Eoin – Page 58 – Cearta.ie

Intolerance of intolerance, and threats to free speech

Posted on 24 January, 20127 November, 2012 by Eoin

Poster for DW Griffith movie Intolerance In DW Griffith’s silent-era powerful – if flawed – classic movie, Intolerance (1916) (IMDB | wikipedia), the contemporary story of a poor young woman, separated by the intolerant prejudice of social reformers from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from ancient Babylon, New Testament Judea, and Reformation France. These fables vividly warn of the dangers of intolerance. Two stories in today’s media demonstrate that intolerance of intolerance is simply intolerance, and is all the more dangerous for that.

UCC society withdraws Nick Griffin invite to ‘free speech’ debate

… In a statement this afternoon, the UCC Government and Politics Society said it had withdrawn the invitation as a result of submissions from University staff and Gardaí, who had outlined a “potential threat to the safety and welfare of our students and the general public”.

As with the earlier TCD debacle, this is as inevitable as it is dismaying.

French Senate passes bill outlawing genocide denial

… France’s upper house of parliament approved a bill on Monday that would make it a criminal offence to deny genocide, legislation that has caused tension between Paris and Ankara. The bill, which was approved by the lower house in December, has triggered outrage in Turkey as it would include the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.

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Letters of Note: Nothing good gets away (letter from Steinbeck to his son)

Posted on 11 January, 2012 by Eoin

In November of 1958, John Steinbeck — the renowned author of, most notably, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men — received a letter from his eldest son, Thom, who was attending boarding school. In it, the teenager spoke of Susan, a young girl with whom he believed he had fallen in love.

Steinbeck replied the same day. His beautiful letter of advice can be enjoyed below.

via lettersofnote.com

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French landmark case: A new dawn for investigative journalism? | Online Journalism Features | Journalism.co.uk

Posted on 11 January, 20124 March, 2013 by Eoin

At the end of last year the French courts finally ended a long
running legal battle which saw an investigative journalist cleared
of defamation 10 years after he first reported on Clearstream, a
financial institution based in Luxembourg.

The landmark ruling stated that although the work of journalist
Denis Robert contained inaccuracies, the thoroughness of his
investigation and the public interest in the story outweighed the
defamatory claims.

The case has already been used as a legal precedent and could make
the work of investigative journalists in France and beyond much
easier.

via journalism.co.uk

h/t Kate Sutherland (@LawandLit) here

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Is internet access a human right?

Posted on 11 January, 20124 March, 2013 by Eoin

A recent United Nations Human Rights Council report examined the important question of whether internet access is a human right.

Whilst the Special Rapporteur’s conclusions are nuanced in respect of blocking sites or providing limited access, he is clear that restricting access completely will always be a breach of article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to freedom of expression.

But not everyone agrees with the United Nations’ conclusion. Vinton Cerf, a so-called “father of the internet” and a Vice-President at Google, argued in a New York Times editorial that internet access is not a human right:

The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

via ukhumanrightsblog.com

See also the excellent post by Paul Barnal:

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I didn’t like the headline, which stated baldly and boldly that ‘Internet Access is not a Human Right’.

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The Council of State and the recusal of judges

Posted on 9 January, 20127 November, 2012 by Eoin

Two very different stories in the media over the last few days have coalesced in my mind over the weekend. The first story is the announcement by the President of seven appointments to the Council of State. The second is the debate in the US about the recusal of Supreme Court Justices from forthcoming challenges to health care legislation.

The Council of State is established by Article 31 of the Constitution, and its primary role is “to aid and counsel the President”. The first meeting was convened by President Douglas Hyde on 8 January 1940, and a large painting of the event (pictured above left) by Simon Coleman hangs in Áras an Uachtaráin, in a reception room now called the Council of State Room. At the end of last week, the recently-elected President Michael D Higgins announced the appointment of Michael Farrell, Deirdre Heenan, Catherine McGuinness, Ruairí McKiernan, Sally Mulready, Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, and Gerard Quinn to the Council.

Among the specific functions ascribed to the Council by the Constitution, Article 26.1.1 provides that the President may, after consultation with the Council of State, refer a Bill to the Supreme Court to determine whether the Bill is constitutional or not.…

Case Law: Cooper v Turrell – the assessment of damages for libel and misuse of private information – Hugh Tomlinson QC « Inforrm’s Blog

Posted on 6 January, 20124 March, 2013 by Eoin

Fourth, the Judge assessed libel damages in respect of a “non-media” publication of a serious libel to a relatively small number of important publishees. He pointed out that in 1993 the Court of Appeal had made an award of slander damages of £50,000 in respect of publication of an allegation of sexual harassment to a small number of individuals with whom the claimant had an existing professional relationship (Houston v Smith unreported December 16 1993; see Gatley on Libel and Slander 11th ed para A3.3) [97]. He made an award in the same sum to Mr Cooper and, in addition, an award of £30,000 to the Company.

via inforrm.wordpress.com

This award is worth contrasting with the obscene £10m recently awarded in the Irish High Court.…

The Volokh Conspiracy » The Original and Traditional Meaning of “Freedom … of the Press”

Posted on 4 January, 20124 March, 2013 by Eoin

Eugene Volokh’s article, Freedom for the Press as an Industry, or for the Press as a Technology? From the Framing to Today, 160 U. Penn. L. Rev. 459 (2011), available in its full PDF form here, has just been published;

via volokh.com

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Happy public domain day! – Updated

Posted on 1 January, 20127 November, 2012 by Eoin

The combination of sections 24 and 35 of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here; implementing EU Directives) means that copyright in a literary work expires from the first of January, 70 years after the death of the author (and it is the same for artistic works). For this reason, 1 January is Public Domain Day in the EU (and other life-plus-70-years jurisdictions), if not in the US (see: Communia | CSPD | Dag Blog | Everybody’s Libraries | ex Africa semper aliquid novi Africa | Excess Copyright | Fair Duty | Michael Geist | Mike Linksvayer | Public Domain Day | Public Domain Manifesto | Public Domain Review | Techdirt here and here | The Atlantic Wire | Wikipedia).

I visited the National Wax Museum today, and, among the many photographs I took were the image of Joyce above left (click on the image for a larger size), and this sentence (presumably a facsimile of Joyce’s handwriting, quoting from a letter he wrote to one of the early French translators of Ulysses):

Note by James Joyce at National Wax Museum

The note says:

I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles, that it will keep the professors arguing for centuries over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.

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