Censorship – cearta.ie

Joseph Anton. A Memoir (London, 2012) (cover left) is a memoir by Salman Rushdie.

On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a legal edict (a fatwa) against Rushdie on the grounds that his novel The Satanic Verses (London, 1988) blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad. Rushdie spent several years in hiding, using the pseudonym Joseph Anton (a name he chose to honour the writers Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov). Joseph Anton. A Memoir is his account of his life in hiding; but it is described as a memoir rather than autobiography because it is written in the third (rather than the first) person.

In the Autumn of 1989, he was invited by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London to deliver the 1990 Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture. Joseph Anton takes up the story:

He knew at once that he wanted to write about iconoclasm, to say that in an open society no ideas or beliefs could be ring-fenced or given immunity from challenges of all sorts, philosophical, satirical, profound, superficial, gleeful, irreverent or smart. All liberty required was that the space for discourse itself be protected.

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Copyright and the National Anthem – preventing a tangled future, avoiding another gap of danger

13 July, 201614 October, 2017

| 7 Comments

| Censorship, Copyright, National Anthem

A national anthem is a hymn or song expressing patriotic sentiment, from prayers for a monarch, to allusions to nationally important uprisings, to expressions of national feeling. It is usually recognised by a nation’s government as the official national song, though it often emerges by convention through use by the people. “Kimigayo” is the Japanese national anthem, and its lyrics are the oldest text of a national anthem in the world, dating from an anonymous ninth century poem (though the anthem was not formally legislatively established until 1999). The oldest musical setting of an anthem still in use is the “Wilhelmus“, the Dutch national anthem (an early version of which is pictured above left). It was written between 1568 and 1572 during the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule; and, although it was the de facto Dutch anthem for almost four centuries thereafter, it was only officially adopted in 1932.

Given their antiquity, there can be no copyright issues with the Japanese or Dutch anthems. The Irish national anthem, on the other hand, is a different story. In my previous two posts (here and here), I sought to unravel the fascinating but tangled story of its copyright, some of which I discussed on the Marian Finucane show on RTE Radio 1 last Sunday morning (listen here) and on The Last Word with Matt Cooper on TodayFM on Monday evening (listen here).…

The university should be a safe space for the life of the mind – says Salman Rushdie

14 November, 201518 November, 2015

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| Blasphemy, Censorship, Freedom of Expression, Universities

While accepting a Chicago Tribune 2015 Literary Award last week, Salman Rushdie robustly rejected the wave of “safe space” censorship that is currently breaking upon college campuses:

The university is the place where young people should be challenged every day, where everything they know should be put into question, so that they can think and learn and grow up. And the idea that they should be protected from ideas that they might not like is the opposite of what a university should be. It’s ideas that should be protected, the discussion of ideas that should be given a safe place. The university should be a safe space for the life of the mind. That’s what it’s for.

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Pornography, cyberbullying, and internet regulation

30 July, 20138 October, 2013

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| Censorship, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights

The image, left, shows the result of a poll on TheJournal.ie which ran last Tuesday: the question was whether Ireland follow the UK’s lead in blocking online porn? And the results show a slight majority (54%) against doing so. This comes in the wake of proposals from UK Prime Minister David Cameron to compel internet service providers to block pornographic material by default.

To the age old question “will no-one please think of the children?“, Cameron (perhaps rather cynically) rushes to answer: “I will”:

I want Britain to be the best place to raise a family. … Where children are allowed to be children. … Protecting the most vulnerable in our society; protecting innocence; protecting childhood itself. … I will do whatever it takes to keep our children safe.

Predictably, there were calls for similar Irish developments. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte, has blown cold then hot then cold again on the issue. Writing in TheJournal.ie, Ashley Balbirnie, Chief Executive of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (the ISPCC), is very critical of Rabbitte’s vacillation, and makes the case for following Cameron’s lead:

… viewing graphic and violent pornographic material online is extremely harmful to children and we believe strongly that introducing such filters in Ireland is an option worth at least some serious consideration.

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YouTube, Facebook, and the responsibilities of intermediary gatekeepers

18 September, 201217 April, 2016

| 4 Comments

| Censorship, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, judges, law school

In my previous post, I argued that, as a matter of principle, the controversial American anti-Islamic video should not be censored. The most obvious form of censorship comes from government action, such as legislation banning speech, but that does not arise in this case. Less obvious, but no less insidious, was the White House request to Google to re-consider whether the video breached YouTube rules. This was not a formal ban, and Google declined to take the video down in the US, but it did block access to it in in Egypt and Libya. This raises two important questions about the structure of free speech. First, in the online world, where most of us access the internet through a range of intermediaries, government censorship does not necessarily need to target the disfavoured speech; it need only target the intermediaries. Very few US companies would feel able to decline a request like that from the White House, and Google are to be commended for standing firm in those circumstances. Second, these intermediaries now have a great deal of practical power over online expression – not only can they be co-opted by government as agents of state censorship, but they also have the capacity to act as censors in their own rights, as Google did in their unilateral action to block access in the Middle East.…

Assassination and censorship

14 September, 20125 November, 2012

| 1 Comment

| Censorship, Freedom of Expression

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

George Bernard Shaw

Given my recent post about cross-border hate speech, I was unsurprised to find that freedom of expression is once again in the cross-hairs in the wake of the assassination last Tuesday of J Christopher Stevens, the US Ambassador to Lybia (pictured), and three of his colleagues. The attack seems to have been sparked by a controversial American anti-Islamic movie, and there have been calls for those responsible for the movie to face criminal charges. On the Opinio Juris blog, Peter Spiro [hat tip Volokh] seeks to chart a means by which this might be done in the US without running afoul of the First Amendment, making a point similar to that made by Banks and discussed in my earlier post:

And the First Amendment? Call me a relativist. We have some pretty good empirical data from the scores of other countries that ban hate speech (in part through signing on to article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) that a permissive approach to hate speech is not a prerequisite to functioning democracy. On the contrary, our European friends would argue that democracy is better served by banning such material.

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San Rafael artist riled after nude painting removed from Marin Civic Center gallery – San Jose Mercury News

15 April, 2011

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| Censorship, General

San Rafael artist riled after nude painting removed from Marin Civic Center gallery

By Nels Johnson
Marin Independent Journal

Posted: 04/12/2011 07:19:16 AM PDT

Updated: 04/12/2011 11:30:05 AM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

Artist Silvia Cossich Goodman at the Marin Civic Center, April 11, 2011, in San… (Robert Tong)

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San Rafael artist Silvia Cossich Goodman is up in arms because her painting of a nude was ejected from a Civic Center art exhibition because it offended a county employee.

“Apparently one person working at the Civic Center is so upset about my nude painting that she went straight to human resources and made a big stir to have my painting removed,” Goodman said, decrying “censorship at the Civic Center.”

Mona Miyasato, chief assistant county administrator, noting that art is in the eye of the beholder, said an employee who was offended complained after the exhibit went up last week “about being accosted by the painting every day in the work environment” because her office was near the first-floor gallery.

Because “employees must not feel we’ve created a hostile work environment,” the artist was asked to pick up the painting, Miyasato said.

via mercurynews.com

In The Life Presents: Censoring Wojnarowicz — NCAC

7 March, 2011

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| Censorship, General

In The Life Presents: Censoring Wojnarowicz

3/3/2011 —

In The Life Media looks at the controversy surrounding the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video installation, “A Fire in My Belly,” from the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek show at the Smithsonian. The video, which represents the artist’s anger as he faced death from AIDS ignited outrage among conservative lawmakers and religious leaders.

via ncac.org

This is another follow-up to my blogpost on whether galleries should display offensive art. Earlier follow-up via here.

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cearta.ie

Category: Censorship

Some of #RushdiesWords on free speech from Joseph Anton

Copyright and the National Anthem – preventing a tangled future, avoiding another gap of danger

The university should be a safe space for the life of the mind – says Salman Rushdie

Pornography, cyberbullying, and internet regulation

YouTube, Facebook, and the responsibilities of intermediary gatekeepers

Assassination and censorship

San Rafael artist riled after nude painting removed from Marin Civic Center gallery – San Jose Mercury News

San Rafael artist riled after nude painting removed from Marin Civic Center gallery

In The Life Presents: Censoring Wojnarowicz — NCAC

In The Life Presents: Censoring Wojnarowicz