Censorship – Page 6

Rushdie: I’m glad I wrote Satanic Verses at BreakingNews.ie referring to this interview
Geoffrey Wheatcroft on Reflections on a fatwa in the International Herald Tribune
Lisa Appignanesi on The Satanic Verses at 20 at Index on Censorship; and listen to her here on the Guardian website
Bernard-Henri Lévy on Emblem of Darkness at Index on Censorship
Anniversary of Rushdie book fatwa on the BBC
Satanic Verses‘ polarising untruths on the BBC
What happened to the book burners? on the BBC
Matthew d’Ancona on How we got here in The Spectator
Andrew Anthony on How one book ignited a culture war in The Guardian
Salman Rushdie and a fatwa woman on Looking for Words
The Satanic Verses Still Have Something to Say as Freedom of Expression Remains Threatened (pdf) at Article XIX
Unwritten books, unshown art on this blog …

Sedition and Lèse-majesté

26 January, 200927 January, 2009

| 3 Comments

| Censorship, Defamation Bill 2006, Freedom of Expression, Sedition

Two Australian stories recently caught my eye; and, although at first blush the only link is Australia, there is in fact a deeper connection. The first is from the BBC news Website:

Writer jailed for Thai ‘insult’

Australian writer Harry Nicolaides has been sentenced to three years in a Thai jail for insulting the monarchy. Nicolaides wrote a novel four years ago, which contained a brief passage referring to an unnamed crown prince. It sold just seven copies.

He admitted the charge of insulting the royal family, but said he was unaware he was committing an offence. Thailand’s monarchy is sheltered from public debate by some of the world’s most stringent “lèse-majesté” laws.

…

Censoring Theatre in Britain and Ireland

21 September, 200829 September, 2008

| 1 Comment

| Censorship, Irish Society

The Licensing Act, 1737, by requiring that every play to be performed on the English stage must first get a licence from the Lord Chamberlain, effectively constituted him a censor of the theatre until the repeal of the Act by the Theatres Act 1968.

An exhibition just opened in the British Library

The Golden Generation, British Theatre 1945-1968

showcases the successful post-war resistance to theatre censorship (see also press release | archive | blog | review). Excellent articles in the Guardian (Yes to pansy but no to bugger) and the Times (A disgusting feast of filth?) put the exhibition into fascinating historical and theatrical perspective. Update: There is an excellent page on the BBC website about this, including a seven minute clip from the Today Show on BBC Radio 4 in which David Hare and Michael Billington discuss the demise of theatre censorship.

In a few weeks time, The Golden Generation will be joined in the British Library by an even more ambitious exhibition: Taking Liberties. The struggle for Britain’s freedoms and rights (blogged here by one of its curators), which promises to

unite[] the pivotal documents which made or changed political history for the nation including Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights 1689, the Articles of Union 1706 ..

…

Banning Books

5 September, 200823 November, 2010

| 1 Comment

| Censorship, Freedom of Expression

Writing today in his Weird Cases column in TimesOnline (update: the outcome of a similar case is here), Gary Slapper (left) hits the nail on the head:

Historically, there has been a serious problem for those who try to use the law to ban books: their action is commonly counter-productive. Nothing so effectively enlarges a book’s readership as a censor trying to stop people from reading it.

It reminds me that the American Library Association (ALA) promotes Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read at the end of September each year:

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

…

Incitement to Anorexia

16 April, 200811 May, 2010

| 5 Comments

| advertising, Censorship, Freedom of Expression, US Supreme Court

L’Assemblée nationale francaise (the lower house of the French parliament) yesterday passed a “Draft law aimed at fighting incitement to seek extreme thinness or anorexia” providing for fines of to €30,000 and terms of imprisonment of up to two years for inciting to “excessive thinness” and more if the incitement results in death (see Associated Press | Daily Telegraph | Guardian | International Herald Tribune here and here | Irish Independent | Irish Times | Media Law Prof Blog here and here | New York Times; update Volokh, including the French text of the Bill). The Bill will go before le Sénat (the upper house) next month. According to the Guardian, the Bill:

would bar any form of media, including websites, magazines and advertisers, from promoting extreme thinness, encouraging severe weight-loss or methods for self-starvation … [and] is specifically aimed at what French MPs called pro-anorexia “propaganda” websites … [which] support anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather than a medical disorder … The blogs and forums, which have developed in the US since 2000 and grown in France over the past two years, often include talk-boards frequented mainly by teenage girls and young women with advice on how to get through the pain of extreme hunger after eating a yoghurt a day, or how to hide extreme weight-loss from parents or doctors.

…

Manhunt II and the value of persistence

16 March, 20087 November, 2010

| 4 Comments

| Censorship, IFCO, Media and Communications

The Manhunt II saga is probably finally over in the UK (hat tip: Daithí off-blog), but perhaps there is one further stage left in Ireland.

As readers of this blog will know, last June the Irish Film Censor’s Office (IFCO), exercised its power to ban Rockstar Games’ Manhunt II, following the lead of many other countries’ authorities, including the UK’s BBFC (see here and here) earlier the same month. When an edited version was submitted, the BBFC reaffirmed their decision in October, but the the BBFCâ€™s Video Appeals Committee (VAC) allowed Rockstarâ€™s appeal in December. In turn, the BBFC appealed this decision to the High Court, which allowed the case to go ahead and then held in January 2008 that the VAC had misinterpreted the relevant legislation and had to consider the issue again (see R (on the application of the British Board of Film Classification) v Video Appeals Committee QBD (Admin) (Mr Justice Mitting) (24 January 2008)). And so the matter returned to the VAC, which this week reaffirmed its earlier decision to allow the game to be released. …

Beware, unintended consequences

11 March, 200825 March, 2009

| 5 Comments

| Blasphemy, Censorship, Defamation, Media and Communications

Daithí has just published a wonderful post on the The strange death of criminal libel?. On the issue of criminal libel, he concludes that the Defamation Bill, 2006, currently receiving its Report and Final Stages in the Seanad even as I write this post,

will without further amendment provide for

* the repeal of the [Defamation Act], 1961 [blogged here] including Part 2 dealing with various criminal offences
* the explicit repeal of â€œthe common law offences of criminal libel, seditious libel and obscene libelâ€?
* no provisions on a new offence of the publication of gravely harmful statements
* no specific mention of blasphemy or blasphemous libel other than the repeal of s 13 (as part of the general repeal) of the 1961 Act (though I think that might mean that, especially in conjunction with the Constitution, blasphemous libel – or blasphemy, indeed – would continue to exist – but see note below on the definition of criminal libel)

And that, I believe, is good news.

I agree; it is thoroughly good news. I agree that the repeal of the 1961 Act and of various of the common law libel offences is a good thing. Moreover, the removal of the proposed replacement offence of publication of gravely harmful statements is an even better thing.…

Le Pen is not mightier than le sword

8 February, 200812 February, 2008

| 1 Comment

| Censorship

According to various news outlets (BBC | BreakingNews.ie | Irish Independet here and here | Irish Times (sub req’d) | RTE | Telegraph) French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen (left!) has been given a three-month suspended jail term and fined 10,000 euros for playing down the Nazi occupation of France, describing it as “not especially inhumane” in an interview with the far-right magazine Rivarol in January 2005. Moreover, according to the BBC,

Elsewhere in the article he described the 1944 massacre of 86 people in the town of Villeneuve d’Ascq as the actions of a junior officer “mad with rage”, and praised the Gestapo for its role in the incident. The French court ruled that Le Pen had denied a crime against humanity and had been complicit in condoning war crimes.

This is not the first time that Le Pen has faced legal sanctions for making controversial comments about the actions of the Nazis. In 1987 he was fined for describing the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history”.

This is unsurprising, but disappointing. The best answer to speech is more speech. Hence, as I have already said on this blog, (in the context of Le Pen’s abortive Dublin visit, condemned here by former Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins and here by UCD Labour Youth), if le pen (freedom of expression) truly is mightier than le sword (the police power of the state), then the best response to Le Pen is to engage with him rather than to prosecute him.…

cearta.ie

Category: Censorship

The Rushdie fatwa 20 years later

Sedition and Lèse-majesté

Writer jailed for Thai ‘insult’

Censoring Theatre in Britain and Ireland

Banning Books

Incitement to Anorexia

Manhunt II and the value of persistence

Beware, unintended consequences

Le Pen is not mightier than le sword