Censor Watch

Terminator: Dark Fate is a 2019 China / USA action Sci-Fi adventure by Tim Miller.
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie Davis and Edward Furlong.

More than two decades have passed since Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, changed the future, and re-wrote the fate of the human race. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is living a simple life in Mexico City with her brother (Diego Boneta) and father when a highly advanced and deadly new Terminator - a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) - travels back through time to hunt and kill her. Dani's survival depends on her joining forces with two warriors: Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced super-soldier from the future, and a battle-hardened Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). As the Rev-9 ruthlessly destroys everything and everyone in its path on the hunt for Dani, the three are led to a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from Sarah's past that may be their last best hope.

The BBFC has just announced its rating for the cinema release of Terminator: Dark Fate. It was passed 15 uncut for strong violence, bloody images, language.

There has been a little debate as to whether the franchise has returned to more adult oriented fare but 4 other European countries have passed the film with 12 ratings or under. So maybe the 15 rating from the BBFC is an outlier and 12 is the norm.

Update: Censored whilst claiming to be uncensored

16th October 2019. See latest MPAA ratings [pdf] from filmratings.com

The film has just been rated R by the MPA (previously MPAA) for violence throughout, language and brief nudity.

Update: New Zealand's Chief Censor speaks about his 13 rating

31st October 2019. See article from stuff.co.nz

Terminator: Dark Fate, released in New Zealand today, has been given an R13 rating by the Office of Film and Literature Classification, with warnings for strong violence and offensive language.

But in Australia, the film has a rating of MA15+, which means it is legally restricted to viewers aged 15 and older (children under 15 must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian). The film also has a certificate of 15 in the UK, while in the US it has been rated R, which requires anyone under the age of 17 to be accompanied by an adult.

Chief censor David Shanks said based on the office's research, New Zealand audiences tended to be less concerned about bad language and nudity than other markets, which sometimes resulted in disparities. He said:

In this case, we've given another major film a lower restriction than the Australian authorities. It's not that we're more conservative or more liberal than any of the other authorities, it's just that due to our engagement with young people and the public, we're attuned to and sensitised to slightly different things.

Shanks also pointed out that the R13 classification was unique to New Zealand, with the Australian Classification Board having to choose between M and MA15+.

New Zealand's Chief Censor David Shanks has announced two bans.

The first was a document said to have been shared by the terrorist who killed two people in Halle, Germany earlier this month. It has been classified as objectionable under the Films, Videos & Publications Classification Act 1993. A live stream of the event had already been banned.

Shanks also banned is a low priced video game that puts the player in the role of a killer called Brenton Torrent with the game play consisting solely of the murder of defenceless people. He said:

The Shitposter from 2 Genderz Productions, that celebrates the livestream of the March 15 terrorist attacks in Christchurch, is classified objectionable.

The creators of this game set out to produce and sell a game designed to place the player in the role of a white supremacist terrorist killer. In this game, anyone who isn't a white heterosexual male is a target for simply existing.

This game is cheaply and crudely made, with little or no appeal in terms of the challenge of its gameplay. Everything about this game, from the name of the shooter character down to its purchase price ($14.88) makes it clear that this is a product created for and marketed to white supremacists who are interested in supporting and celebrating white extremist attacks.

...

The games producers will try to dress their work up as satire but this game is no joke.

It crosses the line.

The Spanish government has quietly begun censoring the entirety of GitHub in response to mounting Catalan protests, causing problems for those developers that use the Microsoft-owned service for their work projects.

While the issue is easily remedied by using a VPN, the fact that the Spanish government has been quick to try to censor such a valuable tool speaks volumes for the increasingly prominent but authoritarian idea that mass censorship is the best way to crush dissent.

One new pro-independence group, Tsunami Democratic, organizes digitally online and is known for the mass occupation of Barcelona's El Prat airport by an estimated 10,000 protesters. In addition to other social media it has a website hosted on Github as well as an encrypted communication app that's also available on Github.

The Android app uses geolocation and end-to-end protocols to make sure that only trusted and verified users have access. Verification takes place through the scanning of a QR code of an already-verified member. The app isn't available via Playstore so the APK file containing the app needs to be downloaded and manually installed on a phone.

It's for this reason that the Spanish government has begun to block GitHub in the country, cutting off access to all users. Over the last week, several Spanish internet service providers have blocked access to the service.

An absurd thing is happening in the halls of Congress. Major ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are banging on the doors of legislators to stop the deployment of DNS over HTTPS (DoH), a technology that will give users one of the biggest upgrades to their Internet privacy and security since the proliferation of HTTPS . This is because DoH ensures that when you look up a website, your query to the DNS system is secure through encryption and can't be tracked, spoofed, or blocked.

But despite these benefits, ISPs have written dozens of congressional leaders about their concerns, and are handing out misleading materials invoking Google as the boogeyman. EFF, Consumer Reports, and National Consumers League wrote this letter in response .

The reason the ISPs are fighting so hard is that DoH might undo their multi-million dollar political effort to take away user privacy. DoH isn't a Google technology--it's a standard, like HTTPS. They know that. But what is frustrating is barely two years ago, these very same lobbyists, and these very same corporations, were meeting with congressional offices and asking them to undo federal privacy rules that protect some of the same data that encrypted DNS allows users to hide.

ISPs Want to Protect an Illegitimate Market of Privacy Invasive Practices to "Compete" with Google's Privacy Invasive Practices, Congress Should Abolish Both

Congress shouldn't take its cues from these players on user privacy. The last time they did, Congress voted to take away users' rights . As long as DNS traffic remains exposed, ISPs can exploit our data the same way that Facebook and Google do. That's the subtext of this ISP effort. Comcast and its rivals are articulating a race to the bottom. ISPs will compete with Internet giants on who can invade user privacy more, then sell that to advertisers.

The major ISPs have also pointed out that centralization of DNS may not be great for user privacy in the long run. That's true, but that would not be an issue if everyone adopted DoH across the board. Meaning, the solution isn't to just deny anyone a needed privacy upgrade. The solution is to create laws that abolish the corporate surveillance model that exists today for both Google and Comcast.

But that's not what the ISPs want Congress to do, because they're ultimately on the same side as Google and other big Internet companies--they don't want us to have effective privacy laws to handle these issues. Congress should ignore the bad advice it's getting from both the major ISPs and Big Tech on consumer privacy, and instead listen to the consumer and privacy groups.

EFF and consumer groups have been pleading with Congress to pass a real privacy law, which would give individuals a right to sue corporations that violate their privacy, mandate opt-in consent for use of personal information, and allowing the states to take privacy law further, should the need arise . But many in Congress are still just listening to big companies, even holding Congressional hearings that only invite industry and no privacy groups to "learn" what to do next. In fact the only reason we don't have a strong federal privacy law because corporations like Comcast and Google want Congress to simply delete state laws like California's CCPA and Illinois's Biometric Protection Act while offering virtually nothing to users.

DNS over HTTPS Technology Advances More than Just Privacy, It Advances Human Rights and Internet Freedom

Missing from the debate is the impact DoH has on Internet freedom and human rights in authoritarian regimes where the government runs the broadband access network. State-run ISPs in Venezuela , China , and Iran have relied on insecure DNS traffic to censor content and target activists . Many of the tools governments like China and Iran rely on in order to censor content relies on exposed DNS traffic that DoH would eliminate. In other words, widespread adoption of encrypted DNS will shrink the censorship toolbox of authoritarian regimes across the world. In other words the old tools of censorship will be bypassed if DoH is systematically adopted globally. So while the debate about DoH is centered on data privacy and advertising models domestically, U.S. policymakers should recognize the big picture being that DoH can further American efforts to promote Internet freedom around the world. They should in fact be encouraging Google and the ISPs to offer encrypted DNS services and for them to quickly adopt it, rather than listen to ISP's pleas to stop it outright.

For ISPs to retain the power to censor the Internet, DNS needs to remain leaky and exploitable. That's where opposition to DoH is coming from. And the oposition to DoH today isn't much different from early opposition to the adoption of HTTP.

EFF believes this is the wrong vision for the Internet. We've believed, since our founding, that user empowerment should be the center focus. Let's try to advance the human right of privacy on all fronts. Establishing encrypted DNS can greatly advance this mission - fighting against DoH is just working on behalf of the censors.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) strongly condemns a draconian new directive from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) that effectively orders TV channels to impose prior censorship on their anchors by ensuring that they express no personal opinions.

Issued on 27 October to all licenced satellite TV broadcasters, the PEMRA directive says journalists who host TV discussions must limit themselves to moderating and must never express an opinion or judgement:

[The] role of anchors is to moderate programmes in an objective, unbiased and impartial manner, excluding themselves from their personal opinions, biases and judgements on any issue. Therefore, anchors hosting exclusive regular shows should not appear in talk shows whether their own or other channels as subject matter expert.

Non-compliance is punishable by a fine of up to 10 million rupees (60,000 euros) and withdrawal of the TV channel's broadcasting licence.

Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF's Asia-Pacific desk said:

It is not the media regulator's role to dictate who can express opinions during debates, or to decree what can or cannot be said. This grotesque PEMRA directive not only violates journalistic independence and pluralism but even goes so far as to criminalize opinions. We urge PEMRA's members to recover a semblance of credibility by rescinding this order, whose sole aim is to intimidate media outlets and journalists.

Don't call us boring: 'Generation Conscious' want to make better decisions than ever before

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is launching new age rating symbols which, for the first time, are designed for digital streaming platforms - a move which will give young people better and consistent guidance about film and TV content, enabling them to make conscious decisions about what they watch.

New research from the BBFC reveals, given their access to more media, nine in 10 (87%) 12-19 year olds want to make better decisions than ever before. Two thirds (66%) of young people resent the idea of being perceived as 'boring' or 'sensible' - something three quarters (74%) of adults admit to having thought.

Instead, almost all teens (97%) want more credit for being conscious decision makers, making informed and positive choices throughout all aspects of their life. The BBFC's own research showed 95% of teenagers want consistent age ratings that they recognise from the cinema and DVD to apply to content accessed through streaming services.

A majority (56%) of teens are concerned about watching content without knowing what it contains - and say they want clear age ratings to guide them. A third of teens (32%) say they see content they'd rather avoid on a weekly basis, leaving them feeling uncomfortable or anxious (46%), and one in twenty (5%) saying it had a negative impact on their mental health.

The BBFC's new digital classification symbols, launching on Thursday 31 October, will help young people to make conscious decisions when it comes to film and content on video on demand platforms. Netflix has welcomed the new symbols, and will begin rolling them out on the platform starting from Thursday 31 October. This builds on the ongoing partnership between the BBFC and Netflix, which will see the streaming service classify content using BBFC guidelines, with the aim that 100% of content on the platform will carry a BBFC age rating.

David Austin, Chief Executive of the BBFC, said: "It's inspiring to see young people determined to make conscious and thoughtful decisions. We want all young people to be empowered and confident in their film and TV choices. As the landscape of viewing content changes, so do we. We're proud to be launching digital symbols for a digital audience, to help them choose content well."

The move empowers young people to confidently engage with TV and film content in the right way. Half (50%) of young people say having access to online content and the internet helps them have tough conversations or navigate tricky subjects, like mental health and sexuality, when talking to parents.

Jack, 12, from Peterborough said: "It's difficult to choose what to watch online as there is so much choice out there. I like to think about things before I watch them. Sometimes my friends watch stuff I don't think is appropriate or I might find scary or it just isn't for me. I could definitely make better decisions and avoid uncomfortable situations if age ratings were more clearly signposted."

The BBFC is calling for streaming services to clearly label content with age ratings - and has this month launched its first set of VOD User Guidelines , developed in conjunction with video on demand platforms. These user guidelines outline how streaming services can help people by offering clearer, more consistent and comprehensive use of trusted, well understood, BBFC age ratings to support 'Generation Conscious'.

The BBFC commissioned Studio AKA to produce a short animation , showcasing the new age rating symbols, to help families help view what's right for them. The film is currently being played nationwide in cinemas until Sunday 3 November.

A gig by comedian Roy Chubby Brown has been cancelled because Swansea Council said it was unlikely to reflect our values and commitments.

It said it would refund 52 tickets sold in advance of April's gig.

But Brown's management criticised the decision, saying not everybody likes Marmite but it doesn't mean the people that eat it are wrong.

The council's censorship attracted more than 500 comments on Facebook, with a further 300 messages on Brown's Facebook page after his management said the gig had been unceremoniously cancelled. They said:

Roy is one of the most popular artistes ever to appear in Swansea and the crowds love him. Who has made a minority decision for the majority? Everybody seems to be frightened, to be honest, in case they upset some militant minority soap box protagonist. Everybody's got different tastes.

Ofcom writes:

We have today published an economic perspective on the challenges and opportunities in regulating online services.

Online services have revolutionised people's personal and working lives, generating significant benefits. But some of their features have the potential to cause harms to individuals and society. These can include exposure to harmful content or conduct, loss of privacy, data or security breaches, lack of competition, unfair business practices or harm to wellbeing. In May, our Online Nation report set out the benefits to consumers of being online and their concerns about potential online harm.

Today's paper aims to contribute to the discussion on how to address these harms effectively, drawing on Ofcom's experience as the UK communications regulator. It looks at the sources of online harms from an economic perspective, which can inform the broader policy assessment that policymakers and regulators may use to evidence and address them.

The Australian Classification Board has published its Annual Report covering the period. 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019.

The report starts with a long report about schmoozing with the bigwigs of the film censorship world at an international conference of film censors.

The Australian film censors have had a pretty good year on the film front. No banned films and only a couple of films with enough classification issues for a press release. These were for Bumblebee and Rocketman .

On the video games front the censors recalled their bans of Song of Memories and most notably Dayz . The Censorship Board is saddled with some stupid rules laid down in statute as a bit of compromise to get an adults only games rating, The lawmakers decided that the rules would be tough on the depiction of drugs leading to the modern day censors getting continually embarrassed by having to ban games where drugs are depicted as beneficial.

The censors didn't have much to say about the 120 online games banned under the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) classification tool. This automated tools seems to assign ratings by random. Minor variants, eg for different consoles, can get widely differing ratings including bans. When a game has sufficient gravitas to make the news, the human censors quietly edit the database with a more sensible rating. It is hard to believe that 120 online games justify being banned.

The censors also noted that they banned the murderous live stream of Brenton Tarrant and his manifesto. Carefully but awkwardly reported without mentioning his name, which serves only to highlight the contrived omission.

Film censors always like to report on the complaints mailbag, probably because, commendably, there generally few complainst about their decision. The Board announced:

• 124 complaints about decisions for films
• 39 complaints about decisions for computer games
• 3 complaints about decisions made by the IARC classification tool
• 6 complaints about decisions made by the Netflix classification tool.

Of the 124 complaints about the classifications of films, 28 were for the theatrical release film, Show Dogs , which had attracted 118 complaints in the period of the previous report. The next most complained about film was the theatrical release film, A Star is Born , which received 13 complaints about an offscreen suicide, followed by Instant Family , which received 11 complaints about strong lanugage, and A House With A Clock In Its Walls , which received nine complaints for being a bit too scary for kids.

Of the games complaints, 26 were about the ban of We Happy Few (actually initially banned during the period of the previous Annual Report). This was another example of a victim of the silly rules about the depiction of drugs.

Australia's Department of Home Affairs is hoping to use its Face Verification Service and Document Verification Service across the economy, and is backing its use for age verification for Australians to look at pornography.

Writing in a submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs' inquiry, launched in September, Home Affairs said it could provide a suite of identity-matching services.

Whilst the services are primarily designed to prevent identity crime, Home Affairs would support the increased use of the Document and Face Verification Services across the Australian economy to strengthen age verification processes, the department wrote.

Home Affairs conceded the Face Verification Service was not yet operational, as it relied on the passage of biometric legislation through Parliament.

The Russian Government is set to begin tests of an internal version of the web -- isolated from the outside world -- in November, local sources claim.

Such a setup is supposedly intended to shield critical Russian systems from cyber-attack, allowing the federation to operate disconnected from the rest of the web.

However, critics have claimed that the tests are part of a wider attempt to isolate its citizens from the surrounding world and its influences.

Previous tests announced in February, for April, did not actually occur, presumably there were technical issues.

According to D-Russia , the tests of the network isolation will begin after November 1, 2019 and will be repeatedly at least annually.

Traditional applause is being discouraged at Oxford University, as students vote to replace triggering clapping with jazz hands.

Students at the University of Oxford, studying diverse subjects such as hydro-crystallisation and the psychology of easy offence, voted to replace noisy appreciation with the British Sign Language equivalent -- a wave of both hands, palms forward.

Union officers claimed clapping can be 'triggering' for some students, including those with anxiety.

The motion to mandate the encouragement of silent clapping was successfully passed by student union representatives at their first meeting of the academic year.

Manuals for Labour campaigners, seen by Sky News, show the party buys data from credit reference agency Experian in order to target both traditional canvassing and advertising on Facebook. Data obtained from the Conservatives shows it categorises people using Experian data in its VoteSource database.

Experian's data is widely used by political parties and private companies, who prize its ability to classify voters on a street-by-street basis into categories such as Bank of Mum and Dad, Disconnected Youth and Midlife Stopgap.

Labour and the Conservatives buy Experian's Mosaic database, which uses more than 850 million records, including crime data, GCSE results, gas and electricity consumption and child benefits, to classify people into types.

Until last year, Labour also used an Experian tool called Origin to target voters based on ethnicity. Labour quietly stopped using the tool in 2018 after deciding it would not be legal under new data protection legislation.

This all seems totally at odds with the new GDPR law enacted this year which suggest that these people should be seeking people's consent before they amass and sell data in this manner.

Tim Turner, founder of data protection consultancy 2040 Training commented:

People have explicit rights to opt-out of processing like this, with no exemptions, but if you don't know it's happening, how can you exercise these rights? Does the average person know about all this?

Pat Walshe, director of data protection firm Privacy Matters, added:

Absent of a specific notice and consent I don't see how such actions would amount to transparent, fair and lawful processing. I can only hope the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is actively scrutinising the activities of UK political parties.

More than £2m of taxpayers' money was spent preparing for the age verification for porn censorship regime before the policy was dropped in early October, the government has revealed.

The bulk of the spending, £2.2m, was paid to the BBFC to do the detailed work on the policy from 2016 onwards. Before then, additional costs were borne by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where civil servants were tasked with developing the proposals as part of their normal work.

Answering a written question fromthe shadow DCMS secretary, Tom Watson, Matt Warman for the government added: Building on that work, we are now establishing how the objectives of part three of the Digital Economy Act can be delivered through our online harms regime.

It is not just government funds that were wasted on the abortive scheme. Multiple private companies had developed systems that they were hoping to provide age verification services.

The bizarre thing was all this money was spent when the government knew that it wouldn't even prevent determined viewers from getting access to porn. It was only was only considered as effective from blocking kids from stumbling on porn.

So all that expense, and all that potential danger for adults stupidly submitting to age verification, and all for what?

Well at least next time round the government may consider that they should put a least a modicum of thought about people's privacy.

It's not ALL about the kids. Surely the government has a duty of care for adults too. We need a Government Harms bill requiring a duty of care for ALL citizens. Now that would be a first!

The BBC has made its international news website available via Tor, in a bid to thwart censorship attempts.

Tor is a privacy-focused web browser used to access pages on the dark web and also to evade ISP censorship more generally.

The browser obscures who is using it and what data is being accessed, which can help people avoid government surveillance and censorship.

Countries including China, Iran and Vietnam are among those who have tried to block access to the BBC News website or programmes.

Instead of visiting bbc.co.uk/news or bbc.com/news, users of the Tor browser can visit the new bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion web address. Clicking this web address will not work in a regular web browser.

In a statement, the BBC said:

The BBC World Service's news content is now available on the Tor network to audiences who live in countries where BBC News is being blocked or restricted. This is in line with the BBC World Service mission to provide trusted news around the world.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the CASE Act, a new bill that proposes to institute a small claims court for copyright disputes. Supporters see the legislation as the ideal tool for smaller creators to protect their works, but opponents warn that it will increase the number of damages claims against regular Internet users. The new bill, which passed with a clear 410-6 vote, will now progress to the Senate.

The bill is widely supported by copyright-heavy industry groups as well as many individual creators. However, as is often the case with new copyright legislation, there's also plenty of opposition from digital rights groups and Internet users who fear that the bill will do more harm than good.

Supporters of the CASE Act point out that the new bill is the missing piece in the present copyright enforcement toolbox. They believe that many creators are not taking action against copyright infringers at the moment, because filing federal lawsuits is too expensive. The new small claims tribunal will fix that, they claim.

Opponents, for their part, fear that the new tribunal will trigger an avalanche of claims against ordinary Internet users, with potential damages of up to $30,000 per case. While targeted people have the choice to opt-out, many simply have no clue what to do, they argue.

Thus far legislators have shown massive support for the new plan. Yesterday the bill was up for a vote at the U.S. House of Representatives where it was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. With a 410-6 vote , the passage of the CASE Act went smoothly.

Public Knowledge and other groups, such as EFF and Re:Create , fear that the bill will lead to more copyright complaints against regular Internet users. Re:Create's Executive Director Joshua Lamel hopes that the Senate will properly address these concerns. Lamel notes:

The CASE Act will expose ordinary Americans to tens of thousands of dollars in damages for things most of us do everyday. We are extremely disappointed that Congress passed the CASE Act as currently written, and we hope that the Senate will do its due diligence to make much-needed amendments to this bill to protect American consumers and remove any constitutional concerns,

A bill has being considered by Massachusetts state lawmakers that bans the derogatory use of the word bitshc and is worded:

A person who uses the word 'bitchh' directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person in violation of this section.

If the bill is turned into law, those who violate the policy would be subject to penalties such as prison time of six months or less and a fine of $200 or less.

However the bill is more of a resident's petition than a seriously supported move by lawmakers and has little prospect of proceeding. The Bill was presented by the state House Representative Daniel Hunt who explained the procedure:

One of the responsibilities of all Representatives is to serve as a conduit for direct petitions from our constituents to the General Court. It's a long-held tradition that gives every Massachusetts resident a voice inside the halls of the State House and a chance to raise their personal interests before the legislature. While this specific instance may amuse some and alarm others, it remains a important process for self-representation.

Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons' digital, culture, media and sport select committee has written to Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice-president for global affairs and communications, querying Facebook decision to exempt political adverts from fact-checking

Collins, presumably speaking from planet Uranus where all politicians always tell the truth, demanded to know why Facebook has decided to exempt political statements from its fact-checking programme -- removing all bars on political candidates lying in paid adverts.

Collins wrote to Clegg with five questions for Facebook to answer , three of which covered the rule change. Why was the decision taken to change Facebook's policy, the MP asked, given the heavy constraint this will place on Facebook's ability to combat online disinformation in the run-up to elections around the world, and a possible UK general election in particular?

The US House of Representatives has just voted in favor of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE Act) by 410-6 (with 16 members not voting), moving forward a bill that Congress has had no hearings and no debates on so far this session. That means that there has been no public consideration of the serious harm the bill could do to regular Internet users and their expression online.

The CASE Act creates a new body in the Copyright Office which will receive copyright complaints, notify the person being sued, and then decide if money is owed and how much. This new Copyright Claims Board will be able to fine people up to $30,000 per proceeding. Worse, if you get one of these notices (maybe an email, maybe a letter--the law actually does not specify) and accidentally ignore it, you're on the hook for the money with a very limited ability to appeal. $30,000 could bankrupt or otherwise ruin the lives of many Americans.

The CASE Act also has bad changes to copyright rules , would let sophisticated bad actors get away with trolling and infringement , and might even be unconstitutional . It fails to help the artists it's supposed to serve and will put a lot of people at risk.

Even though the House has passed the CASE Act, we can still stop it in the Senate. Tell your Senators to vote "no" on the CASE Act.

Take Action

Tell the Senate not bankrupt regular Internet users

The Rise Of Jordan Peterson is a 2019 Canada documentary by Patricia Marcoccia.
Starring Jordan Peterson.

A rare, intimate glimpse into the life and mind of Jordan Peterson, the academic and best-selling author who captured the world's attention with his criticisms of political correctness and his life-changing philosophy on discovering personal meaning. Christened as the most influential public intellectual in the western world, University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson skyrocketed to fame after he published a controversial viral video series entitled "Professor Against Political Correctness" in 2016. Within 2 years, he sold over 3 million copies of his self-help book, 12 Rules For Life, and became simultaneously branded by some as an academic rockstar selling out theatres around the world, and by others as a dangerous threat to progressive society. THE RISE OF JORDAN PETERSON intimately traces the transformative period of Peterson's life while visiting rare moments with his family, friends and foes who share their own versions of the Jordan Peterson story.

Although the documentary itself is observational rather than political, the politics of Jordan Peterson is controversial for his stance against political correctness. The film hasn't been banned by official censors but has routinely been refused venues for screening.

US: Uncut and MPAA Unrated for:

• 2019 Gravitas Ventures RA Blu-ray at US Amazon released on 29th October 2019
• 2019 Gravitas Ventures R1 DVD at US Amazon released on 29th October 2019

UK: Passed 12A uncut for infrequent strong language, discriminatory references:

• 2019 cinema release

UK: BBFC rating not yet published for:

• 2019 Gravitas Ventures VoD at UK Amazon

A Review

See article from quillette.com by Carol Horton

Given today's downward cultural spiral, it's disturbing but not surprising that the makers of a thoughtful new documentary about Jordan Peterson are having a hard time finding somewhere to show their film. Many mainstream and independent cinemas have refused to screen it because they're fearful of controversy or morally concerned. One theater in Toronto cancelled a week-long showing after some of the staff took issue with it. A theater in Brooklyn cancelled a second screening, despite the fact that the first sold out and received good reviews, because some staff were offended . . . and felt uncomfortable.

It isn't a conventional talking heads-style documentary. It doesn't seek to hammer an agenda into its audience. Instead, the film honors the complexity of both of Peterson, his supporters, and his critics.

See the full article from quillette.com

The argument about loot boxes being gambling is very tiresome. The debate about whether they are akin to gambling has become more important than the debate about how to keep children safe. Surely Loot boxes can be deemed an unacceptable monetisation method for children on its own merits, without trying to match apples to pears.

Longfield seems a bit new to the job, she is now calling for small games to be fully vetted by censors when this approach was given up ten years ago due to the unmanageable volume and unviable economics of expensive censors checking small games.

She is also dreaming that age verification is some sort of panacea for all societies ills. Parents generally know exactly what age their kids are, but the knowledge doesn't magically make for an idyllic childhood.

Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner for England, has published a report, Gaming the system' which looks at the experiences of children who play games online. The Children's Commissioner's Office commissioned the research company Revealing Reality to speak to groups of children who play online games like FIFA, Fortnite and Roblox about what they love and what worries them about gaming, both to shine a light on their experiences and to inform policy recommendations.

With 93% of children in the UK playing video games, the Children's Commissioner is today calling for new rules to tighten up gambling laws and to address the worries children have expressed about how they feel out of control of their spending on online games.

However, it also reveals the drawbacks, in particular highlighting how many children are spending money on 'in-game' purchases because they feel they have to in order to keep up with friends or to advance in the game.

The report also shows how some children feel addicted to gaming and do not feel in control of the amount of time they spend playing games. Younger children told us they are playing games for an average of two to three hours a day, whereas older children are playing for three or more hours.

To address the concerns raised by children in the report, the Children's Commissioner makes a number of recommendations, including:

• Bringing financial harm within the scope of the Government's forthcoming online harms legislation. Developers and platforms should not enable children to progress within a game by spending money and spending should be limited to items which are not linked to performance.

• All games which allow players to spend money should include features for players to track their historic spend, and there should be maximum daily spend limits introduced in all games which feature in-game spending and turned on by default for children.

• The Government should take immediate action to amend the definition of gaming in section 6 of the Gambling Act 2005 to regulate loot boxes as gambling.

• The Government's age appropriate design code must include provisions on nudge techniques and detrimental use of data, as proposed in the draft code.

• Games that are distributed online should be subject to a legally enforceable age-rating system, just as physical games are. There should be a requirement for an additional warning to be displayed for games which facilitate in-game spending. The Government should consult on whether age ratings of all games should be moderated pre-release, just as physical games are.

• Online games should be a key focus of digital citizenship lessons in schools, rather than lessons focusing exclusively on social media. Teachers involved in the delivery of these lessons should be familiar with how key online games that are popular with children work.

Nawab Ghar
PTV Global, 29 March 2019, 18:25

Nawab Ghar is a situation comedy series on PTV Global which is available on satellite in the UK. PTV Global is an Urdu language general entertainment channel aimed at a Pakistani audience.

The title of this comedy programme translates to The Lord's House, the central character is called Nawab, which translates to Lord. This programme included members of Nawab's family hoping to secure a partner for marriage. Chris Fail, who is presented as a distant relative, visited Nawab's home with his niece in order to arrange her marriage. The Chris Fail characters seems to be a take on the cricketer Chris Gayle.

During the visit to Nawab's home, Chris Fail falls in love with Guddo, Nawab's sister-in-law. Ofcom received a complaint about racially offensive references in the above programme. The complainant felt that the programme was racially offensive due to the use of 'blackface'

In this programme, Chris Fail was described as a visitor from Africa. Chris Fail was portrayed as having dark skin (which appeared to have been achieved with dark make-up) and long grey curly hair (a wig) under a black headscarf. In the programme he sang and danced when he started conversations with other characters.

Ofcom considered Rule 2.3:

broadcasters must ensure that material which may cause offence is justified by the context206Such material may include206offensive language206discriminatory treatment or language (for example on the grounds of206race206). Appropriate information should also be broadcast where it would assist in avoiding or minimising offence.

Ofcom Decision: Breach of Rule 2.3

We considered that the more general portrayal of Chris Fail was based on a stereotypical view of a black-African person. The factors that contributed to this included:

• the dark make-up apparently applied to his skin;
• the significance of his name, which we understood to be a play-on-words of the West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle;
• the tribal-style drumming played in the background when he sang and danced; and,
• the way he chanted and shouted over the tribal-style drumming.

we considered that the fact that the programme was a situation comedy with a range of fictitious characters and guests from different backgrounds did not, in itself, provide sufficient editorial justification for a stereotype of this nature to be used.

We considered that the way Chris Fail's character had been broadcast as a clearly stereotypically black-African person did not reflect the care that broadcasters should take in portraying culturally diverse people and was not editorially justified. We also considered that the likely audience of the channel, which is aimed at Pakistani people, some of whom would be living in the UK, would not have expected this portrayal.

Ofcom's Decision is that this potentially offensive material was not justified by the context and was therefore a breach of Rule 2.3.

A drill rapper has been banned from using specific slang words in music videos in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.

Ervine Kimpalu, who goes by the artist name Rico Racks, was issued with a special five year Criminal Behaviour Order when he appeared at Blackfriars Crown Court on Friday preventing him from referring to several drug-related words in his online rap videos. The words were bandoe, trapping, Booj, connect, shotting, whipping and Kitty .

It also bans him from possessing articles linked to drug dealing and from owning more than one mobile phone.

Racks, of Kings Cross, central London, features in several music videos posted on social media in which he is said to glamourise drug dealing.

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood is a 2019 USA / UK comedy drama by Quentin Tarantino.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age.

A few days ago the Chinese cinema release of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood was cancelled with just a week's notice. The film censors banned the film but did not given any explanation of the reason why.

Tarantino, who is known to be opposed to any kind of tinkering with his films and has final-cut rights included in his contract, has no plans to bring his film back to the editing bay, especially given that China has offered no explanation for what is objectionable in the film that revolves around the events leading up to the infamous Manson Family murders of 1969.

The decision to halt the release is speculated to be about Tarantino's portrayal of the late martial arts hero Bruce Lee, who was of Chinese descent. It seems that Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, made a direct appeal to China's National Film Administration, asking that it demand changes to her father's portrayal. Friends and family of the Hollywood action star have criticized Tarantino for his portrayal of Lee, saying it doesn't resemble the real-life man and is instead a caricature.

Another source suggested that China may finally be balking at the film's violence, which is graphic at times but far less than a typical Tarantino film. However there are reports that the film had actually been approved and that the something must have happened to change the censor's mind.

Abominable is a 2019 China / USA children's cartoon comedy by Jill Culton and Todd Wilderman (co-director).
Starring Chloe Bennet, Albert Tsai and Tenzing Norgay Trainor.

Three teenagers must help a Yeti return to his family while avoiding a wealthy man and a zoologist who want it for their own needs.

The new animated children's movie Abominable, a co-production between the American studio DreamWorks and the Chinese company Pearl Studio, seems innocent enough. A Chinese girl finds a yeti, a mythical creature also known as the Abominable Snowman.

But in Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, the abomination in the movie is not the yeti but an image of a map of the South China Sea. And on that map, there's a U-shaped dotted line that encompasses almost the entire South China Sea. It's known as the Nine-Dash Line.

Under international agreements, China does not have exclusive rights to the entire South China Sea. But Beijing has just simply ignored that and called it an illegitimate ruling. Now at every opportunity China presents its claims as fact.

This claim is not OK with other countries in the region:

• The image of the map caused Vietnam to remove the movie from theaters, according to a Vietnamese official.
• The Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. proposed to cut out the said contentious scene and even suggested a universal boycott of all @Dreamworks productions from here on. Other politicians have called for a ban but so far this has not happened
• Malaysia's film censor has ordered the China map to be cut

Update: Banned in the Philippines

19th October 2019. See article from cebudailynews.inquirer.net

The animated film has been removed from Philippine theaters since Tuesday, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board said in a statement.

MTRCB understands the situation brought about by the movie 'Abominable.' We wish to assure the public that the said movie is already off the Philippine market effective October 15, 2019, said MTRCB Chair Rachel Arenas.

Update: Withdrawn in Malaysia

19th October 2019. See article from ca.reuters.com

Abominable will not be released in Malaysia after its producers Universal declined to implement censor cuts to a scene showing China's nine-dash line claim to the South China Sea.

South Park's latest episode Band in China mocked Hollywood for shaping its content to please the Chinese government.

Beijing responded by deleting all clips, episodes and discussions of the Comedy Central show from all Chinese streaming services, social media and even fan pages.

On Monday afternoon, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone issued a statement with a faux apology about the ban:

Like the NBA , we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts, the statement reads. We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn't look like Winnie the Pooh at all. Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday at 10! Long live the great Communist Party of China. May the autumn's sorghum harvest be bountiful. We good now China?

The Band in CHina episode featured a pair of storylines about China. One involves Randy getting caught attempting to sell weed in China and getting sent to a work camp similar to those Beijing has been using in Xinjiang Province to hold up to a million Chinese Muslims. While he's at the work camp, Randy runs into an imprisoned Winnie the Pooh.

A second plot follows Stan, Jimmy, Kenny and Butters forming a metal band, which becomes popular and attracts the attention of a manager who wants to make a film about them. But then the script keeps changing so that the film can safely be distributed in China.

Update: The economics of censorship

19th October 2019. See article from businessinsider.com

The Chinese censorship of South Park seems that the producers will take a big hit in income as Apple pulls out of bidding for South Park streaming rights as it seeks to appease China where Apple has significant sales.

Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central's long-running animated series South Park, is looking to sell the streaming rights to the series. Sources familiar with the bidding told Bloomberg that Apple probably won't extend a bid, due to the show's recent ban in China after the second episode in season 23, Band in China included a humorous attack on Chinese censorship. China reportedly ceased all streaming and discussion of the show on its state-controlled internet.

Apple relies on Chinese manufacturing for many of its products, and China makes up a great deal of its consumer base. Thus, sources told Bloomberg that it was unlikely that Apple would want to host South Park on Apple TV+.

The articles also notes that Apple appears to be crafting a family-friendly content selection on its streaming service, with relatively non-controversial content in general.