consumer protection society be granted full power in determining what games and toys were deemed violent, though no indication was given into what criteria might be used to judge the goods.

As it was drawn up, the law also featured provisions for teaching crime prevention classes in school, public campaigns to warn about the dangers of videogames. A government campaign to promote games that taught children respect for an adversary was also included, though no word on if this, or any, additional provisions were a part of the new law.

The ban on violent games and toys is apparently seen as a way to somehow combat crime and violence in the country.

Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli has bben griping about Columbian telenovelas' bloody storylines. He has now  asked the country's parliament to consider setting up a censorship board to regulate TV content.

Martinelli singled out Colombian telenovelas in his rant to the media in late January.

These telenovelas are inflicting great damage to the moral fiber of our country, he declared in reference to Colombian titles El Capo, El Cartel, Las Munecas de la Mafia (Mafia Dolls) and Sin tetas no hay paraiso (Without Breasts There Is No Paradise). Latter is about young women who have breast implants to better attract wealthy drug runners.

In a meeting with media owners in late January, Martinelli warned that he would urge congress to pass a law if they did not self-regulate programming.

So far, all the networks have complied in pushing back their telenovelas to later hours.

Even in Colombia, there is a backlash among the intelligentsia against these telenovelas but ratings continue to rise.

The mayor has been accused of ruining the atmosphere of Rio's famous Carnival with a zero tolerance approach to prostitution, drunkenness and debauched behaviour.

Eduardo Paes wants to end the Brazilian city's lawlessness with his Shock of Order campaign. But as this year's Carnival, billed as the world's biggest party, began on Friday, Paes was called a killjoy.

Those who drink too much beer at giant Carnival street parties and use gutters as toilets face a night in jail. To keep beaches clean, he has outlawed traditional Carnival foods on skewers, while beach football, a near religion in Brazil, is banned until 5pm.

The city's infamous waterfront pick-up club for legal prostitutes on Copacabana beach has been closed to make way for a museum.

Twitter users are fast becoming public enemy No. 1, at least in Mexico City, where they have angered authorities by warning one another of roadside alcoholimetro — or Breathalyzer — checkpoints set up by the police.

But the case against the Twitter is about more than alcohol. Mexico is, after all, a country at war — at least according to President Felipe Calderon, who launched the crackdown on drug cartels shortly after taking office. Three years later, the streets of border cities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana remain full of soldiers. In many ways, the government is still playing catch-up to the nation's criminals.

In this context, the issue of the Twitter has quickly expanded into an argument over whether public safety takes priority over free speech in a country struggling to contain serious social ills. Fearing that kidnappers and drug cartels use Twitter, Facebook or MySpace to communicate, the Mexican government is considering a bill to restrict social networking websites and to set up a police force to monitor them.

The Twitter feed in question, Anti Alcoholimetro, doesn't hide its intent. On any given night, a dozen people write in listing the time and location where they saw a police checkpoint, helping others to avoid it.

The government's response has been erratic. At first, city officials said tweeting the location of police checkpoints was a crime, akin to helping someone break the law, and vowed to find a way to prosecute Twitterers. But after a media frenzy, they quickly backed down.

Yet the right to tweet is far from guaranteed, even in the relatively liberal capital of Mexico City. Article 320 of the city's penal code prescribes prison terms of up to five years for those who in any way help a delinquent avoid investigation by the authorities or escape their actions.

If that seems vague, it is. But federal lawmakers are quickly working on specific legislation to track down and punish Twitterers who break the law or help others escape it.

Panama's Parliament has proposed creating a consultative censorship board to 'regulate' the content of TV networks to controlling programmes with high content of violence.

The move was welcomed by the parliamentary commission of population, environment, and development and will be taken to the parliamentary plenary session for discussion and later approval.

The Canada Border Services Agency won't let one of Damien Crosse's recent films into the country. Raging Stallion Studio's fetish flick Piss Off was recently deemed to be obscene by Canada's border censors.

That's because CBSA says the ingestion of someone else's urine... with a sexual purpose is an indicator of obscenity. Even if it's consensual.

The border agency considers the act of urinating into someone degrading and dehumanizing, with a risk of substantial harm.

Harm, by CBSA's terms, isn't even about whether piss is bad for you. Instead, Harm in this context means that the material predisposes persons to act in an anti-social manner; in other words, in a manner which society recognizes as incompatible with its proper functioning.

Anti-social manner? Society's proper functioning? Why is porn held to Victorian-era morality standards?

Piss Off is just the latest in a string of gay films — pornographic and PG-rated — that have faced barriers at the Canadian border. In CBSA's latest quarterly list of prohibited items (PDF), the agency also banned the Titan Media film Shock Treatment, among dozens of other DVDS and books.

A Venezuelan cable television channel critical of President Hugo Chavez has been taken off the air after refusing to air footage of the president's speeches.

Radio Caracas Television, an anti-Chavez channel known as RCTV disappeared from TV sets shortly after midnight after the government cited noncompliance with new regulations requiring that Chavez's speeches be televised on cable as well as terrestrial television.

RCTV was dropped from cable and satellite programming just hours after Diosdado Cabello, the director of Venezuela's state-run telecommunications agency, said several local channels carried by cable television had breached broadcasting laws and should be removed from the airwaves.

Cabello warned cable operators that they could find themselves in jeopardy if they keep showing those channels: They must comply with the law, and they cannot have a single channel that violates Venezuelan laws as part of their programming.

RCTV's removal from cable and satellite television prompted a cacophony of protests in Caracas neighborhoods as Chavez opponents leaned out apartment windows to bang on pots and pans. Others shouted epithets and drivers joined in, honking car horns.

They want to silence RCTV's voice, said Miguel Angel Rodriguez, the channel's most popular talk show host. But they won't be able to because RCTV is embedded in the hearts of all Venezuelans, he said.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas expressed concern about the decision. Access to information is a cornerstone of democracy and provides a foundation for global progress. By restricting yet again the Venezuelan people's access to RCTV broadcasts, the Venezuelan government continues to erode this cornerstone, Embassy spokeswoman Robin Holzhauer said.