Category: Media and Communications

Senator Norris and the Defamation Bill

| 4 Comments
| Defamation, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Senator NorrisThe Defamation Bill, 2006 (Department of Justice | Oireachtas (pdf)) is currently being debated in the Seanad (Senate). The system of giving a Bill various readings (BBC | wikipedia) refers to an ancient practice in the House of Commons by which a Bill would actually be read out, first when it was introduced (the first reading), again whilst it was being debated (the second reading), and finally in its form for enactment after amendment (the third reading). More recently, a further stage, a committee stage, is often interposed between second and third readings: if the second reading debates the general principles of a Bill, then the detailed section-by-section scrutiny will take place at committee stage. Bills are usually initiated in the Dáil (lower House), and then reviewed in the Seanad, but the Government has in the last few years demonstrated a tendency to introduce Bills in the Seanad first, often for the purposes of detailed consideration and debate before being sent to the Dáil. The reason for this system of various readings of Bills in both Houses of the Oireachtas (ie, the Parliament) is to allow Bills to be publicly scrutinized and debated, and the Defamation Bill is currently undergoing that process with a detailed committee stage in the Seanad in which Senator David Norris (Ind, representing the University of Dublin (Trinity College); pictured left; website | blog) has made several energetic interventions – in the process, he has made one excellent point and one wrong-headed one.…

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Defamation Bill in the Seanad, or, where are the ISPs?

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| Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Seanad chamberThe Defamation Bill, 2006 (Department of Justice | Oireachtas (pdf)) was introduced in the Seanad (Senate; pictured left) on 7 July 2006, and its passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas (Parliament) can be followed here. The second reading began on 6 December 2006 with a set-piece debate, of rather predictable if occasionally interesting speeches, which rather got lost in the coverage of that day’s Budget; and the committee stage continued on 20 and 28 February 2007 with some conventional skirmishing and the occasional grand-standing set-piece battle. The terms of the Bill were outlined briefly in my previous post, so I’d like in this post and the next to turn to a consideration of some of the comments made on the Bill during the Seanad debates so far.

Senator Joanna Tuffy (Labour) (website | blog) suggested an amendment to the Bill to protect those, such as secretaries, who type letters on behalf of others, so that if the letter turns out to be defamatory, the plaintiff has to sue the author not the secretary (see 186 Seanad Debates cols 288-290 (20 February 2007); html | pdf). …

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Defamation Bill slopes towards enactment

| 7 Comments
| Defamation, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

Cathaoirleach's BellThe Defamation Bill, 2006 (Department of Justice | Oireachtas (pdf)) was before the Seanad again during the week. In my next post, I’ll consider some of the points made during that debate; in this post, by way of background, I want to set out the Bill’s main provisions. It aims to modernise Irish defamation law, and it is certainly an advance on what is there now. However, it is still ungenerous, and it remains to be seen whether its passage through the Houses of the Oireachtas will improve it (or, God help us, not!).…

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Ducks, potatoes, blockheads

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| Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

This week’s Economist has a short report (subscription required) to the effect that:

Poland’s governing Law and Justice party is suing the country’s former president, Lech Walesa, for defamation. Mr Walesa called the current incumbent, Lech Kaczynski [official Polish Presidency site (in English) | his own site (in Polish)], a “blockhead” in a row over a report on alleged criminal activity and Russian influence in the country’s now disbanded military-intelligence service.

…

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Data Retention – US style

| 6 Comments
| data retention, Digital Rights, Media and Communications

CDT logoDigital Rights Ireland (of which I am a Director) is making the running against Irish and European data retention legislation (see, for example, Part 7 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act, 2005 in Ireland, and the EU Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC).

However, and unfortunately, Ireland is not the only country in which government seeks to compel the retention of its citizens’ traffic data; in fact, the phenomenon of data retention is fast becoming ubiquituous; unsurprisingly, therefore, it’s happening too in the US. The Centre for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has just published an analysis of various bills pending before the Congress (pdf) in which the legitimate aim of the protection of children online is used as cover for alarming government intrusion on all aspects of online life. Given that law enforcement agencies want to be able to monitor significant traffic data (to say nothing of the traffic itself), it is perhaps to be expected that they should attempt to justify that end on this child-protection basis. However, reflecting a CDT report (pdf) of last June on data retention generally, this week’s report cogently summarizes the case against data retention in language as applicable in Ireland and Europe as it is in the US.…

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Independent Broadcasting

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| Competition Law, Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications

david-mcmunn.jpg Irish broadcasting regulation is undergoing a significant change, what with the Department of Communications review of the Television Without Frontiers Directive as part of the EU Commission‘s proposals for a new Audio Visual Media Services Directive and the Department’s Digital Terrestrial Television trial and its attendant Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill, 2006 (see press releases: BCI; Department). A central plank of all of these changes is the Broadcasting Bill, 2006, and the audience at the Dublin Legal Workshop last week were treated to a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses by David McMunn (pictured above left) Director of Government, Regulatory and Legal Affairs for TV3.

Establishing a commercial broadcast sector in competition with RTE in Ireland must have seemed a slow process. …

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Won’t someone please think of the children?

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| advertising, Irish Law, Irish Society, Media and Communications

It is a difficult skill to master, the ability to wrap serious depth in light witticism. Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary in the Irish Times has it in spades. And yesterday’s column is no exception. Lurking within the comedy is a very serious point about advertising to children. Every parent is aware of the pester power of children. A children’s tv channel advertises the latest must-have range of fanciful dolls or transforming superheros, and children everywhere pester their parents until the wretched things are bought. But it wasn’t always thus. Indeed, McNally began yesterday’s Diary with a trip down memory lane: it marked

the 50th anniversary of a fateful event in the history of broadcasting: the end of the so-called Toddlers’ Truce … a 60-minute suspension of all programmes every day between 6pm and 7pm, so that – wait for it – the children could be put to bed.

Wow! Children going to bed at teatime!! Do modern children go to bed at 6.00pm?! More seriously, though, McNally’s point, buried in the comedy, relates not to this golden hour but to its modern possible alternatives, such as banning or regulating advertising aimed at children, (and not to protect adults from children’s pester power, but to protect the children from the advertising):

I used to have high hopes that the Swedes, who ban all ads to children under 12, would spread their enlightenment to the rest of the EU.

…

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What if Wired were Published in Ireland?

| 12 Comments
| Media and Communications, Press Council, Privacy

Wired Magazine masthead If Wired magazine were published in Ireland, would it be a periodical? Would its website be? Would the website be, even if there weren’t a magazine? And why do these musings matter? Well, they matter because only ‘periodicals’ will be subject to the Press Council proposed in the Defamation Bill, 2006; and whilst the defintion of periodical clearly covers print newspapers and magazines (such as Wired‘s offline edition), and probably covers content on websites associated with such offline editions, it probably doesn’t cover content published exclusively online by publications that look like newspapers or magazines but lack an offline edition. I think that it should.

This week, the Press Complaints Commission in the UK extended its remit to the online realm. …

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