Category: Freedom of Expression

The best reason for freedom of expression …

| 5 Comments
| Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression

… is commentary like this, from the always-incisive Martyn Turner in the Irish Times on Thursday (21 June 2007) (click on the image for the full-size version from the Irish Times website):


Martyn Turner cartoon via Ireland.com














On the issues raised in the cartoon, Michelle Malkin is always good value – especially this important post (even if I don’t usually agree with her other opinions; oh, wait – respecting her right to express the opinions with which I disagree is what freedom of expression is all about!). And, following on from my own post on the issue some time ago, Martin George has another excellent post on Cambridge and the Muhammed Cartoons Again.…

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A true verdict, according to the evidence

| 4 Comments
| Freedom of Expression, Privacy

Gavel, via Concurring OpinionsSo, according to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (pdf), the First Amendment to the US Constitution requires public disclosure of jurors’ names (Concurring Opinions | CrimProf Blog; see generally Raskopf 17 Pepp L Rev 357 (1990); Litt 25 Colum J L & Soc Probs 371 (1992); Zanzberg (2000); Rousseau 3(2) Rutgers Journal of Law & Urban Policy (2006)). To my ears, this sounds like the premise for a John Grisham novel. On the other hand, revealing the identity of a juror in Australia would be a criminal offence (Freedom to Differ) (a clause just crying out for a movie like The Castle). In Pennsylvania v Long (31 May 2007) the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held:

Taking in mind the tradition of accessibility, as well as the competing values of openness versus the promotion of jury service, the conclusion is inescapable. We believe the First Amendment provides a qualified right of access to jurors’ names, but not addresses. In this way, the public will be provided with enough information to confirm the identity of jurors when necessary. Disclosing jurors’ names furthers the objective of a fair trial to the defendant and gives assurances of fairness to society as a whole.

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Couriers, Communication and the Irish Constitution

| 2 Comments
| Competition Law, Freedom of Expression

An Post logo via the An Post siteLet me take you back to a time in which the market for delivery of letters was dominated by large national monopolies or former monopolies, and impatient potential entrants worried the incumbents. Oh wait; that’s today. Postal workers in various EU countries, unhappy at European plans (existing legislation here) to attain greater liberalisation in the postal market, held scattered strikes in Ireland, Belgium and Hungary, though there was little strike activity in France, and none at all in Germany, Poland and the UK.

Cover of Irish ConstitutionBut that’s also Ireland of the early 1980s, when a company called Paperlink sought to run a letter delivery service in Dublin. This contravened the Post Office’s monopoly on letter delivery conferred by section 34(2) of the Post Office Act, 1908; and in AG v Paperlink Ltd [1983] IEHC 1; [1984] ILRM 373 (15th July 1983) Costello J held that this monopoly did not infringe Paperlink’s constitutional right to communicate. The effects of his analysis, baleful for most of its existence but now pregnant with positive possibility, are the focus of my paper at this weekend’s conference on The Constitution at 70 (website | brochure (pdf)) organized by colleagues at the School of Law, TCD.…

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The struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace

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| Blogging, Censorship, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

irrepressible logoamnesty-international-logo.pngAs part of Amnesty International‘s and the Observer newspaper’s Irrepressible campaign against internet repression, there will be a webcast on Wednesday 6 June 2007 at 18.30 (UK / 19.30 Europe / 13.30 EST / 10.30 PST) of a major debate on the struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace. As their blurb puts it:

Amnesty and The Observer newspaper will use the internet to link activists from around the world to discuss the struggle against internet repression and to celebrate the irrepressible desire of people towards freedom of expression. The meeting will include participation from internet gurus, cyber dissidents as well as net activists, writers and journalists. Everyone will be able to participate to the debate online through a webcast on the day.

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Applications for the Position of Press Ombudsman Are Now Sought

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| Defamation, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications, Press Council

Press Council and Ombudsman logoThe Business This Week section of today’s Irish Times carries an advertisment (on page 18), under the heading used as the title to thise post, seeking applications for the position of Press Ombudsman. The advertisment is available online here (from Grant Thornton‘s recruitment arm).

The Press Ombudsman is a crucial part of the press industry’s Press Council package, and will be critical not only to the efficient working of the complaints system but also as a consequence to the public legitimacy of the entire project. According to the Press Council website [update (3 January 2008): the website has been redesigned and this link is no longer active]:

The Press Ombudsman

The Press Ombudsman will be appointed by the Press Council, is and will be the public face of Irish press regulation; s/he is the person who will receive complaints from members of the public, consider whether they are valid, and then seek to resolve them to the satisfaction of everyone involved. The Press Ombudsman will deal with the majority of complaints by members of the public, however s/he will also has the option of referring difficult cases (or cases where those involved are dissatisfied with the decision) to the Press Council of Ireland.

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I must be doing something right?

| 1 Comment
| Blogging, Freedom of Expression

I like Eamonn Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day blog. Today – fatefully, perhaps, the day Daithí is blogging live from the OpenNet Initiative‘s Oxford conference on The Future of Free Expression on the Internet – Eamonn writes:

Banned in Beijing

Was it something we said? According to the Great Firewall of China, Rainy Day is being blocked by the regime in Beijing. read more

picture-3.pngAlways curious about these things, I immediately clicked on the link to find out if Cearta is being blocked too. It is! The text in the middle of the screen-grab thumbnail on the right (click on it – or here – for full size image) says: “Your URL is Blocked!”.

Eamonn and I must be doing something right …


Update (19 May 2007): More on ONI from the BBC and MediaPal@LSE; and another live blog from the day from Tobias Escher at the OII. The ONI website also has a system for checking whether a site is blocked, and according to that, neither Rainy Day nor Cearta is blocked by anyone, not even by China. What a pity. Of course, this raises the age old question of trust, especially online. What was it about Great Wall that led both Eamonn and me to trust its assessment that our sites were blocked, or at least to trust it sufficiently to blog about it – perhaps it was because it told us what we wanted to hear?…

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Milton & Mill: Freedom of Expression online

| 3 Comments
| Blogging, Freedom of Expression

Milton Areopagitica via DarthmouthJohn Stuart MillThe classic liberal justification for freedom of expression has been stated by John Milton (pitctured left) in Areopagitica – A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England and by John Stuart Mill (pictured right) in On Liberty.

New from SSRN: David O Brink “Mill’s Liberal Principles and Freedom of Expression” in CL Ten (ed) Mill’s On Liberty: A Critical Guide (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). From the abstract:

John Stuart Mill’s defense of freedom of expression has proved extremely influential and finds important echoes in First Amendment jurisprudence. Though important in its own right, Mill’s defense of freedom of expression also plays an important, though sometimes overlooked, role in his more general defense of individual liberties. Mill turns to freedom of expression in the belief that there is general agreement on the importance of freedom of expression and that, once the grounds for expressive liberties are understood, this agreement can be exploited to support a more general defense of individual liberties. This means that a proper understanding of the significance of Mill’s defense of freedom of expression requires not only reconstructing his arguments on behalf of expressive liberties and exploring their bearing on issues of freedom of expression but also seeing how these arguments generalize to other kinds of liberties.

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