Emerson, Lake and Palmer performing their 1971 album version of Pictures at an Exhibition

The Cowengate controversy certainly caught the imagination this week; and, by way of update to my earlier posts on the topic, I’ve collected some more links about the affair below. Perusing the coverage in print, broadcast, and online, a question has repeatedly occurred to me: for all that there was online outrage, how much of it was reflected in the print or broadcast media? My impression is that whilst online commentary reflected and often relied upon the print or broadcast media, there was (by and large) very little traffic the other way. Is this a fair assessment? Answers, please, in the comments below.

[The remainder of the post is another compendium of links relating to the Cowengate controversy]. Read the rest of this entry »

Suzy must get the prize for popularising the best political coinage of the day, for – so far as I can see – it is she who has run with the name “Cowengate” for the sturm und drang surrounding satirical portraits of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Brian Cowen. In a piece of guerrilla artistry as ingenious as the coinage Suzy has popularised, caricatures of Mr Cowen were anonymously hung on the walls of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy. Once they were discovered, they were removed, but not before they had garnered sufficient publicity for RTÉ (Raidio Telefís Éireann, the national state broadcaster) to broadcast a story about them on the flagship 9:00pm television news programme.

It has been the occasion for lots of bad puns and some embarrassment on the part of the Taoiseach, the Gallery and the Academy, but in the ordinary course of things, the story should have blown over after about 48hours. However, things then took two turns for the worse. First, RTÉ apologised to Mr Cowen and his family or for any disrespect shown to the office of Taoiseach by their broadcast. Second, when the radio station Today fm covered the story, the Gardaí (the police) arrived at the station asking that an email with the artist’s details be handed over (.wav). Leaving the obvious jokes aside (because they have all been done better elsewhere), these two quite sinister developments raise some profound questions about freedom of expression in Ireland. Read the rest of this entry »

Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgksy’s Pictures at an Exhibition, performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen at the BBC Proms in August 2006

This post is an addendum to Cowengate and Freedom of Expression (above). In the original version of that post, I had a paragraph of links to other coverage. Like Topsy, that paragraph growed and growed, so I’ve taken the list of links out of that post and put them here.
Read the rest of this entry »

From an article in The Times by Alex Wade (who blogs as Surf Nation):

Legal blogs: isn’t it time British lawyers staked their claim in the blogosphere?

Should law firms have blogs? In America they are all the rage. Just about every self-respecting law professor has one, many firms believe them to be a must-have accoutrement, and even one or two judges have got in the act.

In Britain only a handful of legal practitioners maintain blogs, but as society increasingly embraces the Web 2.0 world of interactivity, collaboration and social networking, isn’t it time that UK firms staked their claim in the blogosphere? …

It may be, too, that the embedded right to freedom of expression in American society, in contrast to Britons’ tendency to discretion (exemplified, arguably, in our highly developed libel laws), is another factor in transatlantic enthusiasm for the blogosphere.

I’m sure exactly the same questions can be asked in Ireland. Read the rest of this entry »

0. Prolegomenon, or Why me?
Today is Bloomsday, the centrepiece of a weeklong festival in Dublin celebrating the day in 1904 on which the events of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses unfold, which is the day Joyce first formally went out with Nora Barnacle (the story is told in the enthralling movie Nora; other movies with 16 June references include The Producers and Before Sunrise). In the novel, all human life is there; and Eamon Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day is currently by far the best guide to the important things in life: democracy, football, and technology. Expect a Bloomsday post today (this is last year’s; update: this is this year’s). Just like Oh Brother, Where art Thou?, the novel loosely parallel’s Homer’s Odyssey, and this blogpost will very very loosely parallel Joyce’s Ulysses (or at least his chapter headings). Read the rest of this entry »

That is a question posed by Kris Nelson on his blog, in propria persona. As usual, the answer is that “it depends”. I’ve already had a look at the issue from the perspective of potential criminal or civil liability if a user’s wifi is shared by a third party; and Daithí has taken the discussion several steps further. Now, Kris adds an additional consideration, directing the analysis to the terms of any contract between the ISP and the customer: Read the rest of this entry »

As 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.

Fintan O’Toole makes a strong case in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d) that the leaders’ debates on RTÉ’s Prime Time television programme the week before last (the debates are here and here) were crucial to the outcome of last week’s general election. He is not the only person to have said so; comments to this effect were on the lips of many commentators as the result began to become clear. It is a pity, therefore, that RTÉ did not agree to make the debates available online without restriction so that the video can be lawfully share and reused without infringing RTÉ’s copyright. They were asked to do, and thought about it, but eventually said no (even though Fianna Fáil, of all parties, urged them otherwise). If they had, then online discusson could have put claims like O’Toole’s into the context of clips from the debates. We could only benefit from a this kind of detailed discussion of the turning points of the debate. Imagine if the threads on IrishElection.com, politics.ie, and elsewhere could have been illustrated by such clips. Perhaps next time.