A deal with Beijing has allowed the Chinese authorities to continue to block internet sites, the International Olympic Committee has disclosed.

Journalists at the main media centre in Beijing found that the BBC Chinese language site was inaccessible, as were the websites of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders — whose welcome page at present shows the five Olympic rings replaced with interlocking handcuffs. The US broadcaster Radio Free Asia and the German radio station Deutsche Welle are also out of bounds.

Kevan Gosper, the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) press commission, confirmed that some of its officials had agreed to Chinese demands that sensitive sites be blocked on the ground that they were not related to the Olympics.

Chinese organisers said that the censorship would not hamper journalists in their job of reporting on the Games. Sun Weide, a Bocog official, said that the plan had always been to provide “sufficient” internet access for foreign reporters. Sites run by the Falun Gong religious sect remain inaccessible, as do most sites with the word Tibet in their internet address.

The revelation that China’s censors had never considered relaxing internet curbs further tarnishes the image of the Games amid persistent fears of pollution and security so tight that cafés are not allowed to place tables on pavements and hotels cannot change their brand of shower gel without checks.

Ministers will tomorrow give the go-ahead to the first strict and legally binding classification system for video games.

Culture Minister Margaret Hodge is understood to be ready to accept recommendations from television psychologist Dr Tanya Byron, who conducted a review for the Government.

The proposed changes would mean all games coming under a system of statutory labelling, backed up by heavy penalties for underage sale.

Mrs Hodge is expected to give the go-ahead to a compulsory age classification system set down in law, expected to include 18, 15, 12, PG (parental guidance) and U (universal), the same as the system used for films.

The BBFC is likely to have to certify all games attracting a 12 certificate and above. The ratings will have to be displayed prominently on the front of the games.

Retailers who sell video games to underage children in defiance of the new ratings are likely to face heavy fines or up to five years in prison.

Tory MP John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said: 'Computer games, like films, provide entertainment, but some content is quite plainly unsuitable for children.

A report from Whittingdale's committee is tomorrow expected to back moves to give
the BBFC responsibility for legally-enforceable ratings for video games.

It will also point to risks to children from the Internet, particularly from social networking sites.

The moves to enforce cinema- style ratings are likely to anger games manufacturers.

The world's largest games developer, Electronic Arts, said the new scheme would be confusing for parents and would lead to games being released later in Britain than in the rest of the world.

A TV ad for the release of Grand Theft Auto IV (Cert 18) in association with Microsoft Xbox. The ad showed a man walking towards the viewer with the background scene and his clothes changing frequently. In the background there were several scenes of people firing guns and cars exploding. Towards the end of the ad, the man broke into a car by smashing the window and then drove away.

Issues:

• 10 viewers challenged whether the ad was offensive and harmful, especially to children and young people under 18 years of age, because it condoned violence and criminal behaviour.
• 7 viewers complained that the ad was scheduled inappropriately because it could be seen by children. Two viewers pointed out that the ad was shown during televised European football matches, which, they believed, were watched by audiences with a large number of children and young people.

The ad was cleared for TV by Clearcast who said the ad merely focused on the hero as he walked down a street. They maintained the action in the background was cartoon like and over-the-top as a graphic representation of a popular computer game, which was in its fourth version. Clearcast acknowledged that stealing a car was a criminal act but believed its depiction in the ad was extremely unlikely to encourage emulation in viewers or cause widespread offence. Clearcast believed, had the ad been for a film, viewers would not have complained. They said numerous film ads that contained violent images had less stringent timing restrictions.

Clearcast said the game Grand Theft Auto IV carried an 18 rating. They said they automatically gave games with 18 ratings an "ex-kids" restriction and they therefore were not shown around programmes made specifically for children. In addition there was a warning to broadcasters for sensitive scheduling because the game was available for only adults to buy. They had considered that the current ad contained no violent scenes and was not threatening in tone. They also believed it did not glorify the trappings of a gangster lifestyle. They had nonetheless taken a cautious approach and had given the ad a post 7:30 pm restriction.

ASA Assessment

The ASA noted that the main character did not engage with the background sequences and, in any case, they did not depict inter-personal violence or graphic scenes of injury. We considered that viewers were likely to regard the background scenes as dramatic action sequences associated with the game and they were unlikely to be seen to condone violent behaviour. We also considered that the sequences shown were relatively mild and fleeting and were therefore unlikely to cause harm to children by condoning violence. Although we noted the ad's climax featured a depiction of car crime, we noted Clearcast had given the ad a post-7:30 pm restriction, which reduced the number of unaccompanied children and young people who might see the ad.

We acknowledged that some viewers might object to the themes of the actual game itself. However, we concluded that the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence or harm by condoning violence and criminal behaviour.

We concluded that the ad had been appropriately scheduled and the post-7:30 pm restriction was sufficient and did not find the advert in breach of the code.

Beyer Recommends... Wire in the Blood

A grisly cannibal sex plot is set to spark nutter outrage over the new series of Wire In The Blood.

The drama will show a Hannibal Lecter-type serial killer who eats his victims while they are still alive. Realistic scenes of severed hands, fingers and body parts will be shown after the 9pm watershed.

Graphic scenes set in a fet club will show a leather-clad dominatrix played by former Doctor Who actress Mary Tamm.

Cristian Solimeno plays a kinky cop who is strung up with ropes by the killer. He defended the scenes saying: It's fictitious and you have to suspend disbelief.

John Beyer, of Mediawatch UK, said: If this is what ITV thinks is acceptable, they are mistaken. I wish they would reconsider showing it. People are longing for family viewing.

A Facebook game that lets users 'shank' each other - street slang for stabbing - has been removed following complaints from anti-knife crime nutters.

The virtual "shank" appears as an icon within the Facebook Superpoke! application. Superpoke! allows users to send virtual actions to other users such as smile, wink, take part in the Tour de France or send a bouquet.

Although the application consists of mostly humorous actions, some of the options, such as smack, slap and shank, have darker connotations.

When the knife icon is sent to a Facebook friend they receive a message saying that they have been "shanked".

Superpoke! and Facebook came in for criticism in the Sun. The uncle of Rob Knox, the Harry Potter actor who died after being stabbed in May, told the paper that the application "incited violence".

Slide, who make the Facebook application, have now removed the 'shank' option from Superpoke!.

Sohoxiaobao, not the prettiest but definitely one of the earlier blog service providers in China, has been out of operation for a week now.

Based on article from rinf.com

Journalists working from the Olympics press centre in Beijing are unable to access amnesty.org, the Amnesty International website, the organisation claimed today.

A number of other websites are also reported to have been blocked, they claimed.

It comes as Amnesty International prepares to launch a new report evaluating the Chinese authorities’ human rights performance in the run-up to the Olympics.

It is embarrassing to the International Olympic Committee, who had highlighted the loosening of restrictions on foreign media in China as an example of an improvement in human rights brought about by the hosting of the Olympics.

Earlier this month Jaques Rogge, the IOC President, had claimed that there will be no censorship on the internet.

Based on article from telegraph.co.uk

Competitors staying in the Beijing Olympics athletes village will be able to purchase a wide variety of soft pornography - but websites such as the BBC Chinese news page are still banned.

When Beijing won the right to hold the Games, officials had to promise that journalists would be allowed the same freedom to report as in previous host cities.

There have been repeated cases of journalists detained or otherwise stopped from reporting while covering Olympic and political issues in recent weeks. Officials had to apologise after a Hong Kong photographer was detained for six hours after scuffling with police while trying to film fights among those queuing for the last Olympic tickets on Friday.

Based on article from menassat.com

China will tighten its control over the Internet as the Olympic Games approach by ordering Chinese Web sites to censor certain content, Interfax sources with several online community and blogging platforms said this week.

We received notices from the Public Security Bureau and the Propaganda Department this week, asking us to closely watch for 'unhealthy' information. We have added many key words into our supervision system to watch for such information, said a source who works for an online community platform under a state-owned newspaper.

In the past, we generally watched for posts that contain Party leaders' names, pornography or violent content. Starting this week, more words have become sensitive, the source said.

The source said that some posts containing sensitive key words will be deleted. The key words include Olympic-related themes, names of Chinese nationalities or ethnic groups and comments about terrorism.

When contacted by Interfax, several other sources working for online communities and blogs in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed that Internet censorship has tightened due to the Olympic Games.

Shahe99.com, a Guangzhou-based online community, went so far as to announce on July 3 that it will forbid users from discussing any political news during the Olympics. A section of the forum called News from around China will be closed from July 3 until the end of the Olympics.

Thanks to Nick
Based on article from Art Knowledge News

As the Chinese government attempts to control the country's image during this summer's Olympics games, censors have forced two art galleries to delay the openings of their shows, Bloomberg reports. Galleri Faurschou postponed a show of work by Andy Warhol of Olympic athletes that was set to open this weekend, because censors felt it was inappropriate to exhibit foreign artwork during China's biggest public event. Xin Beijing Art Gallery canceled a show of oil paintings by Ma Baozhong, because censors did not like his depictions of the Dalai Lama and former president Jiang Zemin.

This week, Dongcheng district council put up posters telling residents of the city to avoid picking their noses or sitting with their legs apart in public. The posters also warned residents not to ask foreigners about their salaries, love lives, or health.

Galleri Faurschou is now hoping to open the Warhol show on August 7, after enlisting the help of the Royal Danish Embassy to convince censors to rethink their decision. Xin Beijing may postpone its show until as late as October or November, apparently giving the artist time to enhance the details in a couple of his larger paintings, according to gallery director Li Feng.

Bitter rifts within Iran's leadership came to the surface on Friday when the authorities banned the evening edition of a newspaper controlled by Tehran's mayor, a leading rival of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hamshahri, a daily owned by Tehran's municipality, angered the president by reporting an argument between his ministers and the central bank governor, Tahmasb Mazaheri.

The story struck a nerve because it highlighted the reasons behind the president's acute political vulnerability. One year before he faces re-election, Iran's economy is stagnant, living standards are falling and unemployment remains at crushing levels. This is in spite of the windfall gains brought by record oil prices.

Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran, has emerged as Ahmadinejad's leading opponent and a possible challenger in the next presidential election. Hamshahri, which Qalibaf indirectly controls, has made a point of reporting Iran's economic woes and linking them to Ahmadinejad.

The president has now retaliated. Of the newspaper's two editions, one has been shut down. By a decision of the press supervisory board, Hamshahri evening edition has been banned. The reason for banning this publication was the propagation of untruthful news with the aim of creating disruption in the country's economic condition, reported the official news agency, IRNA.

Hundreds of Turkish people gathered for the call of the Association of Intellectuals for Democracy to protest the shutting of Hayat TV. The group faxed the protest text Turn On My Television to the Ministry of Interior, the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK) and Türksat A.S.

A press release organized by the Association of Intellectuals for Democracy supported Hayat TV, which is banned from broadcasting right at the centenary celebration of the end of censorship in Turkey.

Writer Adnan Özyalçiner read the press release said that shutting of Hayat TV was an arbitrary measure: That Hayat TV helped another TV station by becoming its voice cannot be true, because Hayat TV does not have this kind of technical capability.

He declared they would continue their action until a just solution was implemented.

The days in which a punch was thrown in jest and accompanied by a cartoon Kerpow! seem as distant as Bagpuss. Nothing in this new Batman is in jest. Not even the Joker. This film is doing serious business - and, make no mistake, its business is violence.

I saw The Dark Knight on Monday; or at least I saw the bits that I could bear to watch from behind my giant Diet Coke.

Within the first five minutes, the body count was in double figures - and that was before a detonator was shoved down the throat of a dying bank manager.

Soon afterwards, the Joker, played with diabolical brilliance by the late Heath Ledger, explained how he got that permanent blood-red clown's grin.

His father had been attacking his mother's face with a knife when he caught his young son watching with a serious expression. Dad slashed the boy's cheeks to make sure that the kid would never look down-in-the-mouth again.
More from Allison Pearson...

Horrifying? You bet. But, believe me, that counts as a quiet, reflective moment in a symphony of sadism.

...Read full article

NetIDme’s

The UK moved one step closer to online ID for all last week as the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) decided to give accreditation to NetIDme’s age verification software. But for once this may be not cause for complete doom and gloom. Also added to the list are GB Group (with their URU product) and 192.com.

...

Opponents of ID in any form will be outraged. Well-known anti-censorship site MelonFarmers inveighed against NetIDme (19 July) on the grounds that a database of people’s porn-viewing habits would undoubtedly be of great interest to government. In this case, however, the chances are that they are wrong.

The principles underlying NetIDme’s technology are far closer to the Open Source ID project and involve the assembling of key data items to create a “token” that users may use as future verification of age. Thereafter, they claim, the data is then disassembled again. Hey presto! Individual ID, without a massive underlying database.

...Read full article

Someone is unhappy about the R18+ ratings awarded to Siren Visual Entertainment's Hentai collection.

The R18+ ratings of four titles are to be looked at by the Review Board this coming Wednesday.

The application has been made by Bob Debus, the Minister for Home Affairs.

This is just further proof that Rudd's Government is no better than Howard's when it comes to censorship.

The films are Classes in Seduction, T & A Teacher, Holy Virgins and Bondage Mansion.

A leading art gallery is being taken to court over claims that it outraged public decency by displaying a statue depicting Christ with an erection.

The sculpture was the most provocative item in an exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.

Despite signs warning of the exhibition’s explicit nature, the gallery received complaints.

A private prosecution has now been launched and the first hearing in what could prove a landmark case has been set for September.

Legal documents claim that the gallery has both offended public decency and breached Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The maximum penalty for outraging public decency is six months’ imprisonment and a £5,000 fine.

The documents claim that the foot-high sculpture was ‘offensive and disgusting’ and likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to Christians and those of other faiths.
Controversial: Chinese-born artist Terence Ko

Legal experts said yesterday that the hearing would be the first test of public decency legislation since the Government scrapped Britain’s ancient blasphemy laws in May.

The prosecution has been launched by Emily Mapfuwa who read about the exhibition in newspapers. I don’t think this gallery would insult Muslims in this way, so why Christians? she said.

Father Christopher Warren, of the Roman Catholic cathedral of St Mary’s in Newcastle upon Tyne, said: For Christians the image of Jesus is very special and to interpret it in a sexualised way is an affront to what we hold dear.

A new crime, the ‘cyber insult,’ and expansion of the ‘real names system’ could stifle freedom of expression in South Korea.

The government will impose punishment against administrators of Internet portals if they do not respond to defamation claims by deleting messages, raising questions about censorship. The move is expected to curb the freedom of expression and undermine the use of the Internet as a positive tool for communication because it could prompt Internet portals to voluntarily remove messages from their Web sites they deem objectionable in order to avoid possible punishment.

In addition, the government plans to expand the “real names system” on the Internet and introduce a new crime, the “cyber insult,” which will allow police to punish Internet users who post messages with defamatory content.

On July 22, the Korea Communications Commission announced a flurry of measures titled, Comprehensive Measures for Information Protection on the Internet, which place heavy penalties on Internet portals for rule violations and expand coverage of the real names system. Under the proposed measures, the operators of Internet portals and peer-to-peer Web sites will be required to immediately remove a message from the site if a third person claims to have been defamed. The operators of the Internet portals and P2P Web sites will be punished if they do not accept the third person’s demand.

Coverage of the real names system will be expanded to include Internet portals with more than an average of 100,000 visitors daily. If the measure goes into effect, Internet users will be required to register with their real names in order to log on to small- and medium-sized Web sites, as well as to most of the large portal sites, to post a message or reply. Currently, the real names system is mandatory for Internet portals with more than an average of 300,000 visitors per day and Web sites owned by media companies with more than an average of 200,000 visitors daily.

Sadistic

But the greatest surprise of all – even for me, after eight years spent working as a film critic – has been the sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film.

...

What's the problem? I can already hear some people asking. It's all a comic-book fantasy, and comic books are well known for their surreal, cartoonish bursts of violence. But the director, Christopher Nolan, hasn't sought to ramp up the cartoonish aspects of his superhero story, as other directors before him have. He has tried instead to make the violence and fear as believable as possible, and in this he has succeeded.

...

Britain appears to be gulping down entertainment values wholesale from a Hollywood intent upon mining the profit margin from barbarism. America, for all its manifold strengths, is still a country in which the population can be roused to a frenzy of condemnation by the sight of Janet Jackson's escaped nipple on the Super Bowl, but views the sight of a bound man being torched to death as all-round family entertainment.

...

Is there a link between screen violence and actual violence? Fans of violent films will tell you – frequently in the most aggressive terms – that there is not. Yet we know that children are, to greater and lesser degrees, highly imitative of what they see. We know that there is escalating public concern about violent crime, particularly knife crime, among teenagers.

...Read full article

Max Mosley's victory in the High Court should be celebrated because it exposed the hypocrisy of the News of the World: its mean and suicidal decision to reduce payment to the call girl and main witness, Woman E, by more than half; the pomposity of editor Colin Myler, who insisted that he was motivated by public interest; and the blackmail, unreliability and inconsistencies of its reporter, Neville Thurlbeck.

Since the judgment, there has been much hand-wringing about the freedom of the press. Most of it is self-serving. The damage to the press has not been done by Mosley, or the law, but by the practices of the News of the World. The public-interest defence still remains, but because of the Mosley case, newspapers are now going to have to justify such exposés under the chilly gaze of Mr Justice Eady and the accumulation of privacy law.

That's no bad thing, but my joy at the vanquishing of the News of the World is tempered by the knowledge that while our society haphazardly builds the law to protect privacy in this one limited sphere, we are busily destroying it in almost every other area.

...Read full article

The latest high-profile, UK privacy case raises critical questions for press freedom

See article from indexoncensorship.org by Jo Glanville

The ruling on the Max Mosley case has turned out to be less chilling for free speech than originally feared. Mosley, the president of FIA, Formula One’s governing body, has successfully sued the News of the World for invading his privacy, but he was not awarded the ‘exemplary damages’ he was seeking. So while the damages he will receive of £60,000 may be the highest award yet in a privacy case, it is not the kind of sum that will deter the press from reporting similar cases in the future.

...Read full article

Sadistic violence in the new Batman movie will send knife crime soaring, a victim’s mum claimed last night.

Barbara Dunne whose son Robert was killed with a samurai sword, blasted block-buster The Dark Knight for glorifying blades.

She said scenes showing the knife-obsessed Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, relishing maiming victims will numb kids to the horror of stabbings.

And Dunne said: It’s encouraging children to buy the same knife and actually end up using it. The next day somebody’s dead.

The campaigner, who vowed to grill bosses on the film’s horror scenes, slated its 12A rating.

Comment: Easy Scapegoats

From Dan

It's always odd how parents of victims of violent crime lash out and blame easy scapegoats like films for their loss. They become campaigners against knife crime but instead of trying to campaign to tackle the root causes of young people turning to knife and violent crime they blame films.

Surely they must know that unless society deals with the real problems that lead youngsters down the road of crime and violence the killings and tragedies that befall families will not stop and blaming films won't change that.

Comment: Knives don't kill people

From Andrew

Kudos to Dan, victims of crime always end up stereotyping, and once again films come under the critical microscope.

When will people realise that films don't create killers. Parents do. There I said it. If your child is too fucked up to know where a film ends and life begins then I'm sorry, you failed as a parent.

You can still see kids walking around now dressing like Eminem and thinking that 8 Mile was real. ITS A FUCKING FILM! you know that bit at the end with all those strange markings, well their called words, commonly known at the end of a FILM as credits, telling you the FILM is over. Go back to your life. Now I'm not placing the blame solely on parents, children will imitate, fact of life, but if your child can't distinguish where the end of the film is then you have some real issues.

When I was 14 Natural Born Killers was released and caused a massive divide on what was acceptable in modern mainstream cinema, however unphased by this argument I landed a bootleg copy and watched it...14 years later I still don't have a criminal record.

The bottom line is films are not responsible. People are responsible. Knives don't kill people, irresponsible motherfuckers who carry knives kill people. Instead of looking for things to blame, point that judgemental finger at a mirror. Your child's carrying a knife? you fucked up as a parent. Ipso facto.

A UK television advertisement been withdrawal after a gay rights group called it offensive.

The Associated Press is reporting that Mars is pulling a Snickers television ad that offended gay groups.

The commercial features 80's star Mr. T in an armoured truck shooting snickers bars and ridiculing a gay stereotyped jogger.

During the advert, Mr T, who played B.A. Baracus in the 1980s series The A-Team, pulls up in a large truck next to a speed walker and shouts: "Speed walking. I pity you fool. You are a disgrace to the man race. It's time to run like a real man."

He then fires Snickers bars at the man until he breaks into a sprint.

Mars says the ad was meant to be funny. But gay rights group Human Rights Campaign failed to find the humour: These kinds of ads perpetuate the notion that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is a group of second class citizens and that violence against GLBT people is not only acceptable, but humorous.

Nike said it will drop ads for its Hyperdunk basketball shoes that critics said played off some viewers' homophobia.

Nike spokesman Bob Applegate told The Oregonian that three separate print, poster and billboard ads would be removed as expeditiously as possible. The ads were titled That Ain't Right, Isn't That Cute, and Punks Jump Up.

One ad showed a basketball player dunking over another. The crotch of the player dunking was planted firmly in the other player's face. The ad sported a large tagline: That Ain't Right.

Nike stood by the ads earlier this week, saying the ads were based purely upon a common insight from within the game of basketball - the athletic feat of dunking on the opposition, and is not intended to be offensive.

A tabloid newspaper was withdrawn from newsstands in China after running a photograph from the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters.

The photo - of two wounded young men being taken away on a rickshaw - was carried in Thursday's Beijing News.

The picture was simply captioned The Wounded, and no mention of the protests was made in the text.

But observers suggest newspaper staff could face further punishment for broaching what remains a taboo subject.

The photograph was printed alongside an interview with the Hong Kong-born American photographer Liu Xiangcheng as an example of his work. It seems most likely to have been a mistake by staff who did not realise the significance of the photo.

As soon as Chinese officials noticed, they ordered the removal of the paper from the news-stands and part of its website was blocked.

Max Mosley won his case against the News of the World over the newspaper's allegations he had engaged in "Nazi style orgy" with five prostitutes.

In a powerful judgement, Mr Justice Eady, declared that however morally distasteful the public might find such activities, the press had no right to publish them as they did not constitute a 'significant' crime.

In his ruling the judge acknowledged the growing influence in British national life of the European Court of Human Rights, which gives people's privacy precedence over the right of the media to investigate them.

Lawyers claimed that the judgement effectively introduced a privacy law into Britain, even though Parliament has never passed one.

Mosley, the President of motor sport's governing body, was secretly filmed conducting a five hour sado-masochistic session at his Chelsea flat with the women, one of whom was the wife of an MI5 agent. As well as being published in the newspaper, video footage of the session was then posted on the paper's internet site and viewed by 3.5m people

Mosley, the son of fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, sued the paper claiming they had breached his privacy.

The judge, in a passage which was seen by lawyers as a serious breach of press freedom, stated: It is not for the state or for the media to expose sexual conduct which does not involve any significant breach of the criminal law.

The fact that a particular relationship happens to be adulterous, or that someone's tastes are unconventional or "perverted" does not give the media carte blanche.

Mr Justice Eady also suggested that journalists would not be entitled to secretly film someone in order to catch them committing a crime.

The question has to be asked whether it will always be an automatic defence to intrusive journalism that a crime was being committed on a private property, however technical or trivial.

Would it justify installing a camera in someone's home, for example, in order to catch him or her smoking a spliff? Surely not.

Mosley won £60,000 damages - a record for a privacy case - with the judge ruling the paper had produced no evidence of a Nazi link. The newspaper now faces costs of £850,000.

Council leaders in Manchester will discuss the proposals, which have been backed by health officials.

They are asking for special powers to put "restrictive" ratings on films that they believe encourage smoking.

This could mean films that have PG ratings elsewhere in Britain are rated 18 in Greater Manchester's cinemas. Children could even be banned from watching cartoons such as 101 Dalmations because it shows people smoking cigarettes.

Local councils have the power to overrule BBFC cinema certificates.

A report by the Greater Manchester Health Commission, to be discussed by the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA), says town halls should take into account smoking when giving a classification to film.

 

Very talented, rich, world renowned and a smoker... Thanks to DavidT

The region's 10 councils may also cut funding to theatres that put on plays involving smoking.

The GMHC's report also urges the Government to ban drivers from smoking, to reclassify all films featuring smoking to be rated 18 and to ban smoking in television programmes.

Neil Rafferty, of pro-smoking lobby group Forest, said: It is nannyism of the worst kind.

The BBFC insisted there was no need to classify all films as 18 just because they showed characters smoking. A spokesman said: If we see smoking in films which is actively promoting smoking to young people we would take action against them, give them a higher rating if necessary. But there is less and less smoking in films these days simply because people are unable to smoke in public locations.

Plans to regulate video-on-demand services and product placement on British television are set out in a consultation document published by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham.

The proposals are part of a comprehensive consultation on how the UK should implement the EU Audio Visual Media Services (AVMS) Directive. The Directive includes both compulsory and optional elements, some of which are expected to lead to new legislation.

The Directive updates EU minimum standards on scheduled television services. It also for the first time brings in common standards for video-on-demand services.

Secretary of State Andy Burnham said:

Preserving standards must be the guiding principles as we look to the media of the future. We need to ensure that traditional protections against inappropriate content and advertising standards are secured as technology advances.

While citizens embrace the opportunities offered by massively increased choice of content, and can watch on demand on TVs, online or phones, it's right that the same standards apply.

These proposals are designed to protect the consumer without causing unnecessary burden on industry. Media regulation in the UK has been effective in offering safeguards and at the same time, workable for broadcasters. We want to keep that balance.

The consultation focuses on the Government's proposals on three specific issues in the Directive. These are:

- product placement in television and video-on-demand services
- introducing a system for regulating video-on-demand services in the UK
- and controls over the content of non-EU satellite channels which are uplinked from a ground station in the UK.

Under the Directive the UK has an obligation to ensure its video-on-demand services meet new cross-EU standards. It encourages Member States to seek a 'co-regulatory' solution in which the system of regulation is owned and run by the video-on-demand industry, but with backup powers for Government or a national authority such as Ofcom to intervene if need be. The consultation seeks views on a number of different options designed to achieve this.

AVMS will also give the UK new responsibility under EU law for the content of a small number of non-EU satellite TV channels which legally broadcast into Europe from ground stations in Britain. New legislation is required to allow Ofcom to exercise this responsibility and the document sets out some options to consider.

The consultation concerns three parts of the Directive that require changes to the law in the UK. Other parts, which do not require changes to UK law, are not discussed in the consultation document in any detail. in particular an enhancement to existing procedures under which a Member State can raise concerns about television broadcasts from another Member State which do not comply with the first Member State's own domestic rules

The consultation runs for three months and closes on 31 October, 2008.

It's part of normal existence.

Richard Attenborough has blamed violence in films for rising levels of knife crime.

But he claimed that as violence has become more prevalent in films, viewers have become desensitised to real-life crime - making the carrying of knives almost an acceptable commonplace.

Now 84, Lord Attenborough began his career as an actor and came to prominence after starring as the vicious gang leader Pinkie in the 1947 film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock. He also played the serial killer John Christie in the 1971 film 10 Rillington Place.

He told the Brighton Argus newspaper that he abhors the pornography of violence in modern films.

Lord Attenborough said: Thirty years ago if Gary Cooper pulled out a gun the audience would give a sharp intake of breath.

Now the act of violence with a gun or a knife is the norm and we in the entertainment industry are partly responsible in making the presence of weapons such as knives almost an acceptable commonplace.

So now knife crime is not thought of as something that is horrific and to be abhorred. It's part of normal existence.

Gardai have seized 1,300 pornographic films during a raid on a sex shop in central Dublin.

The DVDs were recovered under suspected breaches of the Video Recording Act as being uncertified for sale or supply.

Investigating officers who targeted the premises at South William Street have also notified the Irish Film Censorship Office. No arrests were made.

Senator Roger Wicker has introduced a bill in the United States Senate which would:

• prohibit the distribution or sale of video games that do not have age-based content rating labels
• prohibit the sale or rental of video games with adult content ratings to minors...

The full text of the bill, S.3315 is not yet available on the Senate's legislative website. Thus far the bill has no co-sponsers. The measure has been referred to the Senate's Committe on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

GamePolitics has received unconfirmed word that Wicker's bill is the Senate version of the Video Games Rating Enforcement Act introduced in the House by Reps. Jim Matheson  and Lee Terry earlier this year.

China will create three "protest pens" in the capital's parks to allow people to demonstrate during the Olympics, an official said.

This will allow people to protest without disrupting the Olympics, said Ni Jianping, the director of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, who had lobbied for the creation of the zones.

But Human Rights Watch attacked the decision, arguing that the restrictions undermined the right to demonstrate under international law. Nicholas Bequelin, a spokesman for HRW, said: The obstacles and deterrents are so high as to negate the right to demonstrate. We are also concerned about the possibility that the authorities might use the existence of these zones to justify repressive measures against demonstrators outside of the zones.

Protest zones have been created at previous games, including Athens in 2004, because the International Olympic Committee's charter bans demonstrations or political, religious or racial propaganda at Olympic venues or sites.

We have dedicated places for demonstrations at several parks, Liu Shaowu, the director of the security department at Beijing's Olympics organising committee, told a news conference. He stressed that under Chinese law all demonstrations must be approved by police in advance, but declined to say whether that applied to the zones, or whether approval would be granted for protests outside them.

Meanwhile Reporters Without Borders said police arrested a prominent internet dissident this week supposedly for violating his probation terms. Du Daobin, given a suspended sentence for subversion after posting essays online in support of another dissident, was arrested this week for posting articles on overseas websites and receiving guests without permission.

The family of another dissident, Ye Guozhu, said he was due for release this weekend after serving four years for organising protests against forced eviction, but had been taken away by police. His brother, Ye Guoqiang, said: We believe that the police took him away to silence him during the games, and that he will not be released until after the Olympics, when most foreign journalists will have left Beijing.

The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) are US action films by Stephen Sommers (Universal Pictures).

The Mummy Returns was passed uncut in 2007. and features in the 2008 boxset. The appallingly edited headbutt is now reinstated.

The 2008 double disk boxset (released to coincide with the 3rd Mummy film) contains the uncut versions of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

The overall rating of the boxset is a family unfriendly "15", for some reason the distributors haven't pushed for a downgrade to a "12" (The Mummy's original rating). This can probably be attributed to the glorification of a Butterfly knife rather than the hanging sequence that caused them concern originally (the BBFC seem to be a bit more tolerable on hangings in "12"'s now, see The Goonies).

Dark Angel warns horror fans about the impact of the Government's noxious Dangerous Pictures Act.

The new law is passed in the Criminal Injustice & Immigration Act 2008 and is expected to come into force in January 2009.

It's no secret that director Kevin Smith has been having a rough time in getting an R-rating for his new comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Well now Zack and Miri has been officially hit with the NC-17 kiss of death.

A search on the MPPA’s official site lists Zack and Miri Make a Porno as “Rating: NC-17”. Reason for the rating? As expected, Rated NC-17 for some graphic sexuality.

Though I think we’d all rather see the NC-17 cut and watch the movie as its director originally intended it to be seen, slapping any movie with an NC-17 spells box office doom. Not because people won’t show up to see it, but because most major theaters will refuse to carry it, thus taking away our right to choose whether or not we want it in front of our eyes. The really frustrating thing in this particular case is that if any filmmaker has the kind of audience necessary to blow up the stigma attached to an NC-17, it’s Kevin Smith. Heck, an NC-17 rating might even help his ticket sales… his crowd is going to be there money in hand regardless. Sadly if it’s not playing, they’re powerless to support it.

The fight’s not over for Kevin Smith’s Porno. Under the movie’s rating on the MPAA site, there’s a little note which reads: “Pending Appeal”. That means they’re fighting the rating, and there’s still reason to think this thing will eventually get the R it needs to show up in a theater. Of course who knows what sort of cuts Kevin will have to make to his film in order to achieve that.

In the UK, there has been much discussion over how adult entertainment should be regulated on the Internet. Parliament has been considering some controversial legislation that would make it a felony to download what some British politicians have been loosely describing as "extreme pornography," and the BBFC — which has been critical of the proposed "extreme porn" law — is launching a voluntary program that will extend its rating system to online entertainment, including erotica.

No one can say for sure exactly where the regulation of adult online content will go in the UK in the future, and like so many things pertaining to the Internet, the rules are still being worked out.

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A panel of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr.'s opinion that the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is impermissibly overbroad and vague.

COPA was the "fix" to the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which banned all "indecent" and "obscene" speech from the Internet – and which was quickly found by the U.S. Supreme Court to be unconstitutionally vague. COPA, on the other hand, limited the banned speech to material that is harmful to minors posted only for commercial purposes, and incorporated a definition of material harmful to minors that has been widely copied by state legislatures attempting to craft anti-adult zoning and other censorious measures aimed at restricting adults' access to adult sexual speech.

The court found that age verification services and obtaining credit card numbers on sites are virtually useless in preventing minors from accessing explicit material since they can easily be circumvented by children who generally know the first and last name, street address and zip codes of their parents or another adult.

The District Court discussed Internet content filters at length in its Findings of Fact, Judge Greenburg stated. We will review these findings in detail, as the need to determine whether filters are more effective than COPA to effectuate Congress’s purpose in enacting that statute was the primary reason the Supreme Court remanded the case.

Judge Reed also found that filtering programs are now harder for children to bypass; that filters will block foreign sexually-oriented sites that COPA can't; and also that the government had failed to show that COPA would be less restrictive than filtering because, unlike COPA there are no fines or prison sentences associated with filters which would chill speech. Also unlike COPA, . . . filters are fully customizable and may be set for different ages and for different categories of speech or may be disabled altogether for adult use.

The Third Circuit also perceptively noted, the circumstance that some parents choose not to use filters does not mean that filters are not an effective alternative to COPA. Though we recognize that some of those parents may be indifferent to what their children see, others may have decided to use other methods to protect their children – such as by placing the family computer in the living room, instead of their children’s bedroom – or trust that their children will voluntarily avoid harmful material on the Internet. Studies have shown that the primary reason that parents do not use filters is that they think they are unnecessary because they trust their children and do not see a need to block content.

It seems almost a foregone conclusion that the Justice Department's next stop will be a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

New York Governor, David Paterson, has signed video game legislation passed by the Senate and Assembly into law.

The Video Game Bill establishes an advisory council to conduct a study on the connection between interactive media and real-life violence in minors exposed to such media.

This bill will also require new video game consoles to have parental lockout features by 2010, and mandate that games sold at retail disclose the ratings obtained from the gaming industry's voluntary rating system.

Will there be a court challenge? Game Politics put this question to the trade association ESA, who said that they are reviewing their options. For a variety of reasons, the main one being that the bill has no real teeth, it's entirely possible that the industry will just live with it.

Russia's highest Muslim council on Saturday issued a protest against a ban on some Islamic publications considered by the authorities to be "extremist".

The Council of Muftis has taken a decision to request that the relevant institutions of the Russian Federation carry out a repeat analysis of the books, the council said in a statement.

Starting last year, the authorities have compiled a regularly updated list of publications seen as breaking sweeping new laws against extremism. Most of the banned books are linked to Islam.

A clearly deranged suspect sits apparently alone in a dimly lit interrogation room. Suddenly, a menacing figure looms out of the shadows and proceeds to rain powerful, thudding blows on the suspect, reducing him to a cowering, whimpering wreck.

Doesn't sound like family entertainment, does it? But, from Friday, anyone will be able to watch these scenes - and many others like them - in the latest Batman movie. Its 12A certificate means that even the tiniest tot will not be refused entry to the cinema, as long as he or she has an adult in tow.

The Dark Knight may well be judged the best of this summer's blockbusters. It's a thrilling action movie laced with psychological subtleties, its haunting crepuscular images underpinned by an edgy, nerve-jangling score. And at its heart is a spine-tinglingly incandescent performance from Heath Ledger as Batman's crazed arch-nemesis the Joker.Without doubt, this is a major cinematic achievement. And, without doubt, it's not for kids.

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