10 May 2013 | In the News
CHINA
Chen Guangcheng’s Family Under Attack
A little over a year ago, China’s heroic blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, escaped from house arrest, eventually fleeing to the United States with his wife and child. The Chinese government is now retaliating against the members of his family who remain in China. (National Review)
CAYMAN ISLANDS
Online poll: Most want libel standards for social media/online forums
Only a small percentage of the respondents to last week’s cayCompass.com online poll believe social media and online forum sites should not be held to the same libel standards as traditional media. (CayCompass)
INDIA
Internet censorship in India
The Indian government these days enters the final stage of the first phase of implementation of the system for monitoring Internet activity, text messaging (e-mail, SMS) and voice calls of their residents. It is about $74 million heavy security project that is broadly conceived as a weapon to fighting terrorism. It is difficult, however, to ignore the fact that the privacy of users now virtually will not exist. (Decrypted Tech)
MALAYSIA
DAP miscasts free speech and ideas as racism
TWO unyielding issues gibbering away post-GE13 are now causing great national distress that seems to be breaking away like a runaway train. (New Staits Times)
TAIWAN
Taiwan seeks official cross-strait talks on culture
China’s publication censorship and lax protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) have left many of Taiwan’s creative and cultural industry operators snookered in their forays into the Chinese market. (Focus Taiwan)
UNITED STATES
What is your freedom of speech costing you?
I am a diehard Minnesota Vikings fan. Even though they consistently lose and still refuse to draft a decent quarterback, I will continue to wear my jersey and braids with pride. So let’s just say that I wasn’t particularly surprised when I got word that the Vikings released their punter, Chris Kluwe, out of his contract. While the 2012 season was a personal best for Kluwe, the Vikings still decided that after eight years, they’ve had enough. His performance was inconsistent at best, and at 31 years old, whisperings of retirement were beginning. But what did surprise me was the possible hidden agenda behind his release. (The Rocky Mountain Collegian)
Dirk Stemerman: Free speech at work
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you — maybe not in a court of law, but certainly before an unemployment judge. Simply put, there is no First Amendment right to free speech in the workplace. (Monterey County Herald)
Bake a Mean Spirited Censorship Pie with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Parker Higgins bakes a “Mean Spirited Censorship Pie” — which is what all have to call the classic Southern dessert formerly known as “Derby Pie,” now that Kern’s Kitchen in Louisville is threatening to sue anyone who posts a family recipe with that name. (Boing Boing)
9 May 2013 | Politics and Society
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently released the Democracy Index for 2012, and it paints a bleak picture of where we are with democracy around the world today.
“There has been a decline in some aspects of governance, political participation, and media freedoms, and a clear deterioration in attitudes associated with, or conducive to, democracy in many countries, including in Europe.”
The EIU measures how democratic countries are based on five categories: “electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture”. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Denmark have topped this year’s list, which ranks 165 countries and two territories. Even though half of the global population live “in a democracy of some sort”, the EIU reports that previous gains in democratisation have been eroded in the past few years.
The global financial crisis has aggravated this decline, and this can be felt in many parts of the world. According to the EIU, the economic crisis has been a double-edged sword: in some ways it can “undermine authoritarianism”, but it can also help reinforce it. While in some cases the economic crisis has emboldened protesters — it has also left governments feeling “vulnerable and threatened”, which has meant a rise in attempts to restrict freedom of expression and control the media.
This isn’t restricted to more authoritarian countries. The report notes a “noticeable decline in media freedoms, affecting all regions to some extent, has accelerated since 2008.” A rise in unemployment and a lack of job security has helped create a “climate of fear and self-censorship among journalists in many countries.”
Perhaps challenges in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa — particularly in younger democracies, are no surprise. But there have been some startling changes in more well-established democracies. Developed western countries have seen a decline in political participation, as well as restrictions on civil liberties in the name of security.
The report shows a troubling situation in Europe, as confidence in the region’s public institutions continues to drop. In Eastern Europe, the scores of ten countries have declined. The scores of Western European countries since 2008 have shown the impact of the economic crisis. Out of 21 countries, 15 have had a decrease in their scores between 2008 and 2010.
The United Kingdom moved up from a score of 18 to 16 this year. The EIU pins the UK’s score on a “deep institutional crisis”, and says that trust in the government is “at an all-time low.” The United States, on the other hand, moved down from 19 to 21 this year, as the report says that the country’s democracy “has been adversely affected by a deepening of the polarisation of the political scene and political brinkmanship and paralysis.”
If the Democracy Index tells us anything, it’s that the economic crisis definitely plays a role in how healthy a democracy is. The United Nation’s International Labour Office now predicts that youth unemployment will only continue to rise in the next five years — estimating that today’s youth will be approximately “three times more likely than adults” to face unemployment. At the start of the year, the World Bank predicted an “uncertain future” for the global economy; with limited growth in the coming years. As countries scramble to cope with economic woes, I think that this report is an important reminder that we shouldn’t lose sight of freedom of expression.
9 May 2013 | Americas
The Brazilian Congress is considering draft legislation to ease the publication of biographies without prior authorization from the subject, but the move is not without opposition, Rafael Spuldar reports.
The country’s 2002 reformed Civil Code made it mandatory for works of a biographical nature – films, books or otherwise – to have prior authorization from the subject of the work before public release. As a result, most biographies published in Brazil end up being eulogistic to the people they portray.
Critics contend that the current legal framework causes editors to practice self-censorship. “Instead of only taking care of the literary quality of the work, editors end up being busy with judicial problems and carrying out a self-censorship that is harmful to the industry”, says Sônia Machado Jardim, president of Brazil’s National Union of Book (Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros, Snel).
Sônia Machado Jardim supports a change to Brazilian law, which would allow publication of biographies without prior approval of the subject. Photo: www.snel.org.br
Jardim also says that many relatives of people portrayed in biographies try to take advantage of the need of previous approval to demand huge amounts of money, making it impossible to have the works published.
Some controversial cases have become notorious in Brazil. Singer Roberto Carlos, one of the most popular artists in the past 50 years, not only barred in the 2007 circulation of a biography written by Paulo Cesar de Araújo – the copies were already printed and ready to go to the stores – but also banned the publishing of a master’s degree thesis on Jovem Guarda, the musical movement he was part of in the mid 1960s. Before that, in the 1980s, Carlos also prevented the publication of magazine articles about him.
The biography of former footballer and two time World Cup champion Garrincha, who died in 1983, provides another infamous example. Written by journalist Ruy Castro, the book was withdrawn from circulation in 1995 because of a lawsuit filed by Garrincha’s relatives. The author appealed and his work eventually went back on sale.
In 2011, controversies like these led deputy Newton Lima (Workers’ Party) from São Paulo to draft legistlation that changes the Civil Code and annuls the need for prior authorization of biographies from public people – like politicians and media celebrities.
“When people go into public life, they give up part of their right for privacy. Of course one does not want to deprive public people of all their privacy, but it certainly gets diminished”, says the draft bill’s rapporteur in the Congress, deputy Alessandro Molon (Workers’ Party) from Rio de Janeiro.
“It doesn’t mean that the modified law will make it free for anyone to publish anything about anybody. If the person portrayed in a biography feels attacked, he or she can go to the court against the author, and the author himself is still responsible to answer for his work”, says the deputy.
The Chamber of Deputies’ Constitution and Justice Committee passed the draft bill conclusively in early April, which meant it should have gone straight to a Senate vote. However, deputy Marcos Rogério (PDT Party) from the state of Rondônia filed a petition against the proposed bill, making it mandatory that the deputies voted before senators, which slowed down the approval process.
Rogério justified his petition by saying the draft bill’s language left some issues unaddressed.
“What is ‘public dimension’ anyway? It’s a relative concept. Someone can write, for example, a biography about a city counselor either accusing him or promoting him electorally. It can be used for good or for evil. Constitution protects both freedom of expression and privacy”, the deputy said during a Constitution and Justice Committee debate.
Molon regrets this reaction to the draft bill. “While this bill is not voted by the deputies, it cannot go on, and now we depend on the Chamber of Deputies’ speaker’s good will to put it on the voting schedule”, he says. Marcos Rogério could not be reached by Index on Censorship to comment about this subject.
Aside from the new biographies bill, a group of publishers filed a direct action of unconstitutionality with the supreme federal court in July 2012. In their filing, the book firms argue that the Civil Code clause governing prior authorization generates censorship, which is prohibited in Brazil.
Opinions of the suit are to be issued by Brazil’s Solicitor-General Luis Inácio Adams and Attorney-General Roberto Gurgel. Minister Carmem Lúcia is responsible for ruling about the case in the federal supreme court. There is no deadline for the opinions or the court’s ruling.
“When you have a restriction for publishing stories about personalities, the preservation of history’s knowledge is lost. It’s a higher issue than looking for profit”, says Snel’s Sônia Jardim.
“After so many years of fighting to reestablish democracy and freedom of expression in our country, we cannot allow censorship to put its clutches over artistic works ever again”.
This article was originally published on May 9, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression
9 May 2013 | In the News
CANADA
Letter: Censorship has no place in our society
What a shameful affront by York Regional Police to the democratic liberties enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, namely freedom of speech and belief, in stopping Pamela Geller, an invited American anti-Islamist, from expressing her thoughts at a Thornhill synagogue. (York Region
CHINA
How to Jump the Great Firewall of China
As the Chinese government’s censorship tools becomes increasingly refined, Internet users have learned to circumvent the Great Firewall. Their primary technique is to communicate via the same networks as government agencies and major businesses. (Tech President/Personal Democracy Media)
ISRAEL
Another bad Israeli law
The libel bill, which was approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, would have a dangerous chilling effect on criticism of IDF operations. (Haaretz)
PAKISTAN
Blogging in Pakistan ain’t like blogging in America
At first, it was just Buzzfeed. I had moved back to Pakistan, where I intended to continue my full time work in online media, after almost 13 years in the United States. But the internet in Karachi did not appear to be the same internet I’d known and loved in America. (GlobalPost)
RUSSIA
Google Defeated in Russian YouTube Censorship Case
In February, Google filed an appeal in Russia to challenge the censorship of a YouTube video deemed unlawful. This week, Google was defeated. (Search Engine Watch)
UNITED KINGDOM
Editorial Viewpoint: Baffling silence on free speech threat
Every day, it seems, we get another example of the dysfunctional nature of government in Northern Ireland. In this case it concerns reforms to the libel laws which are being introduced in Britain. (Belfast Telegraph)
UNITED STATES
Judge Rules For Cheerleaders In Bible Banner Suit
A judge has ruled that cheerleaders at a Southeast Texas high school can display banners emblazoned with Bible verses at football games. (ABC News)
EA Claims Gun Designs Are Protected Under Free Speech
With guns becoming a hot topic of debate once more in the United States, EA has chosen to distance themselves from arms manufacturers; no longer will EA pay for the right to depict real firearms in their games. Just because they aren’t going to pay any longer, don’t expect EA to stop using depictions of real weapons and vehicles; EA believes their constitutional rights under the tenants of free speech allow their use of trademarks without permission. (Click)
North Dakota School Allows Pro-Life Poster After Initial Censorship
One day after receiving a letter from Alliance Defending Freedom, a North Dakota high school and its district agreed to allow a student’s pro-life poster that was part of a class assignment to be placed back on the walls of the school. (LifeNews.com
Free-speech protest at market not met with vendor applause
Though an Athens, Ohio, man says he got arrested at the Athens Farmers Market Saturday on behalf of free speech, his efforts don’t seem to have generated much enthusiastic support among vendors who sell their products there. (The Athens News)
Attorneys and activists say Illinois terrorism law is chilling free speech
Attorneys and activists say Illinois law is chilling free speech by defining legal activism as illegal terrorism.
The argument is being made on behalf of three men charged under Illinois’ terrorism law in connection with protests at last year’s NATO gathering in Chicago.(Medill Reports)
Farms And Free Speech
Senator Mike Brubaker (R-36) is hoping to introduce and pass a bill similar to a bill he proposed one year ago. This time, he said he’s made some adjustments. The bill would require anybody photographing or filming farms during undercover investigations to turn over footage to law enforcement before posting the footage anywhere else first. (CentralPA.com
