02 Jun 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
Facebook admitted on 1 June that it has now blocked Pakistani users from accessing the page Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. A company spokesperson claimed the restrictions were placed “out of respect for local rules”. Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook website on May 19, Bangladesh banned the site on 29 May because of the page, and it is know expected the company will block it for the Bangladeshi government as well.
28 May 10 | Uncategorized
Steve Jobs wants the iPad, which goes on sale in the UK today, porn free. He’s said so. And unlike most people, he can make this sort of thing happen. Approval for Apple’s App store involves passing the censor — and the threshold is quite high: Germany’s Stern magazine recently failed because it runs topless photographs.
It’s not clear whether this just applies to visual porn — nor how this is defined. Are the works of the Marquis de Sade pornography? Will there be an iPad app for Last Exit to Brooklyn?
Well, no one has to buy the iPad or any other Apple product. So this seems to be fair enough. There are plenty of alternatives at the moment. Google, for example, in contrast to Apple seems committed to openness. But what if Apple grew and completely dominated the market? What if just about every e-book or e-magazine publisher chose to do exclusive deals with them? Suppose Apple decides on a whim that it’s not just porn they want to control but anything that might be deemed “offensive”? We’d end up with Steve Jobs or his successor as a de facto online censor, and self-censorship being the route to e-publication readable on the device everyone is using. Is this the future we want? Are we happy that Jobs is controlling iPad content so carefully already?
26 May 10 | Index Index, minipost
A new exhibition in Vienna displaying North Korean poster art and architecture has been slammed by the Association of Austrian Koreans. The “Flowers for Kim II Sung” exhibition at the MAK museum, has been described as “idolising” and “embellishing North Korea’s dictatorial system”. Museum chief Peter Noever has denied that the exhibition is in any way an endorsement of the North Korean regime in interviews.
25 May 10 | Uncategorized
Before we go any further, I need to admit that the second Sex and the City movie isn’t for me. This is not, I should explain, because I operate on a higher moral or social plane than girls who like dramas about girls who like shoes. I simply operate on a different plane: I like shoes, but not enough to watch a whole programme about them, let alone a film. But when Sex and the City used to be on TV, I watched it, if I was home. The last film, however, left me thoroughly baffled, as the smart-mouthed women of the TV show now seemed to care more about white weddings than any rational person should. I dislike weddings. And white clothes. So the last film wasn’t for me; the new one, also not for me.
Yet it is an accepted truth that all women must care about a Sex and the City movie, unless they have given up on womanhood altogether. Every newspaper has articles about it — will it be good, should we care, how old is Kim Cattrall now? And the Times ran an article at the weekend, which featured a couple of paragraphs from Dhaffer L’Abidine, who stars in the new film. She begins by saying, “They’re really strict, on the legal side, about the information I can give out, but all I can say is that in the film I am the reason why they go to the Middle East. I can’t say anything more.”
Which reminded me that I have seen this formulation a lot, recently. It seems increasingly common for a film or TV company to prohibit anyone involved in a forthcoming production from giving anything away. Which I am largely in favour of — one of the things I like least about the internet is how hard it has made it to be surprised anymore. Even if you see preview screenings of films, it’s difficult to go in as a completely blank slate.
And the secrecy — or censorship — is often used, I suspect, to try and prevent an audience becoming weary of something before it’s even in the cinemas or on TV. The more popular the show, the more difficult it is to keep quiet. Neil Gaiman posted a picture of himself with Steven Moffat on Twitter this week. A hand carefully obscured the title of the Doctor Who episode he has written, which will air in 2011. If Bob Quick had had that kind of foresight, he might not have had to quit his job last year, after inadvertently revealing his secret anti-terror documents to the world’s media.
But I think things may now have spun out of control. With all due respect to the Sex and the City storyliners, I think it is fair to suggest that literally no-one is waiting for the movie because of an expected riveting plot. They are waiting for it because they want to see what Sarah Jessica Parker wears near a camel. So HBO Films can really calm down on the secrecy.
