From: Jon F to  Backlash (See also Response from Jon F who also reports the abuse of human rights)

I posed 3 Freedom of Information questions in my response to the Home Office consultation paper. Obviously, I've not received a reply within the required period. I'm not surprised - because I don't think the Home Office has any interest in the views of the private individual. But, that's why I posed 3 Freedom of Informationrequests - to demonstrate that they DON'T read responses to consultation material !

This is another critical factor in the case to be presented to the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg).

Here is the letter I have today issued to the Information Commissioner: -

Dear Sir/Madam,

Freedom of Information
Consultation on Possession of Extreme Pornography

On 14 November 2005 I issued a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to the Home Office as part of my investigation into, and response to, the consultation process on the possession of extreme pornography.

I inserted a freedom of information request for two reasons – one of them to establish whether the Home Office actually reads responses from the private citizen.

I submitted a particularly detailed paper which seriously undermined the Home Office proposals outlined in the consultation paper. My paper supported the legislation approved by all European Union states - encompassed within UK legislation in the HRA 1998. My FoI questions sought to tease out elements in the incompatibility between the HRA and the proposals outlined in the consultation process.

The Home Office initially acknowledged my response. Then the Minister (Paul Goggins) wrote to an MP on 20 December, who forwarded me his letter, providing a very brief outline of his approach following the consultation process. This response demonstrated to me that he had little understanding of the complexity of the issues I had raised within the consultation period. I was convinced that the Home Office had not read my paper. I fear that the Home Office may have concluded its approach to the consultation process without examining the detailed reasons why those, opposed to the legislation proposed, held the views they do.

This issue goes to the core of the purpose of your organisation.

I have been patient, I do not wish to overly embarrass the Home Office, but I wrote in detail on 14 November, posing my questions, and on 29 January, I sent a reminder to Mr Goggins. It is expensive photocopying lengthy documents, so I summarise here the questions posed in my paper of 14 November: -

3. Freedom of Information Requests.

3.1 Request for information which demonstrates that a request has been issued to a foreign government to investigate an alleged sexual assault or rape.

3.2 An attempt has been made to find on the Internet an example of a real time rape video which appears to be a genuine rape. It may be that Home Office staff have devoted some time to this and have found some material. No money was spent on pornographic sites during the research undertaken in support of this response, which may explain why the writer has been unable to find a convincing example of a real rape. There is therefore some concern in case the Home Office has claimed material exists which doesn’t (for some years an “urban myth” was in circulation of the existence of “snuff videos”).

3.3 Given that the consultation paper suggests that virtually all such sites are based abroad, it seems reasonable to expect that, if such a site had been found, and the Home Office had reasonable grounds to suspect that a real rape had occurred, the Home Office would have asked a foreign government to investigate. Please would you let me have a copy of any letter to a foreign government which demonstrates that you have asked it to investigate an allegation of rape?

3.4 Request for any legal advice which confirms that the possession of consensual sado-masochistic violent sex can successfully be prosecuted and that Article 8 does not apply.

3.5 It seems extremely unlikely that violent sado-masochistic sex, which is consensual, and which is not life threatening, can be deemed to be criminal (See: 9.1, 9.3 & 9.4 below: Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000: definition). Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the possession of real images depicting such acts could also be criminalised – because of the provisions of Article 8 of the Convention. I would therefore like to see any legal advice you have received with regard to this specific category of material.

3.6 Request for sight of any research which demonstrates that children may be more harmed by access to explicit Internet based material, that is: material more explicit than that which is permissible within the R18 category (for example “fisting”).

3.7 Would you please direct me to or show me any research you have which demonstrates that children may be more harmed by viewing extreme material on the Internet than by seeing R18 material? Or harmed at all by any such material? (There is a belief that if any harm does occur it may be due to expressions of adult assumed abhorrence.)

3.8 For your convenience I also provide notice of my intention to make a further FoI request in 6 months time (see paragraph 5.18 below).

I ask that you seek a response from the Home Office to these FoI requests, that you investigate the reasons for the delay in replying, and you also press your obligations to the full - to establish whether the Home Office actually reads responses received to consultation papers.

While I expect little sympathy from your office to the underlying theme of my response (the right of consenting adults to enjoy bizarre sex in private), I do ask that you recognise that Government Departments must read responses to consultation papers. An objective observer will, of course, recognise that this has huge implications for issues of mass interest.

From Games Industry.biz

Utah representative David Hogue's controversial violent videogames bill, which tags videogames onto existing obscenity laws relating to pornography, has sailed through the House of Representatives by a vote of 56-8.

Hogue remains confident that his bill will withstand a court challenge, in spite of various similar legislative proposals being rejected on the grounds of constitutionality, First Amendment legal experts having already weighed in on the Utah bill, stating that it likely violates the First Amendment protection of free expression.

Representative Hogue's proposal, which will make it a felony to promote or sell 'inappropriately violent' videogames to minors, failed its initial vote at the House Committee in January. It was finally approved by a vote of 7-2 a little over a month later.

The Republican has rekindled thoughts of various school shooting incidents, including Columbine, suggesting that violent videogames played a significant role and stating his objections to Rockstar's much publicised Bully game for the PS2.

Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not, Hogue stated in the Salt Lake City Tribune.

The bill is not law yet however, and the next step will be to advance to the State Senate. The Entertainment Software Association, which has successfully halted various similar proposals in other US States, largely on the grounds of vague definitions and unconstitutional breaches of First Amendment freedom of expression laws, has already voiced its objection to the Utah bill, and is highly likely to officially contest its implementation into law.

Thanks to Nick

You might be interested to hear that AOL is sponsoring the Internet Watch Foundation to send publicity materials to UK libraries, encouraging library staff & IT professionals to inform on unpleasant internet content.

Interestingly, the letter includes "criminally obscene content hosted in the UK", elaborated on in their leaflet as "images featuring acts of 'extreme' sexual activity".

Is it just me, or are we heading towards a legislative stitch-up on "extreme" porn thanks to an unholy alliance of IWF, AOL, John Beyer & Mr Blair.

Most librarians probably regard the Cadburys flake advert as extreme porn.

From the Yemen Observer

A documentary film of the female Yemeni prisoner, Amina, has been banned by the Yemen Ministry of Culture.

The film, which was produced and directed by Khadeja Al-Salami, tells the story of the famous female prisoner Amina Al-Tohaif, who is accused of killing her husband.

The Ministry claimed that the film should not be shown as it would harm the reputation of Yemen. The censorship department also sent a copy to the Political Security department. They then called on the director and administration of the Central Jail - where Amina has been held for two years - criticizing them for allowing the filming to take place.

Khadeja Al-Salami said she was shocked that the Ministry of Culture should take the decision to ban it. She said that while she knew foreign films were often censored, all the events and scene on her film were set and shot in Yemen.

She said she was especially surprised by the ministry’s decisions as the Yemeni Culture Center had already agreed to show the film. She expressed her great regret that people in Yemen would not be able to watch the film, but said that the film would still be shown in abroad via satellite channels. Al-Salami said that such acts “shake the citizen’s trust” in the local media, and would encourage them to look outside for news about the country.

She denied claims that the film contained anything that would harm the reputation of Yemen, arguing indeed that it did exactly the opposite. She pointed out that the film discusses both the positive and negative aspects of the situation of women in Yemen, tackling the education system, upbringing and expected behavior of Yemeni woman, which in turn determines its future.

Al-Saloami expressed her regret that people in charge of culture in Yemen think with what she called ‘rotten mentalities’. She said that they were supposed to allow for opportunities to discuss issues looking at both the positive and negative sides, rather than do the thinking for others and put blocks on citizens’ minds.

From the BBC

Muslims must accept that freedom of speech is central to Britishness and should be preserved even if it offends people, says Sir Trevor Phillips.

The chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) said we should allow people to offend each other.  And he suggested that Muslims who wanted a system of Islamic Shariah law should leave the UK.

His comments follow angry protests against cartoons satirising the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Phillips told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme: What some minorities have to accept is that there are certain central things we all agree about, which are about the way we treat each other. That we have an attachment to democracy, that we sort things out by voting not by violence and intimidation, that we tolerate things that we don't like.

And that commitment to freedom of expression should also allow Muslim preachers to make comments about homosexuality that are offensive to broad segments of the British population, he said: One point of Britishness is that people can say what they like about the way we should live, however absurd, however unpopular it is.

He also rejected the idea of Shariah law in Muslim communities in the UK. We have one set of laws. They are decided on by one group of people, members of Parliament, and that's the end of the story. Anybody who lives here has to accept that's the way we do it. If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.

From Sun Star

Philippines media yesterday rallied behind The Daily Tribune, which was the subject of the “first attack” against freedom of the press after President Arroyo put the country under a state of emergency.

Police raided The Daily Tribune office in Port Area, Manila, past midnight Saturday and seized several copies of its Saturday issue that were about to be dispatched nationwide. PNP Director General Arturo Lomibao said that under General Order Number 5 issued in relation to Presidential Proclamation 1017, the PNP has a clear mandate to carry out appropriate action and security measures to prevent an escalation of the situation.”

Aside from The Daily Tribune’s office, Criminal Investigation and Detection Group operatives also attempted to raid the office of Abante, a tabloid, also in Port Area, Manila, and offices of Malaya but the policemen withdrew when they noticed several crew of two television stations in the area.

Niñez Cacho Olivares, publisher of The Daily Tribune, decried the act saying that the police conducted the raid without a warrant. She also said they will file a case: What’s this martial law? Does the state of national emergency allow the policemen of (President) Arroyo to just confiscate anything they please?

Marites Danguilan-Vitug, editor of Newsbreak Magazine, feared that they might suffer the same fate that The Daily Tribune had experienced: We view the raid on Tribune, an opposition newspaper, with alarm. It appears to signal the start of a crackdown on media organizations. We have always believed that repression is never the answer to a critical press. Vitug reminded authorities that a free press is a cornerstone of a democracy and without it, “we cannot claim to be a democratic country.”

Vergel Santos of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) likened the incident that happened to The Daily Tribune to the early days of martial rule. Santos said media organizations should band together and oppose the proclamation or any attempt that would curb the freedom of the press.

Also, the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) said it is about time that journalists must take a stand regarding the issue. Carlos Conde of NUJP feared that the situation might worsen had not media would not take any stand on the matter: This is going to get worse. We are worried and concerned about the implications of this proclamation on press freedom.

The five daily newspapers in Cebu yesterday also said the government cannot censor the media as proclamation of a state of emergency does not suspend the constitutional right to freedom of expression. Proclamation 1017, which put the country under a state of emergency, said that certain sectors of the media are “recklessly” promoting the cause of those who want to bring down the Arroyo administration.

From the Salt Lake Tribune

The Utah House voted overwhelmingly  to yank violent video games out of the hands of minors and punish as felons adults, including parents, who provide such entertainment to children.

Republican David Hogue implied such games played a serious role in school shootings such as Columbine: Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not.

Bill HB257 would add extremely violent "interactive video or electronic" games to the state's statute protecting minors from harmful material; the statute is commonly used to prosecute those who provide pornography to children.

Hogue mentioned such games as Resident Evil 4 and Grand Theft Auto. But to violate the terms of the legislation, a violent video game would have to be "patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community" and lack any serious "literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors."

Republican Scott Wyatt said such a tough standard means only the most depraved video games would fall under this bill.

A few lawmakers, including Orem Republican Margaret Dayton and Salt Lake City Democrat Ross Romero, questioned HB257's constitutionality. Dayton said the bill was "frustrating." She dislikes such video games but said violence has certain constitutional protections that pornography does not have: That's why we can have pictures in the Bible, battle scenes or war movies.

Romero also didn't like the fact the bill could land a parent in jail for two weeks, if they buy an extremely violent video game for their child.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

From Adam McConnel on Media Channel

I haven't seen the film, but from what I understand, the Gary Busey character has been interpreted as anti-Semitic, but the character may or may not be obviously so. The interpretation of the film also depends a lot on how knowledgeable one is about events in Iraq during the past three years; for that reason, Americans are likely to be upset about the film because they don't know that much of what is in the film is, unfortunately, taken directly from reality. For example, how many wedding parties (in the region guns are shot off as a part of the celebration and so have been 'mistaken' by the Americans as 'enemy fire' on a number of occasions, with high numbers of dead and wounded) have the Americans bombed in the past 5 years in both Afghanistan and Iraq? The number is higher than one might think.

There is also the problem that this film does to Americans what American films have doing to Muslims (or Turks or Arabs) for, well, 80 years, that is it stereotypes and denigrates them. Two wrongs don't make a right, but Americans need to bear that in mind. . .

From The Telegraph

A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.

Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele.

Bavaria's interior minister admitted last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals. Edmund Stoiber, the state's conservative prime minister, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as "this racist and anti-Western hate film" from their programmes.

The £6 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country's prime minister.

The production went on general release in Germany a fortnight ago and has had full houses ever since. More than 130,000 people, most of them young Muslims, saw the film in the first five days of its opening. At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, Valley of the Wolves was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men. They clapped furiously when the Turkish hero of the film was shown blowing up a building occupied by the United States military commander in northern Iraq.

In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a US commander called Sam, played by Billy Zane. The audience responded by standing up and chanting "Allah is great!"

The nature of the film and the enthusiastic reception given to it by young Muslims, has both shocked and polarised politicians and community leaders. Bernd Neumann, the culture minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government complained last week that the reaction to the film raises serious questions about the values of our society and our ability to instil them.

Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany's Turkish community, insisted that a ban on the film would make matters worse. If it is withdrawn, it will raise levels of identification with the film. A democracy must be able to endure films that it doesn't approve of.

But those arguing for a ban on Valley of the Wolves appeared to have won a partial victory last week when Cinemaxx, one of Germany's largest cinema chains, announced that it was withdrawing the film.



 

The religions of the world have come up with an impossibly contradictory tangle of myths intended to unify communities into controllable and socially powerful groups. When the myths simply become too far divorced from any evidence of reality whatsoever, then they have to be enforced by intimidation and punishment. Perhaps though there is one myth that unifies all of mankind's religions, and that's the story of the King's Clothes.

From the National Secular Society

Belgian Islamists staged a march through Brussels on Tuesday, demanding that the European Commission institute a Europe-wide blasphemy law. The marchers delivered a letter of protest about the cartoons to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Danish Embassy. The president of the Union of Brussels and Neighbourhood Mosques said: We oppose the widening chasm between the Muslim community and other European citizens that has incited hatred and fear of Islam, due to these irresponsible acts [the publication of the satirical cartoons].

In their letter to the European Commission and the European Parliament, the Islamists warn that the wave of irresponsible humiliation caused by the cartoons may be dangerous:This attitude can only exacerbate conflict, fuel hatred and reinforce the logic of the clash of civilisations

The letter asks for the European Union’s top decision-makers to act determinedly to prepare a draft law that forbids every kind of blasphemy, so that all groups in society can leave in peace and harmony. Such a law would:  be completely consistent with the EU’s protection of freedom, human rights and sacredness, and the elimination of all acts that lead to racism and xenophobia

EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana signalled this week that the EU might be supportive of this idea, stating: We are working on some ideas. I cannot be very precise, but we are working on some ideas that maybe it is possible to get through, according to Reuters. Deutsche Welle quotes Solana’s spokeswoman Cristina Gallach as saying They want mechanisms to guarantee this is not repeated and we should be able to find it in UN conventions on human rights.

Meanwhile, an Iranian government minister has demanded that the European Union ban the publication of caricatures that satirise “holy figures” of any religion, including the allegedly offensive Prophet Muhammad cartoons, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Motaki told a news conference in Yerevan on Tuesday: Today I will hold negotiations over the phone with the foreign minister of Austria, which currently holds the EU presidency. During the conversation, I will suggest including the issue of respect for all prophets of any religions in the EU agenda.

East Asian Muslim and Christian leaders wrapped up their two-day meeting in the Indonesian capital Jakarta by urging the UN to make a “universal declaration” strictly banning blasphemy. Din Syamsuddin, leader of Indonesia’s second largest Muslim organisation, the Muhammadiyah, said I personally agree that the UN should issue a universal declaration of human responsibility, apart from the universal declaration of human rights, Because having the freedom without responsibility could lead our civilisation to absolute liberalism.

Extremist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has added his influential voice to the pressure on the United Nations to adopt a resolution banning blasphemy to head off similar incidents in the future. He also urged the European Union to criminalise blasphemy against any religion, including pagan religions.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is pressing for a ban on religious intolerance to be part of the “bedrock” of a planned new United Nations human rights body. According to the text of an OIC proposal, the new UN body should state clearly that the defamation of religions and prophets is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression and that states, organizations and the media have a responsibility in promoting tolerance and respect for religious and cultural values.

See www.RadioListings.co.uk for more on the episodes of the Goons.

There is also a mention on the BBC 7 Comedy Message Boards about this and cartoon  censorship in a thread entitled: Should BBC7 pull any mention of Muhammad. There is also a management reply in The Lounge in a thread entitled: Ofcom Regulations

Thanks to Frank

The Daily Telegraph report was (following the comments of BBC7 Head - Mary Kalemkarian on BBC4 'Feedback') misleading...

The 'African Queen' was a boat, played by the announcer Douglas Smith - with cocoa on his face (ie to be read also as an African gay queen..) containing Kenneth Williams as Gaylord Ffitch and Kenneth Horne (a keen Botanist..) - both uncocoa'd - going up the Umpopo to visit the 400 year old 'She' - a whitey Queen played by Betty Marsden - reaching shore there was a 6 second burst of "Da Camptdown Races"...quickly terminated with Kenneth Horne with a 'that's enough of that'.

Slightly off topic news included to highlight the contradiction with sex related TV channels where adverts continually suggest stronger material than we ever get to see. The ASA presumably think it's ok for sex customers to be misled.

Based on an article from ign.com

In a decision that may have wide-ranging implications for the way videogames are advertised,  the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), has ruled that Activision's advertisements for its Call of Duty games are "misleading" and ordered them never to be shown in their present form again.

The complaint centered around the television advertising for Activision's Call of Duty 2. According to the complaining parties, Activision's advertising was misleading because the graphics used in the [advertisement] were superior to that of the game itself.

The subsequent investigation by the ASA revealed that the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) -- a group responsible for the pre-transmission examination and clearance of television advertisements in the UK -- believed that the graphics in the advertisements were "scenes taken from the games themselves." It was only after contacting Activision itself to ask about the complaints that it was discovered that the graphics were "computer-generated scenes...produced solely for the ads."

According to the ASA, this revelation "immediately made the ads unacceptable for broadcast" because the ads did not reflect the quality of the actual graphics which would be present in the games themselves. The ASA ruled that because the ads were misleading, they could no longer be shown in their present form.

Activision attempted to counter the ASA ruling by stating that such use of pre-rendered footage represented a "common industry practice" and that the company had acted in "good faith." The ASA rejected this argument on the grounds that it was an "insufficient" defense of the advertisements.

For overseas readers, the Evening Standard and Daily Mail are right wing papers that pander to intolerance and bigotry. Ken Livingstone's colourful views about them are more than justified.

Based on an article from The Independent

The London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended for four weeks after being found guilty of bringing his office into disrepute by comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. A disciplinary tribunal said he had been "unnecessarily insensitive and offensive" when approached by a journalist from London's Evening Standard after a party at City Hall last February.

The Mayor will be suspended on full pay for four weeks starting on 1 March. He will not be permitted to work for the Greater London Authority from its headquarters at City Hall or his Brent home and his duties will be carried out by the deputy mayor, Nicky Gavron. Since he lost the case he must pay his own costs, estimated at £80,000.

His treatment of the journalist was unnecessarily insensitive and offensive, said David Laverick, chairman of the adjudication panel, which took up the case after it was referred by the Standards Board for England, the local government watchdog. He persisted with a line of comment likening the journalist's job to a concentration camp guard, despite being told that the journalist was Jewish and found it offensive to be asked if he was a German war criminal.

Livingstone issued a statement condemning the ruling. This decision strikes at the heart of democracy. Elected politicians should only be able to be removed by the voters or for breaking the law. Three members of a body that no one has elected should not be allowed to overturn the votes of millions of Londoners. He signalled that he would decide next week whether to mount a legal challenge.

During the hearing, Livingstone sought to defend himself against charges that he had damaged the reputation of the mayor's office by claiming he was acting in a private capacity on the night of the incident.

The controversy began when Livingstone was approached by a Evening Standard (associated with the Daily Mail) reporter, Oliver Finegold, as he left a party at City Hall on 8 February. After aggressive and repeated hassle for a comment, Livingstone unsurprisingly retorted on the possibility that the reporter had been a "German war criminal"

The story first appeared on another newspaper's website and, after the Mayor refused to apologise, the matter was referred to the tribunal following a complaint by the Jewish Board of Deputies. Earlier this month, a report by the Community Security Trust, which advises Britain's Jews on security, said the comments were to blame for 11 anti-Semitic attacks in London and the South-east last year.

It is unlikely that Livingstone will face any further charges as a result of the ruling. Although there is a public order offence of using threatening or abusive language, the six-month period to bring charges in this case has elapsed.

'You're just like a concentration camp guard, doing it because you're paid'

This is a transcript of the taped exchange between Ken Livingstone and Oliver Finegold which led to the Mayor of London being suspended from office yesterday. Livingstone was leaving a reception at City Hall in February last year when approached by the reporter.

Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it ...
Ken Livingstone: Oh, how awful for you.
OF: How did tonight go?
KL: Have you thought of having treatment?
OF: How did tonight go?
KL: Have you thought of having treatment?
OF: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
KL: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
OF: No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal.
KL: Ah ... right.
OF: I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
KL: Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?
OF: Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go?
KL: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags.
OF: How did tonight go?
KL: It's reactionary bigots ...
OF: I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job.
KL: ... and who supported fascism.
OF: I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment.
KL: Well, work for a paper that isn't ...
OF: I'm only asking for a comment.
KL:  ... that had a record of supporting fascism.
OF: You've accused me ...

From ZD Net

This year's ISPA Internet Villain is the UK government. The UK government walked off with the title of Internet Villain of the year for pushing for tougher data retention laws in Europe.

The award was presented at the ISPAs, the annual awards evening organised by the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA).

During its presidency of the European Commission last year, the UK government drove forward the data retention directive. It forces ISPs and fixed-line and mobile operators to keep details of their customers' communications for up to two years.

The other nominees for the award were:

• European Commissioner Reding "for the revision of the TV without Frontiers Directive which threatens ISPs by extending the scope of broadcasting regulation to content delivered via the Internet, in a market which is not yet fully developed."
• The European Commission "for its inability to get through one year without producing yet another piece of intellectual-property Legislation."
• Russia "for failing to deal with illegal Web sites and online abuse hosted within its borders".
• Sony BMG "for compromising the security of its customers’ PCs with its copyright-protecting rootkit technology"

Sony's actions sparked calls for a boycott of the company last year, but it's understood that the judges were swayed by the massive costs that ISPs could face in order to comply with the data retention directive.

It seems a world truism that wherever one finds intolerance of sexual trivia, then thuggery, torture, bombs, violence and intimidation are never far away.

From Contact Music

Pop star Janet Jackson's notorious "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl will cost US TV bosses $550,000 (GBP315,000) in censorship fines, after they lost an appeal to overturn the fine.

Authorities have picked on CBS for broadcasting the blunder and upheld the previously-imposed punishment.

Jackson inadvertently exposed her breast while on stage with Justin Timberlake at the half-time show.

Based on an article from the Sydney Morning Herald

Rocking in a pink swing fashioned from the cab of a pedal-driven rickshaw, Agus Suwage felt at peace. He had just installed his Pinkswing Park exhibit at Jakarta's international biennale and was surrounded by massive panels with multiple pictures of a near-naked man and woman frolicking in a utopian park - a world away from thoughts of religious furore, public condemnation and possible imprisonment.

Within days of November's exhibition launch, Islamic fundamentalists had shoved Suwage to the forefront of their struggle to redefine Indonesia by descending on the biennale, forcing its closure and demanding prosecutions. At first police claimed his work blasphemed the story of Adam and Eve, then last week they told Suwage he faced five years in jail for producing pornography.

The same groups staging violent demonstrations against the West over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad are targeting pornography in their battle to transform Indonesia into a strict Islamic nation. And they are winning: parliament is set to introduce a sweeping anti-pornography law. Expected to be passed by June, the law imposes a rigid social template; couples who kiss in public will face up to five years' jail, as would anyone flaunting a "sensual body part" - including their navel - and tight clothing will be outlawed.

Most women's groups are horrified, entertainment industries believe it could destroy them and Bali's embattled tourism authorities are alarmed at the prospect of sunbathing tourists being arrested.

Plans to introduce Playboy's soft porn to the Indonesian market next month have become another focus of rowdy demonstrations, with protesters portraying the magazine as a symbol of the decadent West's attack on Islam. Playboy's publishers are proposing a bizarre compromise, no naked women will be featured - Indonesians, at least, will be able to say they only buy it for the articles.

In Jakarta, police have seized hundreds of thousands of "erotic" magazines - including FHM and Rolling Stone - and DVDs, after an edict from police chief Sutanto to "eradicate pornography".

The Islamic Defenders Front spearheads the anti-porn protests. Its leader, is Habib Riziek. Porn, including artworks such as Suwage's, contributes to moral delinquency, Riziek claims. We don't care about the technicality of the picture. What we care is that the picture is publicly exhibited and it is pornography and it would damage morals. Riziek remains emphatic the bill is essential to "guard the nation's morality" against pornography, which extends past explicit photographs to "anything that could arouse sexual desire".

Suwage is increasingly bitter about the gallery's curator, Supangkat's, reaction to the protest. After hundreds of demonstrators arrived at the exhibition, a panicked Supangkat ordered the offending panels to be covered with white cloth. Other artists draped their own works in solidarity and Supangkat closed the biennale, permanently. Suwage believes his prosecution is linked to pressure to pass the anti-porn law and the desire of fundamentalists to impose Islamic rule on Indonesia. Suwage, who is afraid of prison, says he is determined to fight.

In Bali, the head of the government's tourism authority, Gede Nurjaya is concerned prohibitions against kissing and revealing bodies could be imposed against foreigners, destroying Bali's faltering tourism industry.

Arriva says most women's groups oppose the bill. Most of it restricts women, what they wear, how they act. It even creates a board that would go around monitoring women's behaviour. She sees the anti-porn movement as part of an agenda to reshape Indonesia, with pornography a symbol of Western culture to the many Muslims who believe globalisation aims to destroy their culture.

Adrian Vickers, Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Wollongong, agrees the debate is part of whipping up a moral panic about Western decadence eroding Indonesian culture and morality, with the potential to push Indonesia towards an Islamic state.

By my calculations the Jerry Springer version of Christ is just as likely to be the truth as the multitude of church versions. Which in turn is equally likely to be the truth as a prophet from God wearing a turban bomb and indeed, equally likely as a prophet from God wearing any other sort of headwear.

From Christian Today

Protestors gathered in Yorkshire earlier this week, regarding the controversial stage show Jerry Springer – The Opera. As part of a national tour, the show is at the York Grand Opera House every night this week, and will visit the Bradford Alhambra in May as its only other Yorkshire date.

Major Paul Westlake, of York Branch of the Salvation Army, said: We are here to put across to people that they should not formulate any ideas about Jesus Christ from this production they are going to see. In the production, he is portrayed as a ridiculous figure who says he may be a little bit gay. The issue is that there is a lot in the show that is offensive to Christians. In this country we seem to be able to poke fun at Christianity but not other minority faiths.

Lizzie Richards, general manager of the Grand Opera House, said: It's up to them if they want to protest. They are perfectly entitled to say how they feel. We are trying to offer a balanced programme. We think it is a great show from great producers written by two very talented people in Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas, which is why we wanted it to come to York.

From the BBC

Chinese Communist Party bosses are as determined as ever to maintain control over every word published or broadcast in the world's most populous country. A media clampdown - the latest of many over the years - has seen a string of journalists disciplined, dismissed or even jailed for violating official guidelines.

Some of the campaign's targets, however, are refusing to be silenced. And they have found plenty of supporters - some in unlikely quarters - willing to speak up on their behalf.

There is now an unstoppable wave of demands for more freedom of expression and resistance to the old propaganda policies, said Jiao Guobiao, who was forced to resign his post as a journalism professor last year after accusing the government of handling the press in a manner worthy of Nazi Germany.

Far more embarrassing, not to say ominous, has been the chorus of domestic protest over the closure in late January of Bing Dian (Freezing Point), a weekly publication noted for its cutting-edge reporting on sensitive topics.

Unlike most journalists punished in the past, the two editors loudly disputed the move to censor them. In comments widely aired on the internet they called it an "illegal abuse of power" aimed at preventing the growth of a civil society.

In an apparent climb-down, it was later announced that the magazine would reopen on March 1, but without its two chief editors. The reopened magazine would be an empty shell of its previous self, they said, and had been ordered to print a full rebuttal of the article on historical censorship which triggered the closure.

Among those who have rallied behind the editors are a group of former senior Party and media officials, including Mao Zedong's secretary and a former Editor in Chief of the People's Daily. The Taiwanese-born columnist Lung Ying-tai, whose controversial articles for Bing Dian may have been the real reason for the closure, has sent an open letter of protest to President Hu Jintao.

She believes the move against the influential magazine was a calculated one made by the president himself. His power base lies in the Communist Party Youth League, whose newspaper, China Youth Daily, publishes Bing Dian as a weekly supplement.

The decision to reopen the supplement was an attempt to ease the anger about the closure, she told the BBC: Freezing out the two prominent and courageous editors, she added, was designed to warn all other journalists to behave.

Propaganda officials have also faced other public challenges to their authority, including a rare strike by reporters in support of three editors dismissed from a leading daily, the Beijing News, late last year.

But what really worries them is that those now pushing for a lifting of censorship include not just journalists and activists, but also people in business, government and law who believe media reform is a necessary part of China's modernisation.

It is not good for the Communist Party to keep to its old ways, said Jiang He, who runs a hi-tech company in the western city of Chongqing.  China's rapid economic growth is proving a strong force for change, he said, pointing out that the media was already far more open in many ways than in the past. It's such an information age. There's no way anyone can block everything, he said.

Thanks to David:

Everyone should read this:

http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/islamophobia_prospect.html

It's a Muslim investigative journalist's essay about how politicians on all sides manipulate perceptions of cultural differences, and where the real problems lie. There's some good warnings about censorship too. It's simultaneously reassuring and disturbing stuff.

Most of the stuff relevant to Melon farmers is down in the latter third, or thereabouts

From The Nation

A senator representing Thailand's northeastern Nakhon Ratchasima Province on Tuesday alleged that government agencies are blocking local residents from political information by forcing cable TV providers to cancel their services despite having subscriptions.

Such acts will only drive more people to join the upcoming rally against the prime minister, warned the senator, Pichet Pattanachoti.

Pichet said residents of Chumpuang District and surrounding areas had complained that government officials forced their cable TV providers to disconnect their services to prevent them from seeing the news, as the opposition against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has grown with democratic activists planning the massive rally against him on February 26.

Villagers were told by their cable TV providers that they have been ordered to disconnect the services by government officials, police and district chiefs, he said: Doing this will push more people to rally to oust the prime minister.

From the forum at Thai Visa

Presumably they are blocking The Nation, ASTV channels (1-6) and a few others that "dare" to criticize this government. There may be other Thai channels doing this as well that I'm not aware of.

We've been lucky none of them have been removed from our service as I thought would happen eventually...

Spoke to soon!
Tonight's ASTV 1 presentation of a demonstration down South was temporarily replaced by a different channel.

Based on an article from The Telegraph

A teenager who used "fuck" while chatting with friends in a park has been handed an £80 fine by a police officer for anti-social behaviour.

Kurt Walker, 18, a student and volunteer youth centre worker, is refusing to pay the fine, saying that the use of the word in a private conversation was normal among his peer group and did not constitute an offence.

Walker said yesterday that he was not given a chance to explain when the woman officer approached him in a park in Dover, Kent, and handed him the fixed penalty notice fine. He said the incident happened as he was walking through the park on his way to the youth centre, when he came across a group of his friends. One of my mates asked: 'What have you been up to?' And when I replied, I used a swear word. But I was shocked when the police officer gave me the fine. She just slapped on the fine and then left. I walked off up the street furious. It's my right to swear in a private conversation. In my eyes I have not committed any crime whatsoever. There's no way I'm going to pay the fine. I'm going to take it to court and argue my case.

The fixed penalty notice was abusively issued under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and the decision to issue it has been welcomed by some campaigners in the town.

A spokesman for Kent Police said: "Swearing is an offence under the Public Order Act." [Well Fuck You!]

The world's religions are doing a fine job in demonstrating their intolerance and their affinity for intimidation. It seems also that the threats of violence will surely lead to some restrictions on criticism via humour or insult.

Maybe the next time your mum/dad/friend trundles off to church, rather than saying: that's nice, why not try instead: it's nice that you are doing your bit to further the causes of intolerance and intimidation. And by the way, what is the probability that your belief is the correct one?

Based on articles from South Manchester Reporter & India West

One of Manchester's Hindu leaders has slammed an advertisement depicting Goddess Durga clasping eight bottles of Southern Comfort.

The image, used in adverts in bars throughout Europe, has predictably outraged both moderate and strict Hindus. They have accused the licensing trade of ridiculing one of their most revered gods and of hijacking their religion to boost profits.

Ashit Sinha, a community worker and former journalist, says the advert should be banned. And he is calling on the media to institute an international regulatory body that would stop newspapers, magazines and advertisers lampooning religions and gods.

Sinha  continued: This is not just a Muslim problem. I don't know whether it's a lack of awareness and knowledge or complete lack of morality in the whole community. I think there needs to be an international regulatory body to monitor and where necessary, censor, the publication of religious images to stop this kind of thing happening.

Brown-Forman is the company which owns Southern Comfort. Phil Lynch, vice president of corporate communications, said We made a terrible mistake. We didn't realize it was the image of a Hindu goddess. Lynch asserted it was only a day earlier that his company found out about the anger the display had triggered in Hindu communities in Europe and India.

According to Bimal Krishna das, general secretary of the National Council of Hindu Temples (United Kingdom), which had been in the forefront of the protests said that while the beverage makers were to be lauded for removing the offending display after being pressurized by the Greek government, it was unfortunate that they did not listen to the requests made earlier by Hindus and Sikhs.

Krishna das noted that he was disappointed that the Indian Embassy in Athens had ignored his organization's requests over the last three months to take steps to have the window display removed. We request the Indian embassies to be much more forthcoming in providing assistance to the Indian communities settled outside India. We also request the world-wide Hindu community to formulate a concerted strategy to make sure that no further abuse of Hinduism takes place anywhere in the world.

From BYU News Net

A Utah House bill that repeals parts of Utah's controversial anti-pornography law hints at the inherent problems with governmental regulation of Internet pornography.

While government has a responsibility to protect its citizens and enforce laws against obscene material, BYU law professor John Fee said state regulation of the Internet is problematic: The Supreme Court has been extremely protective of pornographic material to the point that it makes it very difficult for Congress or the states to meaningfully control pornography on the Internet. It doesn't mean there are no means left, but it makes it difficult, and it remains unclear what will be done in the future.

Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland, was the sponsor of an anti-pornography bill that was passed last year (2005), and is now sponsoring HB187, which amends and repeals portions of his previous bill.

The law requires Utah's attorney general to maintain a database of Internet sites that display content that could be harmful to minors and requires Internet service providers to filter content for households who request it. Dougall's bill removes the database requirement, and allows Internet service providers to charge for providing the filter.

When Dougall's bill was made law last year, it received extensive criticism from attorneys who said parts of the law were highly likely to be found unconstitutional. The American Civil Liberties Union and 13 other plaintiffs sued, and that litigation is still in progress. ACLU would not comment on the lawsuit, but said Dougall's latest bill is in response to the lawsuit.

Other anti-pornography bills are passing through the U.S. Congress right now, HB3479 would require Internet sites that sell pornography to use age-verification software to prevent access by minors, much like the software online tobacco and alcohol sales sites use. The bill also proposes a 25% tax on all Internet pornography sites. Both the age verification and the tax would be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission.

Fee said that although obscenity (usually interpreted as deliberately offensive, hard-core pornography) is not free speech protected under the First Amendment, it is extremely difficult for state and local governments to regulate because the sites offering such material may not be within the state: That creates additional problems because it affects interstate commerce. So our state law would affect people in another state.

He said a national law, such as Matheson's, could possibly be approved to regulate Internet pornography, but two attempts to create such laws have already been struck down by the Supreme Court.

Based on an article from The Independent

A Muslim pop singer has been forced to hire bodyguards to protect her during a visit to Britain next month after she received a string of death threats from religious extremists.

US-based Deeyah is due in London next month to promote a new single and video, released tomorrow. But the track "What Will It Be?" has already outraged hardline Islamists here as it promotes women's
rights.

Her performances with a clutch of male dancers and revealing outfits have also deeply offended many Muslims. In one scene in her latest video, the singer drops a burqa covering her body to reveal a bikini.

That has attracted vitriol from some quarters. The singer claims that in the past she has been spat upon in the street and told that her family would be in danger if she did not tone down her work. The situation is now so bad that Deeyah feels she cannot visit Britain without protection. I can no longer walk around without specially assigned bodyguards. I would be lying if I said abuse from religious fanatics didn't upset or scare me.

Deeyah was originally a singer of classical Indian music and lived in the UK until just over a year ago. But she claims to have been shocked by the reaction to her shift to pop music accompanied by raunchy videos: I had no plan to court controversy or anger people in my community. I wanted to make people think and confront my own fears as a Muslim woman, Soon, though, she was dubbed "the Muslim Madonna". And then came hate mail and abuse from extremists. I have  had people phone me and tell me they were going to cut me up into pieces. I became this figure of hate simply because of what I do and wear.

Based on an article from Stuff

The  controversial Bloody Mary episode of South Park that shows a statue of the Virgin Mary menstruating blood has kicked up a fuss in New Zealand.

C4 owner Canwest said the transmission is being brought forward as a matter of "democratic choice" to better inform the debate. The episode was originally scheduled for a screening in May, but will now be shown on 22 February.

The episode depicts a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus, bleeding, with Pope Benedict XVI putting it down to menstruation, rather than a miracle. The Pope's face and other church leaders are also sprayed with blood and a priest uses the blood to draw a cross on a woman's head.

The country's prime minister, Helen Clark, said she had not seen the show but that it sounded "revolting".  She added the company was free to screen the programme, but should weigh that freedom against a potential backlash of viewers.

Palmerston North Catholic Bishop Peter Cullinane said Catholics can choose to take a stand against what he calls crass insults by boycotting advertisers linked with the cartoon. He said many are bored with using official complaint channels that go nowhere. Boycotting advertisers is something different that others will notice: I don't think Catholics have any problems about laughing at themselves. Some people have said Catholics should grin and bear it. Ninety-nine percent of the time we actually do.

But he said ridiculing the people and things held dear by Christians is the same as ridiculing the prophet Muhammad. Media are selective about who they offend, he said: They wouldn't do it for Maori, for example - it would be out of bounds.

Bishop Cullinane said there are minor differences between the Muhammad and Mary controversies: With the prophet Muhammad the media could claim they were merely reporting, (but South Park) is not reporting anything. They're just using that kind of lewdness for entertainment.

Catholic Church in New Zealand spokeswoman Lindsay Freer calls the Canwest move an arrogant, cynical and unethical effort to capitalise on the debate and boost ratings: I can't use the words I'd like to use as they would be unprintable. I think there will be many people in New Zealand who will be deeply offended by using toilet, menstrual humour involving Mary to illustrate a plot.

CanWest TVWorks chief operating officer Rick Friesen said once viewers see the scenes in the context of the entire episode, he believes many New Zealanders will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Broadcasting Standards Authority chief executive Jane Wrightson said any attempt to stop the cartoon being aired is state censorship. No action can be taken until a complaint is made, and that can't happen until after it screens, she said: We have no power to operate before the event. That would be censorship by a state organisation and that's not what we do.

Predictably ludicrous response over an innocuous add on to a game.

From Reuters

Take Two, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is facing more legal action over the game.
Separately, two law firms have filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of shareholders who they say lost money due to the controversy about the game.

Take Two faced widespread criticism in late 2005 when hidden (innocuous non-explicit) sex scenes were found in the game. The discovery prompted the release of a cleaned-up version of the game and led some stores to stop selling it.

Now New York law firms Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman and Stull, Stull and Brody are filing class action lawsuits for people who owned stock in Take Two between the day when the game was released and the announcement of the LA lawsuit. Take Two stock fell sharply on the day the LA lawsuit was announced.

From The Guardian

If the certainty of having your collar felt, metaphorically of course, by the local police every few days is not enough to put you off walking the length of Britain naked, then the February wind blowing off the Pentland Firth should at least be a deterrent. So, as the Naked Rambler and his girlfriend finally arrived at the northernmost tip of Scotland yesterday, their first thoughts turned to clothes. "Quick, get them on," said Stephen Gough to his partner, Melanie Roberts.

Before they dressed, there was a little welcome party of locals waiting at John O'Groats with cameras and mobile phones to record the end of the 874-mile naked walk. Bobbie, a man in his 70s from the village of Halkirk, near Thurso, had driven down especially. It's not him I've come to see, it's the girlfriend  he said unabashed. It's a bit of fun. There's not much else to brighten the winter here.

Clothed, they reckon they could have completed the walk in 40 days, covering 20-odd miles a day. Naked, a few problems with the law lengthened the expedition. Gough was arrested nine times, Roberts five.

I've never been in trouble with the police before and I found the first night in the cells quite frightening, said Roberts, I still don't see what all the fuss is about.

In all, Gough has spent four months in jail for causing offence with his naked ramble. What's the point, why do it? Why do anything? I want to show people that nakedness is nothing to be ashamed about and they should not pass their shame on to their kids.

From The Scotsman

The BBC was censured yesterday by Ofcom, the media watchdog, after a number of performers used bad language during live coverage of last summer's Live 8 concert.

No time delay was used for the broadcast and the language, which sparked 400 complaints, was heard by young viewers before the 9pm watershed.

Madonna broke the swearing ban when she shouted Are you fucking ready, London? as she came on stage, while Johnny Borrell, lead singer of Razorlight, said: I say sign the fucking petition in reference to calls to ban world poverty. Snoop Dogg repeatedly chanted Get your motherfucking hands in the air.

The BBC said it regretted the offence caused to viewers, but also blamed a "confrontation" with the organisers for the fact that its key staff missed the performance by Snoop Dogg.

By the time the scale of the problem with Snoop Dogg's performance had become clear, the Corporation said it was felt that the moment for a full apology had passed, and that to have returned to the issue would have merely drawn further attention to the original offence.

BBC officials told Ofcom they had approached some performers before the concert over the issue of language, but had not been given access to all the stars.

Snoop Dogg's record company had assured the BBC the rapper would do "TV versions" of his songs, without swearing.

However, Ofcom criticised the BBC for not imposing a time delay, failing to ensure a senior editorial figure was monitoring output, and not giving an apology during the broadcast.

In a separate ruling, ITV soap opera Coronation Street was cleared by Ofcom following the use of the term "poor white trash" by an Asian character, a remark which prompted 500 complaints.

Ofcom said that while the term had obvious racist overtones, it could also be used in context to describe a "low socio-economic group".

Glasgow radio station Xfm apologised to the media regulator after broadcasting an Ice Cube song containing "fuck". The station's owners said the song had been mistakenly labelled as a "clean edit" in the station's computer system.

BBC Radio 1 breakfast DJ Chris Moyles was reprimanded by station managers yesterday after using "fuck" in conversation with a caller.

Surely Austria has enough incitement laws to deal with any serious crimes worthy of 3 years in jail without needing to stoop to punishing the ludicrous contradiction of well established history.

From The Times

David Irving, the far-right British historian, sat stunned and open-mouthed yesterday when an Austrian court found him guilty of denying the Holocaust and sentenced him to three years in jail.

I’m very shocked and I’m going to appeal, Irving said as he was bundled out of the Vienna courtroom by armed anti-riot police.

From the public gallery a British supporter shouted “Stay strong, David”, before he too was led away.

But in Britain there was dismay at a verdict that could turn Irving into a right-wing martyr.

Irving had pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust in two speeches in Austria in 1989. He was arrested when he re-entered the country, where it is a crime to deny the Holocaust, last November, and had been in custody since.

During his seven-hour trial yesterday Irving sought to convince the jury that he had changed his mind and now acknowledged the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis. But the judge and jury were unswayed.

One hundred and fifty-eight people have been convicted of Holocaust denial in Austria between 1999 and 2004, but only a handful other than Irving have been imprisoned.

...Apologise or my mates will kick your head in...

From Christian Today

Danish church officials met with Egypt's top Muslim cleric in an effort to resolve the conflict caused by the Muhammad cartoons.

According to the Associated Press, however, no significant advancements were made during the meeting.

During the meeting, Grand Imam Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of al-Azhar University, the world’s highest Sunni Muslim seat of learning, said the Danish prime minister must apologise for the drawings and further demanded that the world’s religious leaders, including him and Pope Benedict XVI, meet to write a law that “condemns insulting any religion, including the Holy Scriptures and the prophets.”

He said the United Nation should impose the law on all countries.

In response, Bishop Karsten Nissen of Denmark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, did not address the issue of a global law but said that it was impossible for Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmusen to apologise for what a newspaper had published: I have brought to his excellency (Tantawi) the apology of the newspaper, but our prime minister did not draw these cartoons. Our prime minister is not the editor of this newspaper. He cannot apologise for something he did not do, Nissen said

Saturday's meeting was part of a four-day visit to Egypt by the Danish church delegation to open up a dialogue after the events following the publication of the Muhammad cartoons.

From Web India 123

Officials at the Bangladesh Ministry of Information said that a proposed law would be part of the governments drive to check the onslaught of obscenity on the local film industry. They said the plan is to ban the exhibition of English films in cinema halls in the districts and local levels.

The government was considering a number of steps to rid the film industry of vulgarity and encourage production of good films for healthy development of the industry, the New Age newspaper quoted Bangladesh's Information Minister M Shamsul Islam as saying.

The minister said some dishonest producers, distributors and cinema hall owners were showing uncensored and obscene English films, which could lead to the moral degeneration of society, particularly the young generation. So, we must take action against those who are responsible for the exhibition of obscene films, he added.

Earlier this month, the government had enacted a law to give some teeth to the Film Sensor Act. Producers and actors associations then claimed that the new law might be used as a tool for harassment against them.

The Ministry of Information will send the proposal to parliament shortly, even as the entertainment industry has given a mixed reaction to the move.

English films do not necessarily contain obscenity, and every year, Hollywood produces plenty of good movies. So, if the government enacts the law, moviegoers here will be deprived of watching many good films, said the owner of a movie-theatre in Dhaka.

From The Guardian

The government was urged to bring in new laws to ensure magazines and newspapers, including so-called "lads mags", featuring "disturbing pornographic" images be kept where children cannot see them. Labour's Diane Abbott, in an early day motion, also called for retail giant WHSmith to recognise certain tabloid titles as pornography [ie the Daily Sport] . Her motion states: There is still no legislation in place to ensure that adult titles, including so called lads mags, newspapers and tabloids containing disturbing pornographic material are kept out of the reach and sight of children.

From The Telegraph

Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.

The results of the poll, conducted for the Sunday Telegraph, came as thousands of Muslims staged a fresh protest in London yesterday against the publication of cartoons of Mohammed.

Last night, Sadiq Khan, the Labour MP involved with the official task force set up after the July attacks, said the findings were "alarming". He added: Vast numbers of Muslims feel disengaged and alienated from mainstream British society.

The most startling finding is the high level of support for applying sharia law in "predominantly Muslim" areas of Britain. Islamic law is used in large parts of the Middle East, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, and is enforced by religious police. Special courts can hand down harsh punishments which can include stoning and amputation.

40% of the British Muslims surveyed said they backed introducing sharia in parts of Britain, while 41% opposed it.

Based on an article from the BBC

Meanwhile 16 people have been killed/murdered in Northen Nigeria where Sharia law has already been established. Most of the deaths occurred in rioting in Maiduguri over the cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad.

Witnesses said most of the dead were from Maiduguri's minority Christians. Eleven churches were also torched.

The BBC's Alex Last in northern Nigeria says the protest had begun peacefully in Maiduguri, and it was not clear what started the violence. The city's residents described demonstrators running wild after police tried to disperse the protest with teargas. Crowds of protesters carried machetes, sticks and iron rods through the city centre, the Associated Press news agency reported. One group threw a tyre around one man, poured gas on him and set him ablaze, it said.

Christian leader Joseph Hayab told the agency most of those who died were Christians: The Muslim group came out to protest and the security forces tried to ensure it was peaceful, but there were some hoodlums in the crowd and somehow the security forces shot one or two of them, They went on the rampage, burning shops and churches of the Christians. The protesters killed the others. Some were even killed in the churches.

From The Scotsman

A million dollar bounty for the killing of a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad was yesterday offered by a radical cleric in Pakistan, as thousands joined in street protests.

In the north-western city of Peshawar, the prayer leader Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi announced the bounty to a crowd of about 1,000 people. Qureshi said the mosque and his religious school would give $25,000 (£14,300) and a car, while a local jewellers' association would give another $1 million (£570,000).

Qureshi continued: This is a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam that whoever insults the Prophet deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end will get this prize.

The security forces were out in strength, particularly around government offices and Western businesses, as Muslims streamed on to the streets after Friday prayers. More than 200 people were detained, but most gatherings were peaceful.
 
Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard, president of the Danish Journalists' Union and spokesman for the cartoonists, condemned the bounty said the cartoonists - who have been living under police protection since last year - are aware of the reward and were "feeling bad about the whole situation".

In Islamabad, the former US president Bill Clinton criticised the cartoons but said violent protests by Muslims had wasted an opportunity to build better ties with the West: Most people in the United States deeply respect Islam ... and most people in Europe do.

Denmark announced it had temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan. It also advised against travel to Pakistan and urged Danes still in the country to leave.

Pakistan, meanwhile, recalled its ambassador to Denmark for "consultations" about the cartoons, foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.

From The Guardian

At least nine people were reported dead in the Libyan city of Benghazi after a mob set fire to the Italian consulate.

More than 1,000 protesters set upon the mission, setting cars alight and breaking windows, apparently angered by a minister in Silvio Berlusconi's government who has said he intends to wear T-shirts bearing some of the cartoons.

An Italian consular official said nine protesters had been killed and several more had been wounded as armed police clashed with the crowd. State television showed part of the consulate on fire.

Italian state-owned RAI television said six members of the consular staff were trapped inside, but unhurt. RAI said anger mounted at the actions of Roberto Calderoli, the minister for constitutional reform, and a leading member of the xenophobic Northern League. Earlier this week, he announced that he planned to wear T-shirts featuring the cartoons that were published in European newspapers and have sparked violent protests around the world.

Last night Berlusconi asked for Calderoli to resign.
 

From Reuters

Google have formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's subpoena of logs of Web searches, arguing the demand violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets.

Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California the government demand to disclose Web search data was impractical.

The Bush administration is seeking to compel Google to hand over Web search data as part of a bid by the Justice Department to appeal a 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize Web site operators who allow children to view pornography.

Google is going it alone in opposing the U.S. government request. Rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are among the companies that have complied with the Justice Department demand for data to be used to make its case.

Google's lawyers said the company shares the government's concern with materials harmful to minors but argued that the request for its data was irrelevant. They offered a series of technical arguments why this data was not useful.

The Mountain View, California-based company said that complying with the U.S. government's request for "untold millions of search queries" would put an undue burden on the company, including a "week of engineer time to complete."

Complying with the Justice Department request would also force Google to reveal how its Web search technology works -- something it jealously guards as a trade secret, the company argued. It refuses to disclose even the total number of searches conducted each day.

Google users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google search box ... that Google will keep private whatever information users communicate absent a compelling reason, attorneys for Google said in the filing.

The legal spat also comes amid heightened sensitivity to privacy issues by the company as it recently began offering a new version of its Google Desktop service that vacuums up data stored on user PCs and makes it accessible on the users' other computers. For customers who consent to the service, copies of their data are stored on Google's central computers.

Probably didn't espouse the required morality of intolerance and violent intimidation.

From The Telegraph

Algeria has banned as "immoral" a reality television show that has become so popular in the Arab world that restaurants in the region are empty during its broadcasts.

Star Academy, a version of Fame Academy, is keeping the Middle East on the edge of its seat with the rare sight of male and female contestants competing for the prize of money, fame and a record deal.

The show has weathered protests that it is "un-Islamic" and a toxic import from the West but this week Algerian national television stopped showing the programme after protests by the main Islamist party.

Aboudjerra Soltani, the leader of the Movement for a Society of Peace, said the show was a provocation against society and attacked its moral values. It can still be watched on satellite television.

Launched by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation and filmed in Lebanon, Star Academy starts with the pan-Arab recruitment of thousands of hopefuls, who audition to become one of the 16 finalists. The finalists live and train together in Adma, Lebanon, taking lessons in music, dancing, singing, fashion, hair-styling and make-up.

Star Academy is one of the few places in the Arab world where personal advancement depends on talent rather than connections, where men and women can mix freely, and where expressing individualism is something to be celebrated. Such values have made the show both controversial and hugely popular.

Star Academy has also attracted more than its share of militant Islamic critics, who maintain that the show transgresses the most basic Islamic principles, either because men and women live together in an "un-Islamic" way, or because they see reality television as an alien concept imposed by the West.

The Dean of the School of Islamic Law and Shari'a at Kuwait University passed a fatwa condemning the show; the Kuwaiti parliament has discussed legislation to "protect public morality" from Star Academy, and articles in the Saudi press have called the building where the contestants live "a whorehouse".

From DW World

Ernst Zündel, a Holocaust denier is in front of a German court on charges of inciting racial hatred and defaming the dead.

According to prosecutors, Ernst Zündel is one of the "most active" Holocaust deniers today. He began distributing Nazi and neo-Nazi propaganda in the 1970s and has written several books praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Since 1995, he has been associated with a Web site that carries his name and is one of biggest online repositories of Holocaust-denial propaganda.

But Zündel, who was born in Germany's Black Forest region, was only able to engage in such activities because he was living outside of his native county, in Canada and the United States.

Although freedom of the press and of expression is written into German law, the country is generally more wary of free speech than the US, where Zündel's dissemination of racist literature and refutation of the Holocaust,  while distasteful to most, was perfectly legal.

In Germany, however, it was not. Zündel was deported to his native country in March 2005 after a long legal battle with the Canadian government. He found himself immediately under arrest and up against the German justice system. If he is found guilty by a court in Mannheim of incitement to racial hatred, libel and defamation of the memory of the dead, he faces up to five years in prison.

Article 5 of Germany's constitution, or Basic Law, enshrines the right of freedom of speech and of the press. Everyone has the right to freely express and disseminate their opinions orally, in writing or visually and to obtain information from generally accessible sources without hindrance, states paragraph one of the law. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting through audiovisual media shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.

But the next paragraph puts certain limits on that freedom, which were deemed necessary when the Basic Law was proclaimed in 1949, just four years after the end of World War II and the downfall of the Nazi dictatorship:These rights are subject to limitations embodied in the provisions of general legislation, statutory provisions for the protection of young persons and the citizen's right to personal respect, reads the second paragraph.

German law therefore constrains press freedom, said Udo Branahl, a professor of media law at the University of Dortmund:The penal law code says Holocaust denial is a punishable offense. That ban limits press freedom and overrides the right to free expression in the mass media.

So while in the US and Canada, Zündel could freely present his "evidence" that the gas chambers and crematoria of the Third Reich did not exist, in Germany, he was committing a crime that he would be tried for, even though it was not committed on German soil.
n weighing free speech against individual rights

The country's Federal Constitutional Court confirmed in 1994 that Holocaust revisionism is not protected speech. In weighing the importance of free speech against that of individual rights, courts must consider on the one hand the severity of the offense caused by Holocaust denial to the Jewish population in light of the suffering inflicted upon it by Germany, the court wrote at the time. This court has consistently protected the personal honor of those defamed above the right of others to make patently false statements.

From the Chicago Tribune

The student newspaper at Northern Illinois University this week ran the controversial Danish political cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. The student paper at the University of Illinois is still reeling from the consequences of running them.

Harvard's conservative alternative paper has run them. On Wednesday, so did the alternative student paper at Illinois State University.

We weighed the potential backlash, the potential fallout and decided being afraid of backlash should not keep us from running a story, because where do you draw the line? said Northern Star editor-in-chief Derek Wright, as letters—many incensed, some supportive—began to arrive at the Star's offices at Northern Illinois. We felt it was something that was our responsibility.

As violent reactions to the cartoons simmer in the Muslim world—at least three more people were killed in riots in Pakistan on Wednesday—the controversial cartoons are trickling into student newspapers here.

Faculty advisers and journalism ethicists have rushed to frame the discussions with students over handling the images in their own campus papers.

For the most part, news organizations—including the Chicago Tribune—have decided it is enough to write about the cartoons and their aftermath without publishing them. Only two major U.S. newspapers have run the cartoons, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the American-Statesman in Austin, Texas.

The nature of the offensiveness alone creates a significant barrier to publishing or republishing the image, even if you can justify the original publication, which I think is not easy to do, said ethicist Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute for journalism.

Meanwhile, the Daily Illini's suspended editor, Acton Gorton, on Wednesday hired a Chicago-based Muslim-American civil rights attorney, Junaid Afeef. Gorton said he was defamed by the Illini's retraction editorial, which blamed the decision to publish the cartoons on a "renegade editor."

I just want to make sure I have good representation for whatever happens now, Gorton said. My career is in jeopardy.

The Daily Illini backlash was fresh in the minds of editors at NIU, where the Star's editorial board decided to publish the political cartoons last Thursday, but postponed doing so until Monday. Officials said they delayed to look into copyright questions about re-publication. But it was just as well they waited, Wright said. The reaction in Champaign prompted them to rethink how to present the material.

The 12 cartoons were run inside on Page 3 of the tabloid paper, with an editorial headlined "More Than Cartoons" on the front page. Alongside the cartoons, an article explained the controversy and student opinions. On Page 8, the Star ran an opinion column from a student Muslim group explaining objections to the images.

Feedback on the decision has been split, said Wright and Jim Killam, the paper's adviser. Some people, including Muslims, said they objected to the cartoons but appreciated the newspaper's muted presentation.

From The Telegraph

A TV advert featuring women kung-fu fighting and a lesbian kiss has attracted 50 complaints.

The French Connection advert shows a blonde and a brunette model fighting in a basement before getting soaked in water and sharing a passionate kiss.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it has received around 50 complaints since the clip was first aired on Sunday night. A spokeswoman said: Complaints have been on two points. Some believe it's offensive in its sexual nature, particularly the lesbian kiss. Others have complained about the violence.

The new advert, directed by Duncan Jones, the son of singer David Bowie, is only shown after the 9pm watershed. The two models are initially immaculately dressed, but then throw each other around in violent scenes reminiscent of the film The Matrix. Their kiss is cut short with a headbutt from the dark-haired model, at which point the clip ends.

Based on an artile from Khaleej Times

A video documentary Waiting, appealing for sanity to prevail in Jammu and Kashmir, has been banned by the Indian Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) as it does not deal with the complex and Poignant situation in a comprehensive manner.

The revising committee of the censor board has refused a certificate to the documentary, its producer-director Atul Gupta said.

The film depicts the women whose husbands have been declared missing but not dead and eventually they are described as half-widows and their children live without fathers. The film projects that Kashmir, the paradise on earth, is today infested with militants from Pakistan. The psychological impact on children and single women is probably the most tragic outcome of the situation Gupta said.

The 39-minute film in English, Hindi and Urdu, is co-directed by Shabnam Ara and has entered in the national competition of the MIFF, Gupta said. It was shot over a period of two years in Kashmir, he added. We were threatened and pushed around by the military authority and faced hostile crowds, who were suspicious of us, he alleged.

Taking up cudgels on behalf of Gupta, several short filmmakers and festival delegates have written a letter to Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Priyaranjan Dasmunsi objecting to the refusal of censor certificate. The issue of the half-widows will not disappear by suppressing freedom of expression and flow of information, which is the corner stone of any democratic society, they said.

Opinion from The Telegraph

The Government's appetite for passing oppressive laws grows with the eating. Yesterday's vote in the Commons to make the "glorification" of terrorism an offence was justified by ministers as essential to combat the rise of extremism. It is nothing of the sort.

The existing laws on incitement to murder, to violence, and to racial and other forms of hatred provide all the scope needed to prevent extremists from encouraging others to support violent attacks.

There was plenty of "glorification" of terrorism in the demonstrations in London a fortnight ago over the Danish cartoons: but it also constituted incitement to murder, for which the police have not yet seen fit to have anyone prosecuted.

The "glorification" law was said to be needed to stop the likes of Abu Hamza: but without it, Hamza is already in jail. It all helps support the case eloquently put by the shadow attorney-general, Dominic Grieve, that yesterday's proceedings were merely a stunt designed to make Tony Blair look tough.

Blair himself talked of the measure in terms of being a "signal". As with so much else he does, he sees even something so important as this as a matter of spin-doctoring.

The vote overturned a Lords amendment to the anti-terror Bill that would itself have provided an offence of encouraging terrorism. Lawyers can now argue long and expensively over what does or does not constitute an act of "glorification".

One man's "glorification" might merely be another man's "encouragement": or even something far less enthusiastic than either. When the law becomes rooted only in narrow semantics, it invites robust challenge, and feeds a climate of increasing absurdity.

The British traditions of liberty, free speech and freedom of thought are all ridden over roughshod by this measure. Within three days this limitation on free speech, the introduction of identity cards and the ban on smoking even on private premises have shown this administration in its true colours.

It wishes, plainly and simply, to engage as completely as possible in control of individuals and the monitoring of their behaviour.

Such part of this as is done in the name of improving the public's protection from terrorists is done dishonestly. Not a single life is likely to be saved because it might be an offence to glorify terror, or because the British people are to be increasingly forced to submit to carrying a state identity card.

If someone exalts terrorism his best punishment is to be treated like those who exalt the memory of Hitler, or deny his genocide of the Jews: to be made the subject of contempt and ridicule. If it is exalted to the point of urging violence then there can be prosecutions as the law stands.

Instead, the new law will give a steady supply of martyrs, many deliberately seeing how far they can go. That, and the minefield of legal argument that will inevitably follow, will secure one outcome: that the Government will eventually regret this law. Because of its serious impact on our liberties, the rest of us should regret it now.

Based on an article from The Times

Philip Pullman and Nicholas Hytner are leading a campaign to repeal blasphemy laws after the Government’s failure to outlaw “abusive and insulting” criticism of religion. Both are spearheading a movement to remove the special protection afforded to the Church of England by 300-year-old blasphemy laws. They have been brought together by English Pen, a lobby group for freedom of expression.

Pullman said that the blasphemy laws had no place in modern Britain and Hytner and that repealing blasphemy laws was the next logical step for the Government. He told The Times that he had discussed the matter informally with members of the cabinet who suggest that repealing the law is a good idea.

Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat human rights spokesman, said that he was waiting for an opportunity to propose repeal of blasphemy laws, either as an amendment to relevant legislation or as a Private Member’s Bill.

Blasphemy is illegal under common law and the 1697 Blasphemy Act. It covers only blasphemy against the Church of England after a judgement in 1938. The last successful prosecution was in 1977, when Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association brought a private prosecution against Denis Lemon, editor of Gay News, for publishing a poem about a gay centurion’s love for Christ.

From Yahoo News
From MediawatchWatch

Arts Council England has given £30,000 to the national tour of Jerry Springer: The Opera, six months after turning down an application for funding.

In August the organisation threw the future of the production into doubt when it decided against subsidising the tour. On that occasion the application was from the producers Avalon and the Arts Council claimed it could not justify the use of public money for a commercial tour.

But it has now made the £30,000 award in response to a separate application from a consortium of theatres. The musical is in the middle of a nationwide regional tour. The funding will enable the production to reach new audiences across the country.

Sir Christopher Frayling, chair of Arts Council England, said: "We are committed to continuing our association with Jerry Springer: The Opera. The original production provoked an important debate and attracted new audiences during its time on the London stage. Our award will allow the production to reach out to new audiences across England allowing them too to take part in the debate."

Stephen Green of Christian Voice, the organisation which is currently picketing venues around the country, is predictably furious: It would not be possible for this show to be any more blasphemous and insulting to Christians if it tried. I cannot believe it has qualified for public money. It needs the money to keep it going. As far as I am concerned, Jerry Springer: The Opera appeals to people who like treading in dog shit. Taxpayers have no business supporting it.

So full of love and the grace of his lord Jesus Christ, isn’t he?

The BBFC recently awarded a 12 rating to a DVD because of a badly dubbed 'fuck'. Now they harp on about the it being 'a very serious offence' to supply that DVD to a child. If BBFC decisions are to be used to imprison people, then the BBFC should have to consider whether there is sufficient harm to justify a 6 month prison sentence before being able to award an age restricted certificate. Badly dubbed 'fuck's surely do not cause sufficient harm to justify people being set up for a six month jail term.

From The Sunday Herald

Newsagents face fines or even imprisonment for selling papers containing free 12 and 15-certificate films.

British censors have warned that many of the DVDs given away recently with newspapers carry 12 or 15- certificates, which makes it illegal to supply them to anyone under the appropriate age. The fact they are free makes no difference in the eyes of the law.

It is a very serious offence, said Sue Clark, head of communications at the BBFC. You end up with a criminal record and can go to prison or be heavily fined.

The National Federation of Retail Newsagents has warned members of the implications of selling age-restricted DVDs to children, but there is anecdotal evidence that many continue to do so.

Trading standards officers are responsible for policing the Video Recordings Act and the local authority regulatory body, Lacors, has made representations to newsagents, stores and garages, trade bodies and news papers demanding they all tighten up.

As suppliers, newsagents are in the frontline. But Clark said some papers had broken the law by failing to show film certificates on their front pages, so newsagents might not realise they contained age-restricted material.

There is the further complication of paper boys and girls delivering age-restricted DVDs to homes. I know from one person who rang the BBFC that they came in to find their child watching a 15-rated film and they were about seven or eight, said Clark. Parents have raised concerns. And we are concerned that parents may not be able to choose what their children access.

Highlander and Conan the Destroyer, both 15-rated films, were given away with red-top tabloids last month. But English broadsheets have been handing out the kind of films in which Wingate specialises. Last month The Independent gave away Czechoslovakian masterpiece Closely Observed Trains, which is rated 15 and yesterday it gave away the Italian 12-certificate film The Sky Is Falling.

Sue Clark said one solution might be for newspapers to give away vouchers for DVDs instead, and some already do this. Adam Whisker at Lacors said they had suggested DVDs should be supplied separately from newspapers.

Based on an article from Irrawaddy

Indonesia’s government has imposed a new law aimed at inflicting control over the broadcasting of foreign programs. The government says that the change has been made to preserve “local culture” and to prevent “indecent” presentations from foreign broadcasters.

The new law, applicable to public service broadcasts, covers the monitoring of programs, the allocation of frequencies and the awarding of licenses to broadcast stations. It also limits the content of foreign transmissions and the ownership of broadcasting outlets.

Indonesian Information and Communication Minister, Sofyan Djalil, said the new regulations will mean avoiding anarchy in the broadcast industry.

Until now, most of Indonesia’s 160 radio and television stations have regularly broadcast content from major foreign media groups such as the UK-based BBC, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, Radio Hilversum from the Netherlands and Radio Australia.

While an official announcement of the new law was made on January 30, the proposed changes were delayed following complaints from media activists.

Last week, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists said: the regulations will severely restrict foreign broadcast content, having a detrimental impact upon media freedom by limiting news and information sources. We implore the Indonesian government to respect the public’s right to freedom of information.

In a region where press freedom is too often trampled underfoot, the Jakarta government should protect rather than obstruct it, said the Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

The new law marks a definite shift for the Jakarta government, which has maintained a largely hands-off policy with regard to media operations in the country since the fall of the Suharto regime eight years ago.

From The Telegraph

BBC censors have cut politically incorrect bits out of a rerun of a 1950s episode of The Goon Show, starring Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. They have also sunk a whole episode of Round The Horne.

On the BBC's Radio 7 website, advertising the digital revival of the programmes, the vintage humour is described as "unadulterated entertainment". However, as Mary Kalemkerian, the head of Radio 7 programmes, said last night, in eight edits of 20,000 programmes from the archives, The Goon Show was censored where, as the musician Ray Ellington walked on with his quartet, one of the cast re-named the programme The Coon Show. She said: This, we felt, was wrong. We also cut the phrase 'sambo-speak'.

The Round The Horne episode found to be "just beyond the bounds of acceptability" featured the cast travelling on the African Queen, with faces daubed in cocoa, grinning and singing "De Camptown Ladies".

Peter Reid, who reviews BBC programmes for unacceptable content, said that, with the revivals of vintage classics, he sometimes recommended the elimination of the odd word which we wouldn't use in polite company these days.

From The Guardian

Thousands of British Muslims went into Trafalgar Square yesterday to express their anger at the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. But they also voiced their rejection of the wave of violent protest that has swept the Muslim world during the past two weeks over the cartoons, first published in a small Danish newspaper.

This is the Muslim community, said the rally chairman, Anaf Altikriti, of the Muslim Association of Britain. Not a handful of people claiming vile things like those last Friday. He was referring to protesters who took to the streets of London with placards embracing al-Qaeda and calling for the beheading of non-believers.

5000 people gathered in the square to listen to an array of speakers. The organisers had carefully chosen calm, co-ordinated banners that were lifted in the air to create a sea of white and blue. The messages simply read: United against Islamophobia, united against incitement, mercy to mankind and Muhammad, symbol of freedom and honour.

Sumayah Razzak, said they had come there to defend the honour of Muhammad: But we are against all violence and hatred and also condemn those evil reactions. We are hear to show Muslims are peaceful.

Pakistan's ruling party and hardline Islamic groups yesterday issued a joint call to hold a nationwide strike there on 3 March. The Muslim League party and a six-party coalition of religious groups also urged people to boycott the products of those countries where the Danish cartoons have been printed.

Perhaps a few of our regulators and broadcasters should take note. Surely this will be the of Ofcoms human rights abusing ban on hardcore. And who wants to watch Sky's mandatory PIN protected films when one can skip the whole bollox of control freakery.

From the Korea  Herald

The start of Web-based television in Korea may still take some time with the confrontation between the nation's IT regulator and broadcasting sector over the service's legal boundaries showing no signs of ceasing.

The Korean Broadcasting Commission and the Korean Cable TV Association on Friday lashed out against Information Minister Chin Dae-je's comments earlier in the week that he is willing to approve cable TV system operators to engage in internet phone service business in return for a prompt launch of internet protocol television, or IPTV.

Though technically ready, commercialization of IPTV has been delayed for more than a year in Korea amid a turf war between the nation's telecommunication companies and broadcasting sector.

The nation's broadcasting sector has called for an "industry restructuring" as business domains of the telecommunication and broadcasting industries increasingly overlap with advancements in the IT field. The broadcasting industry says related laws must first be refurbished to ensure a fair business environment before IPTV is introduced.

IPTV, which distributes television contents over the high-speed internet, is considered a killer application for the future internet industry, however, with countries around the world racing to introduce it.

Chin has argued IPTV should be subject to minimum red-tape and quickly introduced because of national interests. The trade-off solution from Chin, however, has drawn heavy criticism from the broadcasting sector, which accuses the minister of favoritism: Chin keeps making comments favoring certain telecom operators like KT and hampering fair competition environment between operators of telecommunications and broadcasting, the Korean Broadcasting Commission said in a statement.

Meanwhile, analysts see the broadcasting sector eventually giving into the information ministry.

It is a global trend (to encourage the introduction of IPTV), said Kim Kyeong-mo, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities Co.

From the BBC

A student newspaper has recalled 8,000 copies and suspended its editor after publishing a cartoon satirising the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. It is thought Cardiff University's student union paper Gair Rhydd is the first UK publication to use the image which has caused global protests. The paper has been withdrawn and said it regretted any upset caused.

Gair Rhydd which means Free Word in English was published and pulled on the same day, but the university said it was likely that about 200 copies remained in circulation.

A statement by Cardiff University Students' Union read: The opinions expressed in Gair Rhydd are those of the editorial team independently of the Students' Union or University. The Students' Union very much regrets any upset caused or disrespect shown by the publication of the controversial cartoon and has taken immediate action by promptly withdrawing all copies of this week's edition of Gair Rhydd.

From the Daily Mail

There were fears of a backlash from extremists last night as a British magazine published one of the controversial cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed.

The Liberal magazine placed one of the Danish caricatures on its website despite warnings from police about the likely reaction.

Several newspapers across Europe have already published the cartoons but The Liberal is the first to show them directly in Britain.

Scotland Yard chiefs last night called an emergency meeting to discuss the development. Anti-Terrorist Branch detectives believe the British magazine's decision to publish one of the original cartoons will increase tensions "significantly".

Staff at The Liberal decided against publishing one of the cartoons in the magazine itself after warnings from police. Editor Ben Ramm said detectives had told him it would inflame an already tense situation. They also hinted they only had finite resources to protect him and his publication.

After last night's meeting of Scotland Yard commanders, security is expected to be stepped up at The Liberal's North London offices and staff may be given advice about their own protection.

Ramm said he was not afraid of being targeted by extremists. "I realise it is a very sensitive issue but I believe that Muslims will see our reasoning for doing this. We had a long and heated debate before deciding to go ahead with it. We have chosen the least offensive of the cartoons. We do not want to cause offence unnecessarily but in the end we decided it was about artistic freedom of expression.

The magazine is in its seventh issue and has a print run of 25,000. The image shows a cartoonist bent over a drawing of a conventionally depicted Arab. Drops of sweat fly from the cartoonist's forehead, and it is not clear whether they come from the heat of the lamp above the drawing or from the tension of drawing the Prophet of Islam.

Inayat Bunglawala, from the Muslim Council of Great Britain, said he was "saddened and disappointed" by the decision to publish the cartoon: The cartoons are gratuitously offensive to Muslims and will cause great hurt. I would appeal to the editor of The Liberal to think again. The mainstream media in Britain have shown great restraint but we always feared a smaller publication would print the cartoons."

A senior police source said: It appears the people running this magazine have underestimated the likely reaction to this decision.

It is not clear to me why earlier puberty should be considered an occurrence to worry about anyway.

Thanks to Dan: Mediawatch UK picked up on this. Presumably to back their agenda for wishing to deny adults the freedom to watch sexual material.

From Mediawatch-UK originally from the Daily Mail

Part of the reason for our mounting epidemic of obesity is the all-pervasive influence of television on the lives of children. In modern Britain, the TV is far more that just a piece of furniture or a piece of entertainment. It is a huge force in almost every family, dominating the domestic environment, acting as an electronic babysitter and shaping behaviour. More than half of three-year-olds have TV sets in their bedrooms, while by the age of six the average child will have spent a full year of 24-hour days in front of the screen.

Apart from giving rise to obesity, this helps to promote early puberty in other ways. One is through the relentless exposure to sexual imagery. Scientific research has shown that when adults watch sexual material on the screen, hormones are released into the body. There is no reason to believe the same is not true of children and that these hormones help hasten the onset of adolescence …

In other words, TV is not just a medium for negative images; it can also have direct biological consequences. Along with pop videos and magazines, television is also part of an arsenal of media influences that have encouraged a loss of innocence in children. Publications aimed at preteen girls now talk openly about sexual positions and oral sex, while the pop scene is filled with gyrating exhibitionist stars and explicit lyrics.

Based on an artile from Khaleej Times

The Ministry of Culture and Information will not allow the screening of the Hollywood film Brokeback Mountain in the UAE because of scenes involving homosexuals.

The portrayal of the sexual behaviour of its main character is said to be offensive to eastern societies, particularly Muslims and the Arabs since Islam forbids homosexuality, said Dr Abdullah Al Amiri, Chairman of the Committee of Financial, Economical and Industrial Affairs of Sharjah Consultative Council.The film will upset the people of this culture and tradition,” he said, explaining that there were scenes showing two men romantically inclined to each other.

The decision of the Ministry of Information was hailed by the nutters of the Sharjah Consultative Council during the meeting yesterday. The nutters thanked the ministry for its efforts in protecting the society from unethical and immoral practices.

The movie was named ‘Best Picture’ at the 17th Annual Producers Guild of America (PGA) awards.

From The Guardian

British imams have demanded changes in the law and a strengthening of the Press Complaints Commission code to outlaw any possible publication of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the UK. They also wanted the Race Relations Act modified to give Muslims the same protection as Sikhs or Jews.

Amid escalating tensions provoked by the controversy throughout Europe and the Middle East, more than 300 religious leaders and scholars met yesterday to highlight the distress of British communities and to plan a way forward.

They have scheduled a march through London next weekend and say at least 20,000 people are likely to attend.

Yesterday's event, which involved imams and grassroots figures from throughout England and Scotland, marked the foundation of the Muslim Action Committee (MAC), whose leaders plan a continuous campaign to confront the alleged disparagement of Muslim communities and to call for "global civility".

They say they are determined to show how deeply Muslims have been hurt, without allowing the issue to be hijacked by extremists. Families on the MAC-sponsored march on February 18 from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park will only be allowed to carry approved banners.

Faiz Siddiqi, the MAC's national convenor, said: What is being called for is a change of culture. In any civilised society, if someone says, 'don't insult me', you do not, out of respect for them.

He said committee members would seek to meet editors and the PCC. Newspapers have so far declined to publish the offending cartoons. Siddiqi called for that approach to be formalised: The PCC's code is voluntary. It is a benchmark of civility. It is a social contract. Why could it not be extended to cover Muslims?

The meeting also agreed to back a boycott of Danish goods already imposed by Muslims in other European countries.

Based on an article from Dark Horizons

Sharon Stone's latest movie is too sexy for an R rating. Censors in the US have had to cut a steamy orgy scene out of Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction so that teenagers can watch it reports Bang Showbiz.

Britain's Daily Star newspaper quotes a spokesman for the studio as saying: It is a hard 'R' rated movie which means it includes strong sexuality, nudity, violence, language and some drug content. Censors threatened to give it the dreaded NC-17 rating which would mean that no-one under 18 could watch it.

Although they found the orgy scene too much, the MPAA did allow a sequence where Sharon's character is pleasured by a man as she drives a sports car through the streets on London at high speed. Sharon reportedly refused to use a body double for the sex scenes.

From The Can Mgazine

We were recently alerted that the MPAA has finally dropped the rating for the remake of The Hills Have Eyes down from an NC-17 to a hard-R. Though this is great news for Fox Searchlight Pictures, what possibly cool scenes had to be cut to get the downgrade in rating?

From what we have heard, nothing was cut to get excited over. According to the latest, not only is the film just as dirty but it is still in the running to be one of the most fucked up films you see this year.

From Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake City police raided a sex shop Thursday and seized about 700 DVDs they suspect of violating state obscenity laws. Police arrived about 7 p.m. Thursday at Dr. John's Lingerie, 677 S. 200 West, with a warrant to confiscate the store's DVD inventory and invoices and other paperwork related to the disks, said Josh Henson, the store's manager.

Salt Lake City police confirmed the raid on the store but declined to discuss it further, saying it was an ongoing investigation. Henson said no criminal charges have been filed against the store, its owners or managers. The warrant and the officers who served it indicated they believed the DVDs violated obscenity laws, Henson said. Under Utah statutes, it's a third-degree felony to distribute pornographic

material and minimum punishments include a $1,000 fine and 30 days in jail. Henson said the DVDs are similar to ones sold at a Dr. John's store in the Weber County town of Roy. The confiscated DVDs included about 70 titles, each selling for between $20 and $70, Henson said: I wouldn't say it's hard-core. If you want to look at it this way, it's the classiest stuff you can get.

From backdoor_uk on The Melon Farmers' Forum

"The BT CleanFeed figures are even more deceptive than that..."

The BT CleanFeed figures are pretty meaningless. The Internet Watch foundation, who administer the Child Abuse Images database that CleanFeed is based on say themselves that the real increase is on the number of urls on the list. More urls means more hits; it`s as simple as that. The real question is why more urls?

- According to an email I had from the IWF 5% of urls feature pictures of `children` aged 16-17 (IWF changed its definition of child porn to `under 18` when the 2003 sex offenders act did, this only really took effect in their 2005 figures)

- For a url to be included on the database it only takes 2 of their reviewers to judge a picture as category one. In other words they only have to think that the picture *looks* like they are under 18 and it is `erotically posed` (it doesn't even have to be nude).

The CAI database is a piece of work. Not only are website owners not informed when they are put on it, no one but approved partners has the right to access it. If a website does find out and appeal the IWF asks the police (effectively) for the final say on if an image is illegal or not. Ultimately then it constitutes censorship in the hands of the police.

The IWF can only go after websites on the basis of breach of current laws. Since the OPA doesn't cover other countries they can't do anything about adult porn production outside of the UK. But there is some suspicion that the whole point of the proposed law on extreme pornography is not so much to prosecute individuals, but rather to give the IWF a legal excuse to monitor websites containing such pictures and publish a database similar to the CAI.

How many of us would be happy with adult porn urls being blocked on the say of 2 'expert' IWF reviewers with the police as the only avenue of appeal?

I thinks some one is exaggerating the problem here, Surely one has to subtract all the hits originating from spiders and automated systems from these figures. Then one has to discount a proportion of the links that are made without realisation that it is a banned site. Then the daily hits hardly sounds very large. (for the sake of comparison Melon Farmers receives 17,500 page hits a day compared with 35,000 blocked pages).

Based on an article from the BBC

The number of attempts to view illegal child pornography on the web has risen sharply since 2004, according to BT.

The company has a system to block sites carrying indecent images of children and over the past four months it has been thwarting 35,000 hits each day.

When BT first launched its Cleanfeed system 18 months ago, there were just over 10,000 attempted hits every day.

Children's groups have repeated calls for all internet service providers to prevent access to illegal websites.

BT's blocking technology forbids access to sites blacklisted by the Internet Watch Foundation, which monitors illegal activity on the web.

Most of the bigger service providers use similar blocking technology to BT, but there is continuing pressure on all UK providers to follow suit.

The IWF blacklisted more than 6,000 websites in 2005 - up from 3,500 in the previous year.

John Carr, an internet adviser to the children's charity NCH, has welcomed the work being done by BT and other companies. He believes the current system of self-regulation is "reaching its outer limits". He threatened: unless the industry can show pretty quickly that they're at or close to 100% coverage in Britain, I'm afraid we will be going to talk to our MPs... demanding legislation.

According to the industry about 80% of domestic internet users in the UK are covered by BT Cleanfeed-type solutions, he said, but he also raised concerns that there was "some scepticism" about that figure and called for it to be independently verified.

Based on an article from The Telegraph

Four decades after CBS in New York forced the Rolling Stones to change the lyrics of Let's Spend The Night Together to "Let's spend some time together", censors at the Walt Disney-owned ABC network stepped in during a half-time performance by the band to remove vaguely explicit lyrics.

The Super Bowl game is America's top-rated broadcast event but it has been the subject of controversy since 2004, when there was an outcry about indecency after Janet Jackson bared her breast in what was described as a "wardrobe malfunction". The Rolling Stones delivered their usual slick performance with Mick Jagger stalking the stage, grinding his hips and pouting like a man half his age.

But during Start Me Up, the line "you make a dead man come" was cut short and Once upon a time "[I was your little rooster]. But am I just one of your cocks" in the new song Rough Justice also disappeared.

The Rolling Stones were aware of our plan, which was to simply lower the volume on his microphone at those two appropriate moments," said Brian McCarthy, a National Football League spokesman. We agreed to that plan earlier in the week. The Stones were aware of it and they were fine with it.

Just to be sure, ABC, beaming the match to 90 million Americans, and millions more across the world, kept a five-second tape delay in the broadcast.

Curiously, the lyrics have been played countless times on American radio and in Microsoft advertisements, without complaint.

From the New Zealand Herald

The Rolling Stones considered the decision to censor two of their songs during the Super Bowl halftime show as "ridiculous" and unnecessary, a representative for the band said today.

Stones spokeswoman Fran Curtis took issue with a comment by a National Football League spokesman yesterday that the band was not only aware of the plan to lower the volume on Mick Jagger's microphone for two lines but also "fine with it."

The Stone's representative said the members of the band were far from happy with the decision to cut the lines on the broadcast which was carried by ABC.

Based on an article from the BBC

Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, is caught up in a growing debate about pornography. News that the raunchy Playboy magazine has signed a deal to produce a local edition has fuelled the controversy.

Parliament is expected to pass a new anti-pornography bill by the middle of this year but the draft legislation is proving divisive.

A series of demonstrations has taken place in the capital, Jakarta, in support of the tightening of the laws.

The head of the parliamentary committee which drafted the new legislation, Balkan Kaplale, said Indonesia was in a state of moral decline: It is terrible, our poor country. We are a religious people but now Indonesia is third worst in the world for porn after Scandinavia and Russia. It is so easily available and it is going unchecked. That is why we need this law.

Few people in Indonesia would openly argue against the need to control the sale of porn. And yet the proposed anti-pornography bill has come up against strong opposition.

The draft document includes articles which would make it an offence to show what it calls sensual body parts, including the navel, hips and thighs. Those found guilty of breaking the law could face a two-year jail sentence.

Husna Mulya, a women's rights activist, said the anti-pornography law had been hijacked by groups pushing a hardline conservative agenda.The people behind this are using religious values to make their argument, especially Muslim groups. It is not stated in the bill, but the standard being used is the standard of Sharia law. They say people are not dressing in line with Indonesian culture. But the fashion in Indonesia now is to wear trousers that are tight around the hips, and even traditional clothes are often designed to show off a woman's breasts.

And it is not just women who are worried.

The artistic lobby is up in arms as well. The draft bill would make it illegal to record anything which portrays erotic dancing, or kissing on the lips. It would mean ground-breaking Indonesian films such as Arisan would be banned. Arisan is a humorous take on the life of wealthy, 30-something Jakartans which addresses traditionally taboo subjects like adultery and homosexuality.

The screenplay was written by one of Indonesia's leading film critics, Joko Anwar. He said the anti-pornography bill was a dangerous and unnecessary form of artistic censorship that would hamper filmmakers' creativity. We are not going to make some very graphic sexual scenes because we know that it wouldn't be accepted by an Indonesian audience. We already have that filter ourselves so I don't think it needs to be put into law. It's not democracy. It's not about pornography, it's your freedom to express yourself.

The consensus in parliament is such that the anti-pornography bill will almost certainly be passed. The question then becomes how it will be interpreted and enforced by a notoriously corrupt legal system.

But it is perhaps an encouraging sign of Indonesia's growing democratic maturity that a piece of draft legislation is being debated in public at all.

Based on an article from the Sun Star

In Dumaguete City, Philippines, Vice Mayor William Ablong welcomed a move by members of the House of Representatives to impose a stiffer penalty on persons engaged in obscene, pornographic, and immoral activities. The proposal was to increase the penalty to P1 million or its equivalent life imprisonment.

The vice mayor is a top nutter and official of Couples for Christ in Negros Oriental and a sponsor of an anti-pornography ordinance in the City Council.

Meanwhile, Representative Emmanuel Joel Villanueva of Partylist, CIBAC, called for an update on the country's penal laws to adapt it to advances in technology. Villanueva said despite provisions in the law defining and penalizing indecent act, pornography still prevails and is even more rampant because violators have grown bolder in recent years.

He said the campaign of the Philippine National Police in 2003 alone has resulted to seizure of 365,602 pornographic VCDs, DVDs, and VHS, with an estimated value of P14,733,467 and 120 cases were also filed in the same year for violations of existing anti-pornography laws. It is unfortunate that there seems to have no little impact on the continuing proliferation of immoral doctrines, obscene publications and exhibitions, indecent shows, and the despicable practice of involving children in them.

He said this could be attributed to the fact that aside from its high profitability, low penalties are being imposed. Villanueva said even if an offender was convicted, there was no assurance he would be in jail and kept away from the public: The fine is so negligible when compared to the profit pornography business generates.

From www.backlash-uk.org.uk

With the government planning to criminalise what it calls extreme pornography, artists, performers, musicians and photographers are among those concerned their work may soon see their audiences in prison.

Going way beyond past attempts to ban records from airplay, or to stop Madonna or Marilyn Manson from playing live, new censorship proposals from the Home Office and the Scottish Executive could see audiences, filmgoers and fans slammed into jail for a crime they didn't even know they were committing.

March 4th will see exciting bands new and old from up and down the country and lesbian vampire poetess Rosie Lugosi come together to celebrate cultural expression and to demand the govenrment stop any knee-jerk law in its tracks. And all the money raised will go to fund backlash as it readies itself for the next stage in the challenge to government plans.

So far backlash -- formed in August -- in response to the consultation paper "On the possession of extreme pornographic material" has: paid for the advice of leading Human Rights lawyer Rabinder Singh written to every MP, human rights lobby groups, leading lawyers to outline the oposition to the proposals advised hundreds of people on how to write to their MP and how to submit a response to the consultation

As it gears up for the next round of meetings with politicians, advisers and civil servants and readies itself to field questions from the press when the government summarises the massive number of responses it received, backlash thought how better to celebrate all the hard work than for eveyone to let their hair down at a loud and banging, sometimes kinky knees up.

So they're hoping you'll join members from campaigners like Unfettered, the Spanner Trust, Feminists against Censorship and the Sexual Freedom Coalition to find out more about the campaign and at Saturday 4th March, 8pm-10:30pm at Conway Hall main hall.

The line-up from Scottish elecktronica wizards Sisa to anarcho punk misfits Flowers in the Dustbin, Powervaggio and Danbert is bound to tickle your eardrums, whatever your interest. Tickets are £12 in advance.

Send cheques to Backlash Whiparound,
1 Holly Court,
Beacon Road,
Crowborough,
East Sussex
TN6 1BB.

Or pay cash on the door, And if you keep your ticket stub, you get reduced entry to Club Subversion on the same night so you can carry on your celebrations until the early hours.

For more details about the featured acts, check out www.myspace.com/sisamusic, www.flowersinthedustbin.co.uk and www.rosielugosi.co.uk

And to find out more about backlash, go to www.backlash-uk.org.uk

From The Telegraph

Police were under pressure last night to adopt "a no tolerance" approach to Muslim demonstrators threatening violence in Britain after a third embassy was set on fire in the Middle East.

The Conservatives called for firm action against any further militant demonstrations as police faced growing criticism over their failure on Friday to arrest protesters in London who chanted and carried placards glorifying the July 7 London bombings and threatening beheadings.

Scotland Yard said it was studying film of the protests but refused to say if any prosecutions would go ahead.

Television pictures broadcast that evening showed the majority of placards in similar handwriting. One of three veiled women - or at least people who appeared to be women - was seen writing placards and distributing them. Most were held by men who had also hidden their identity.

Among the slogans were "Europe, your 9/11 will come" and, in an apparent reference to the four July 7 suicide bombers, "Europe you will pay, fantastic 4 are on their way". One protester was dressed as a suicide bomber.

The only arrests were of two counter-demonstrators, who police said were held after apparently attempting to hand out caricatures of Mohammed. Both were released without charge after a few hours.

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain umbrella group, said last night:The placards were quite disgraceful and seemed to constitute a clear incitement to violence, even murder. I think the police were right to take footage of the event and identify the ringleaders, because although several hundred people were there the placards were being held by a tiny group of extremists. I think people will understand that the police did not step in to make matters worse and were waiting for a more propitious time to charge these people. Most Muslims feel enormous distress and anguish at what has occurred. There will be no sympathy for [the extremists] when they are charged by the police.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, led Government appeals for calm but stopped short of endorsing Tory calls for the police to arrest militant protesters in future.

Hain called on all sides to "cool it" and said that politicians must not try to "second guess" police: If people are on our streets inciting terrorism or promoting suicide bombings, they should be dealt with and dealt with toughly and firmly - and they will be. But that is the police's responsibility and they will discharge that.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said that slogans such as "Massacre those who insult Islam" amounted to incitement to murder and that police should take "a no tolerance" approach to them. He told the Sunday Telegraph:"Clearly, some of these placards are incitement to violence and indeed incitement to murder." Dominic Grieve, the Conservative legal affairs spokesman, expressed concern that it could prove impossible to identify those responsible because arrests had not been made at the time.

Scotland Yard, which has received at least 100 complaints from members of the public so far, defended the decision not to make arrests. It said the officer in charge at such scenes had to weigh the need to make arrests against the likelihood of provoking more serious unrest.

From GayNZ.com

A fringe Christian nutter group’s vendetta against New Zealand’s gay chief censor and his deputy has been renewed this week, with pressure being put on the government to replace them both.

The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards says Deputy Chief Censor Nicola McCully’s term expired in September and no moves have been made to replace her. It wants her out, along with Chief Censor Bill Hastings, whose term expires later this year.

However, a spokesman for Internal Affairs Minister Rick Barker says this situation is not unusual as last year was an election year, and a “period of restraint” is placed on ministers, preventing them from significant appointments during that time. When this happens, the incumbent continues in their job. With the formation of a new government coming almost right on top of Christmas, the delay in reviewing McCully’s position has been compounded.

The SPCS says the Office of Film and Literature Classification under Hastings and McCully has failed to protect the public from the pandemic of obscene and sexually degrading publications that are being regularly cleared by the Office for adult 'entertainment’.

The two examples they cite are the art-house films Baise-Moi and Irreversible, both festival films which received nationwide cinema releases and exposure to a wide audience only after the publicity generated by the SPCS attempts to ban them both.

The largely ineffective lobby group has nevertheless become notorious enough to warrant its own entry on web-based encyclopedia Wikipedia. Described as a “Christian fundamentalist anti-gay group”, the entry says the SPCS appears largely concerned with criticising the decisions of the Office of Film and Literature Classification (New Zealand) and the current Chief Censor, Bill Hastings, seemingly on the basis that he is gay.

From the BBC

Lebanese demonstrators have set the Danish embassy in Beirut on fire in protest at the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Thousands of people attended a rally and clashes broke out with security forces sent to protect the building.

Denmark urged its citizens to leave the country as soon as possible.

The violence came a day after mobs in neighbouring Syria torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus in anger at the pictures.

Huge crowds attended Sunday's protest in Beirut. It turned violent after Islamic extremists tried to break though security barriers protecting the Danish embassy building.

Some 2,000 riot police and army troops fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd and fired their weapons into the air. But smoke was later seen rising from the building after demonstrators broke into it. Some protesters threw stones at the security forces and burned Danish flags.

The embassy building, which also houses commercial offices, was believed to be unoccupied.

Denmark and Norway condemned Syria for failing to stop Saturday's attacks in Damascus and urged their citizens to leave the country.

The principle of diplomatic relations is that diplomats can work safely and the fact that this has been broken is extremely serious, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a news conference in Oslo.

Based on an article from The Telegraph

A museum of erotic art due to open this week yards from St Mark's Basilica in Venice has predictably provoked outrage from the Catholic Church and local officials.

The display of paintings, photographs and sculpture, which opens to the public on Friday at the start of the annual Venice Carnival, has been accused by critics of being no more than a "sex shop" and "a shameful embarrassment" to the city, which welcomes millions of tourists every year.

The exhibition is housed over four floors in the 250-year-old Palazzo Rota, overlooking the lagoon and less than a minute's walk from the recently-restored basilica.

Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Catholic patriarch of Venice, has condemned it:The location of this museum is scandalous but, more importantly, why does Venice have a need for a museum of erotica? It is just a commercial venture. I'm not shocked by Lucien Freud's paintings, but I really don't see the logic in having these sort of exhibits on public display.

Maurizio Costa, the museum's artistic director, said Venice was synonymous with erotica, having been the birthplace of Giacomo Casanova, the world's most famous seducer: I can't see what all this fuss is about. They should take a look at the history of Venice. The city has a history of eroticism. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Venice was known as the bordello of Europe.

From Religioscope

An Indonesian obscenity and blasphemy case has been registered against six people for putting up a pictorial exhibition on Adam and Eve in which the actors in the photograph were in a state of nudity. Police named three artists, a photographer, a prominent art curator and a sixth person as suspects in the case, local news reports said Friday.

The exhibit at the Bank Indonesia Museum in Central Jakarta raised a furore with Islamic hardliners who said the photograph depiction of Adam and Eve, who were played by an actor and actress with fig leaves covering their private parts, was an insult to Islam.

Authorities refused to release the names of the six suspects, but lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who will defend three of them, named the five suspects as model-actor Anjasmara, model Isabel Yahya, artist Agus Suwage, photographer Davy Linggar and art critic Jim Supangkat.

The hardline Indonesian Islamic group Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) was at the forefront of the criticism of the CP Biennale 2005 Urban/Culture exhibit held last October.

Leaders claimed the artwork violated criminal laws against insulting a religion in Indonesia and publicly displaying pornography, crimes punishable by up to five years and 18 months in prison respectively.

Anjasmara defended himself by saying that he was not completely nude during the photo shoot of Adam, who is considered a prophet by Muslims, but was wearing underwear. He also apologised to anyone whom the photograph offended, and explained that he was only trying to create art.

FPI, which is known for its violent attacks against nightclubs and other establishments seen as "un-Islamic", has stepped up legal attacks on perceived cultural offences to Islam.

From New Kerala

The Sindh High Court has issued notices to the federal Culture Ministry and the country's film censor board following a petition by the Pakistan Film Exhibitors Association (PFEA), which questioned the continued ban on import and exhibition of Indian films.

In the petition, the Association had pleaded that the ban should be declared illegal and unconstitutional, and its members be allowed to import Indian films through proper channels and exhibit them in their cinemas.

The PFEA said that the ban was imposed to protect the country's film industry, but it (ban) had “instead ruined it by banishing away trade competition”.

The ban was imposed in 1961 for five years after a study conducted by the federal industries ministry to 'identify the problems facing the (Pakistani) film industry' and suggest remedial measures. Thereafter, the fact-finding body appointed by the ministry came up with a proposal for a five-year ban on Indian films to be reviewed after the prescribed period as per its effects.

The petitioners stated that the ban was never reviewed and had been thoughtlessly extended with devastating effect on film industry.

From NZ Herald

New customs powers to seize goods proposed in New Zealand.

The "draconian" rules which govern the powers of Custom officers to seize and keep goods may be due for a major overhaul with the Law Commission recommending the system be simplified.

The Commission has made 48 recommendations aimed at modernising the Customs and Excise Act 1996 which Law Commissioner Warren Young has described as "well out of date". It is framed in centuries old language and concepts from the time of smuggling around the shores of Britain. It is difficult to understand and in fact the legal principles are not always clear, Dr Young said.

The report recommends replacing "forfeiture and seizure" with "detention and confiscation".

Customs would be able to detain goods at the border on the same basis as now but there would be more safeguards for the rights of people who had goods confiscated.

Goods considered harmful or forbidden -- such as illegal substances, pornography, dangerous or pirated goods -- would be confiscated permanently, as is the case now.

But owners of goods which were not harmful and were detained because of violations such as mislabelling or payment of incorrect duty would be entitled to recover their goods by correcting the violation or paying the fine.

The current forfeiture system was disproportionate in many situations and a monetary penalties system was recommend for less serious offences, Dr Young said: In addition people should always be able to apply for a review and ultimately appeal to a court when goods are detained or confiscated. New Zealanders have a lot at stake in protecting the borders but we are also great travellers and people need to have confidence that the law in this area is fair.

Key features of the proposed reforms are:

• Categorisation of goods in three main categories -- forbidden goods, restricted goods and craft used in the commission of offences;
• Notices to people affected by the detention or proposed confiscation of goods;
• An opportunity for people to respond to the notice before a penalty is imposed or the goods confiscated;
• Introduction of administrative monetary penalties for less serious offences;
• An opportunity for people to appeal to the Customs Appeal Authority if dissatisfied by a Customs' review of the original decision;
• Protection of the interests of third parties.

Who can be the most offensive?

Perhaps if Islam allowed itself to be tempered by public criticism and debate it would not provide such a fertile breeding ground for violence, intimidation and intolerance

Based on an article from The Telegraph

Demonstrators in London gathered at Regent's Park mosque following Friday prayers and marched to the Danish embassy in Sloane Street

The protesters held placards, one declaring: "Behead the one who insults the prophet." Another said: "Free speech go to hell."

Passers by stopped police officers to ask why the marchers were being allowed to carry banners threatening further suicide attacks in the city. One police officer replied: Don't worry. We are photographing them.

Media organisations - including the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV - showed the controversial drawings, but British newspapers did not publish the images.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, today attacked media outlets who republished the cartoons.
There is freedom of speech, we all respect that, but there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory. I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong.

America sided with tens of thousands of Muslims who protested worldwide yesterday about cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in European newspapers.

In its first comment on the furore, the State Department said: These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims.

Answering a reporter's question, its spokesman, Kurtis Cooper, said: We all fully respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable.

On a somewhat different tack, Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, said: It is not normal to caricature a whole religion as an extremist or terrorist movement. But the extreme reaction to the cartoons would suggest the caricaturists were right.

Pakistan's parliament unanimously passed a resolution yesterday criticising the newspapers publishing the cartoons for conducting a vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was quoted in the Turkish press saying: Caricatures of prophet Muhammad are an attack against our spiritual values. There should be a limit of freedom of press.

By contrast, Wolfgang Schauble, the German home minister, defended the decision by four German newspapers to publish the cartoons:Why should the German government apologise? This is an expression of press freedom.

Today a New Zealand newspaper, the Dominion Post, became the first in that country to publish the cartoons. Its editor, Tim Pankhurst, said: We do not want to be deliberately provocative, but neither should we allow ourselves to be intimidated.

The Irish Daily Star in Dublin was the latest to publish the drawings yesterday.

From Out-Law.com

The House of Lords on Wednesday restricted Government plans to allow the police to order the take down of suspected terrorism-related web content by requiring that the authorities obtain the permission of a judge first.

The draft Terrorism Bill was published in October, in the wake of the London bombings, and was instantly controversial due to provisions dealing with the detention of terrorists, the criminalisation of those planning or preparing a terrorist act and the prohibition of the encouragement or glorification of terrorism.

Website owners and ISPs are also affected by the proposals, which deems them to endorse prohibited material if, without reasonable excuse, they do not take down or modify the material once notified by a constable.

But critics are concerned that this imposes too great a restriction on free speech and gives too much power to the police. The Lords have therefore introduced an element of judicial oversight.

I entirely accept the principle that where there is something on the internet which is transmitting material from a website which is indeed truly terrorist related I entirely accept that it should be removed, Lib Dem spokesman Lord Goodhart told the Lords

It is simply a question that the police should not have authority which would enable them to go round removing any material, which they had the slightest suspicion could possibly be of some interest to somebody for terrorist purposes, he added.

The peers also tightened the definition of unlawfully terrorism-related material to cover material likely to be understood as encouraging terrorism, rather than the previously broad reference to material that could encourage terrorism.

The amendment, which was passed by the House of Lords by 148 votes to 147, was the second time in 24 hours that the Government had lost a motion by only one vote. On this occasion the critical vote could have been provided by Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is responsible for pushing the legislation through the Lords.

She had left the Chamber because of a family emergency, according to reports.

From Hankooki

A local court Wednesday ordered an online video provider to pay 7 million won ($7,000) in fines for distributing obscene video files, despite their legitimate censor ratings for adult users.

The ruling is the first of its kind to hold a content provider accountable for "excessive’’ obscenity in commercially-made online sexual material after the materials were reviewed and properly rated by the Korea Media Rating Board (KMRB).

However, it is expected to raise strong opposition from Internet users and portal sites as the videos were legitimately rated by the board and posted on the Web pages of major portal sites accessed by adult users.

Critics said the judges did not take into account the files’ approval by the rating authority. The Seoul Central District Court imposed the fines on the video provider, identified as Kim, for providing the videos which contain "explicit’’ sexual acts between a woman and a man through the online portal sites.

A panel of judges said that the 30-40 minute-long videos, consisting of 12 pieces, have no meaningful story. They star a woman and a man who engage in sexual conversation without any prior contact, with repeated erotic sounds from the start to finish, thus having no artistic merit.

The videos are seen as being commercially-motivated material, intended to arouse lewd and prurient interests, the judges said.

They said that the videos are prurient even though the degree of nudity is lighter than pornography. The conception of obscenity is changing with time, and our society is getting more lenient about sexual portrayals.

Also, though we need to respect the ratings of the videos, the rating board has no authority to exempt it from the level of obscenity shown, which ultimately depends on the court’s decision, the judges said.

From the BBC

Warner Bros to sell movies on the Internet. Films such as Batman Begins and TV series The OC are to be made available over the internet via peer-to-peer (P2P) networks by studio Warner Bros.

The firm will sell movies and TV shows over the internet in Germany, Austria and Switzerland from March. Its In2Movies service will use existing file-sharing technology. Warner Bros did not reveal price details but said it planned to widen its international use of P2P networks.

One of the most effective weapons for defeating online piracy is providing legal, easy-to-use alternatives, said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group.

New films will be made available to registered users of the service from the day they are released on DVD in the German language. Our initial efforts will focus on the German market, but in the months ahead we will leverage this technology to better serve markets around the world, Tsujihara added.

A later version of In2Movies will also enable viewers to store movies and TV shows on portable devices. The BBC is currently testing a similar service called iMP, which will enable viewers to watch BBC programmes up to seven days after they have been broadcast on TV.

Thanks to Chris on The Melon Farmers' Forum

Have people read the new Scottish Law Commission Discussion Paper on Rape & Other Sexual Offences?

It’s refreshingly sensible and free from legislation based on sexual prudery. It addresses things like consent and BDSM from the point of view of sexual autonomy being the most important thing and even for things like bestiality it defines only as an offence if it causes harm to the animal. It’s quite different in tone than the government's consultation paper on extreme pornography (though this one doesn't actually cover porn).

• Letter to consultees
• Relevant News Release
• Response Form 
• Summary

The press release is as follows:

CONSULTATION BEGINS ON SEXUAL OFFENCE REFORMS

Sexual offences such as rape are on the path to reform as public views are sought on proposals issued for consultation today. The Scottish Law Commission publishes its Discussion Paper on Rape and Other Sexual Offences, marking an important stage in the first ever systematic review of Scots law on sexual offences.

The Commission was asked by the Scottish Ministers to examine the law on rape and other sexual offences and the evidential requirements for proving these offences. This request followed two widely-reported High Court cases in 2004, together with concern among the general public, and professionals working in this field, that the law was in confusion.

Launching the consultation period today, Professor Gerry Maher QC, the lead Commissioner on the project, stressed the need for clarity: The law on rape and other sexual offences must be clear. People must be able to know what types of sexual conduct the law prohibits and what types are legal.

Professor Maher also emphasised that the paper is not aimed only at lawyers: This paper is not concerned with a technical area of the law. Rather it deals with issues which are of concern to the public at large. Our Discussion Paper, which can be accessed on our website, is part of our public consultation on reforming the law on rape and other sexual offences. We hope that anyone with views on the issues covered in the paper will send us their response.

Following consultation, the Commission aims to publish a final Report, including draft legislation, next year. The key issues covered in the Discussion Paper are redefining rape to cover male and female victims, as well as a wider range of sexual acts; enhancing the protection of the vulnerable, including young people, from exploitative sexual activity; and defining in statute the meaning of consent to sex. The paper emphasises the need for the law to apply equally to men and women, and it asks whether the requirement for corroboration for proof of sexual offences should be retained or removed, and, if it were removed, for which offences.

From AVN

A recent story reported that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that attempts by governments to censor Website contents were doomed, because banned information can seep out, despite official injunctions.

The ability to really withhold information no longer exists, Gates told a government forum on the Internet. Gates also commented that his company must comply with legal requirements in the countries where it operates.

The report went on to say that late last year, Microsoft shut down the site of a popular Chinese blogger at Beijing's request. The blog by Zhao Jing, writing under the pen name An Ti, appraised sensitive topics such as China's relations with Taiwan and media freedoms in China.

But the spread of free, private e-mail enabled users to disseminate information anyway, Gates said: You may be able to take a very visible Website and say that something shouldn't be there, but if there's a desire by the population to know something ... it's going to get out very broadly via e-mail, Gates told the forum.

Some of Microsoft's rivals, including Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), also have hit problems with censorship in foreign countries.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's top lawyer, said Tuesday the company was tightening its policies regarding blocking Web journals.

The story went on to say that the software company operates a popular blogging technology called MSN Spaces. Smith said the changes would include efforts to make the banned content available to users elsewhere in the world even if Microsoft decided it had a legal duty to block it in a particular country.

From The Telegraph

A schoolboy shot his cousin in the face with a shotgun, seriously wounding him, after playing a notoriously violent video game, a court heard yesterday.

The boys, both 13 at the time, had been playing the game Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas which, in America, has been blamed for prompting several killings by teenagers.

Joanne Eley, prosecuting, said that the prosecution did not accept that the shooting had been an accident because the boy, who denies unlawfully and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm, had to release the safety catch.

Eley described the Grand Theft Auto game - various versions of which have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide - as a "gangsters and guns" game that involved "running around nicking cars and shooting people".

Eley told the court that the two cousins and other friends had all been playing the game where you beat people up, scare them, get cars and shoot people.

In the United States it has been the subject of a lawsuit following the fatal shootings of three people, including two police officers, by an 18-year-old in Alabama in 2004 who went out to steal cars after becoming addicted to the game.

Another lawsuit has arisen from the fatal shooting of a motorist and the wounding of another by two teenagers who opened fire on cars on a Tennessee motorway after playing Grand Theft Auto.

The hearing continues.

From The Daily Independent

The Nigerian National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) is planning a clampdown on all those selling pornographic films within the Lagos metropolis.

Its Public Relations Manager, South-West Region, Mrs Abosede Francis, disclosed this in an interview in Lagos. She said the board is already working on modalities to enable it launch the crackdown on those selling such films within and outside the state, adding that they are dealing in illegal materials.

Francis said the board’s monitoring team is already moving round with a view to closing up on all those dealing in pornographic films. She said the job of monitoring the country for such illegal act should not to be left in the hands of the board alone, saying that every law-abiding Nigerian must be involved. She called on the people to always furnish the board with information on the activities of illegal operators to enable the board take appropriate action.

In addition, she said the board would clampdown on those selling films that are not classified by the board.

The NFVCB was set up to classify and censor films produced locally or internationally meant for the Nigerian market. But nobody is authorised to produce or sell pornographic materials in the country.

From The Times

Newspapers across Europe yesterday republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have inflamed the Muslim world since they first appeared in Denmark.

Daily newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands featured the 12 cartoons, which have caused a firestorm in the Islamic world.

Editors expressed a wish to show solidarity with the Editor of the Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, whose cartoons triggered violent protests in Gaza, a boycott of Danish goods across the Arab world and death threats against the newspaper’s senior staff. The paper’s offices had to be evacuated last night after the second bomb threat in two days.

Showing any depiction of Muhammad is deemed blasphemous and these were seen as particularly offensive, with one portraying the Prophet wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb. Under the headline Yes, we have the right to caricature God, France Soir covered its front with Buddha, the Christian and Jewish deities and the Prophet all sitting on a cloud. The Christian God says: Don’t complain Muhammad, all of us have been caricatured.

Shortly after the paper appeared, however, its managing editor, Jacques Lefranc, was sacked. Raymond Lakah, the paper’s owner, issued a public apology: We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication of the cartoons, he said.

French officials privately shuddered over the likely damage to relations with Muslims at home and abroad but ministers defended France Soir’s freedom to publish what it wanted. After a Cabinet meeting with President Chirac, Jean-François Copé, a minister and government spokesman, said: France is attached to the freedom of expression, but adding that respect should always be shown for the beliefs of others.

France Soir published all 12 Danish cartoons and deplored what it called the new inquisition by “backward bigots” in a Muslim world that knew little democracy.

In Berlin, Die Welt reprinted one cartoon on its front page and three others inside: The protests from Muslims would be taken more seriously if they were less hypocritical. When Syrian television showed drama documentaries in prime time depicting rabbis as cannibals, the imams were quiet. Roger Koeppel, Editor of Die Welt, told The Times: We owed it to our readers. They have to understand what the fuss is about.

In Italy some of the cartoons appeared in Corriere della Sera and La Stampa. Both newspapers said that the decision to publish had been taken on purely journalistic grounds.

Paolo Lepri, the acting foreign editor of Corriere della Sera, said that it was not a political decision. We simply felt that you could not explain to readers why the cartoons had caused such a furore without showing them some examples by way of illustration.

The Spanish daily El Periodico published a montage of the cartoons under the headline The Effects of Terrorism: A Test. Carlos-Enrique Bayo, foreign editor of El Periodico, said: We don’t normally shy away from things like this. Publish and be damned, as they say.

The Dutch daily De Telegraaf has also published the 12 cartoons which can also be seen on the  Dutch MP Groep Wilders who published them on his blog. 

Based on an article from The Guardian

The archdeacon of Plymouth and two of the city's former lord mayors have attacked the staging of Jerry Springer: the Opera, as the controversial show begins its national tour. Archdeacon Tony Wilds branded the award-winning musical "unfair and unacceptable", and called for its tour to be abandoned. But the opening performance of Jerry Springer went ahead as scheduled last Friday, and continues in Plymouth until the end of the week.

In a statement entitled Freedom, Not Hate in Plymouth, Wilds was backed by former mayors Tom Savery and David Stark, plus ministers of five other Christian denominations. According to the statement: The local production of the controversial Jerry Springer the Opera is ... a serious and damaging misjudgment.

The shameful archdeacon said that he was in favour of the principle of free speech... BUT... he  argues that Springer takes undue liberties according to this standard. The abusive portrayal of figures held by Christians to be [dear] should be recognised by all people of goodwill as unfair and unacceptable ...

Organising this tour has been the most difficult thing we've ever done, said producer Jon Thoday. It's been on and off about three times, to the point when we thought we were fighting a losing battle. Further protests against the show are planned across Britain as the tour progresses.

But Thoday is heartened by the events of last Friday, when only a handful of protesters attended the opening night of the show. If they can only muster 35 people praying on the first date of the tour, my hope is that it will be the show that prevails and not the protests.

From The Hindu

Three dozen journalists were arrested in Nepal as they held demonstrations to protest against the curbs imposed on the media after King Gyanendra's assumption of absolute power a year ago.

Two dozen scribes were arrested from New Road, a restricted area in Kathmandu, as they demonstrated, marking the first anniversary of the royal takeover as 'Black Day' to protest against curbs on media.

Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) President Bishnu Nisthuri, former Press Council Chairman Harihar Birahi, and 'Himla Khabarpatrika' Editor Kanakmani Dixit, were the prominent journalists who were arrested, FNJ sources said.

Journalists Ramesh Bista and Bijaya Sivakoti were also seriously injured as paramilitary forces indiscriminately baton-charged the scribes holding peaceful demonstration, the sources said.

In Jhapa in eastern Nepal, 12 more journalists were arrested while trying to bring out an anti-government rally.

Nepalese journalists have launched a series of demonstrations to oppose the curbs, press censorship, harsh press laws and ban on FM broadcast.

FNJ described the one-year direct rule of the King as "black period" in the Nepalese media history.

Over 400 journalists have been arrested so far and some 240 newspapers faced various kinds of censorship by the government, stated a report published by FNJ.

From Monsters & Critics

Bangladesh parliament has adopted an anti-obscenity law that can land any 'pornographic' film maker in prison for three years, officials said recently.

Parliament officials said the Censorship of Films Act was passed in the legislative assembly after a threadbare discussion held overnight by the deputies.

It is a law against obscenity and vulgarity and is not aimed at curbing freedom of expression in any form, said Information and Broadcasting Minister Shamsul Islam who had introduced the bill in the assembly and sought the support of the lawmakers for its approval.

The new law provides for three years in jail for any film maker whose production is adjudged by censor officials as pornographic. Islam said the new law would also protect the local cinema industry from the influence of pornographic film videos smuggled into the country from abroad.

Critics said the new censorship law could be used by the government against creative film makers questioning established values in the society.

Kissing on screen as well as scenes of physical contacts between a man and a woman are snipped off the reels by the censor authorities before the films run in cinema halls across the country.

From OFLC

The Office of Film and Literature Classification has banned an issue of the Otago University student magazine Critic Te Arohi because it tends to promote sexual violence and criminal activity.

The New Zealand Police submitted the magazine for classification after it was published primarily because it contained an article on how to drug and rape women written from a drug-rapist’s perspective. The Classification Office also received submissions from the magazine’s publisher, the New Zealand Drug Rape Trust, Rape Crisis Dunedin, and the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards.

The Classification office decided that the magazine is injurious to the public good because it places an instructional drug-rape article beside a positive profile of a man who makes a living by filming the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal.

The magazine’s editorials ask readers to think about the nature of offensiveness, the boundaries of what should be published, and claim to draw readers’ attention to what to look out for to combat the sinister and growing trend of drug-rape. By including an article that instead instructs in how to conceal what to look out for, the Classification Office found that these claims lacked credibility.

The magazine asks the reader to find humour in its demeaning descriptions of women and its matter-of-fact references to raping them, said Chief Censor Bill Hastings. Because it contains no articles written from the victim’s perspective to balance those from the perpetrator’s perspective, said Hastings, this issue of Critic is distinctly uncritical of, and indeed tends to promote, the very criminal activities it purports to challenge.

The magazine’s claimed ‘theme of offensiveness’ never discusses the nature of offensiveness, and does not acknowledge the ability of articles appearing to endorse sexual violence and misogyny to cause injury to the public good, added Hastings.

Read more on Ofwatch

Following on from demands made by the Information Commissioner last year Ofcom have finally published censored versions of the minutes for the first 21 content board meetings. Unsurprisingly not a lot has been revealed , however one or two snippets are noteworthy and some of the censored sections make amusing reading. It would seem that paper CB 65(04) looked at safe guards and how security might be regulated if Ofcom decided to allow the transmission of R18 material. The content board also requested to see some R18 content for themselves (yet were not so keen on allowing others the right to view it on subscription television). Some members of the content board also asked about the availability of such content on the web and (presumably) were informed that access was very easy indeed.

The prize for the most censored minutes must go to the ninth meeting held in Riverside house on the 20th January. The agenda merely states that the purpose of the meeting was "The hearing and determination of a complaint", whilst the "minutes" are shown below, in their entirety, as published by Ofcom - a true masterpiece of censorship that will strike a cord with those of you who are familiar with the way in which our transparent regulatory friends deal with adult service issues. Strangely the announcement of the £25,000 fine imposed on Playboy for showing R18 rated content was made in early February, but whether the two are connected remains a secret. Why does the regulation of adult service cause such regulatory paranoia?

Present

In Attendance

[Withheld from published minutes]

By Invitation

Appearing on behalf of The Number

[Withheld from published minutes]

Appearing on behalf of [Withheld from published minutes]

[Withheld from published minutes]

Observers from Ofcom

[Withheld from published minutes]

Preliminary points

1. [Withheld from published minutes].

2. [Withheld from published minutes].

The Hearing

3. [Withheld from published minutes]

4. [Withheld from published minutes]