Category: Censorship

It’s long past time to abolish the Censorship of Publications Board

| 3 Comments
| Censorship, Irish Society

Cover of Huxley 'Point Counter Point' via WikipediaLast month on this site, I posed the question: why do we need a Censorship of Publications Board? It was a rhetorical question; in my view, we don’t need one at all.

The Censorship of Publications Board was established by section 3 of the Censorship of Publications Act, 1929 (also here), with the power (under section 6 (also here)) to prohibit the sale of any book which

… is indecent or obscene or advocates the unnatural prevention of conception or the procurement of abortion or miscarriage or the use of any method, treatment or appliance for the purpose of such prevention or such procurement …

Its procedures are governed by the Censorship of Publications Regulations, 1980 (SI No 292 of 1980), and the Department of Justice website contains the Register of Prohibited Publications of December 2009 (here: pdf). A piece by John Byrne in today’s Irish Times (with added links) not only reinforces my view that we no longer have need for such paternalism, but also gives grounds for optimism that we will soon no longer be subject to it:

What a shocker: no more books to ban

After 80 years of censorship from a board once internationally notorious for its prurience, the last remaining book to be banned in Ireland on the grounds of obscenity will have its prohibition lifted this year, …

On May 9th, 1930, a year after the passing of the initial Censorship of Publications Act, [Aldous] Huxley’s novel [Point Counter Point, above left] became the Act’s first casualty.

…

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A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit

| 5 Comments
| Blasphemy, Censorship, Freedom of Expression, prior restraint

Milton Areopagitica via DarthmouthThe title of this post is taken from the third paragraph of Milton’s Areopagitica. As I commented in an earlier post, one of the classic liberal justifications for freedom of expression was stated by John Milton (pitctured left) in his Areopagitica – A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England. According to The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (with added links):

It was on this day in 1644 that John Milton published a pamphlet called Areopagitica, arguing for freedom from censorship. He said,

I wrote my Areopagitica in order to deliver the press from the restraints with which it was encumbered; that the power of determining what was true and what was false, what ought to be published and what to be suppressed, might no longer be entrusted to a few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refused their sanction to any work which contained views or sentiments at all above the level of vulgar superstition.

He compared the censoring of books to the Spanish Inquisition and claimed that the government wanted “to bring a famine upon our minds again.”

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Why do we need a Censorship of Publications Board?

| 4 Comments
| Censorship, IFCO, prior restraint

Film Censor's Office former brass plate, via IFCO websiteFine Gael‘s new policy document “Reinventing Government” will no doubt keep a lot of political debates (and perhaps even fires) burning during the long cold November nights, and I look forward to the heat thereby generated. Quick off the mark was Ninth Level Ireland with a summary of its proposals on universities. Glancing through it, I was also taken by two aspects of its list of “Quangos to be abolished” in Appendix 1, one inclusion and one omission. The inclusion is this:

Department of Justice and Law Reform

… Merge Censorship of Publications Board and Office of Film Censor and Irish Film Classification Office into single Censorship Office.

Merge Censorship of Publications Appeals Board and Censorship of Films Appeal Board into single Censorship Appeals Office. …

I can understand why a classification system for movies and computer games is felt to be necessary, but I am at a loss to understand the need for prior restraint upon print publications, and I would therefore achieve the desired savings simply by abolishing the Censorship of Publications Board and Censorship of Publications Appeals Board altogether. …

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Gallimaufry

| 2 Comments
| Blasphemy, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Censorship, ECHR, Gallimaufry, Phones in class, Typography

GallimaufryDr Johnson defined gallimaufry as

1. A hoch-poch …
2. Any inconsistent or ridiculous medley. …

Here’s another hoch-poch, or hotch-potch (though, of course, not a hotchpot) of links relevant to the themes of this blog that have caught my eye over the last while. I’ll begin and end with some stories of censorship, and along the way I’ll mention open wifi, international perceptions of Ireland, typography, mobile phones, broadcasting, and the future of our universities.

First, as a supplement to my post on the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trials, Alan Travis in the Guardian argues that the failure of the Chatterley prosecution secured the liberty of literature in Britain over the past 50 years. By way of a similar supplement to my post on the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Akdas v Turkey 41056/04 (15 February 2010) that a Turkish ban on Apollinaire’s Les Onze Mille Verges infringed Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Guardian reports that Turkey is at it again: publisher Irfan Sanci is being prosecuted – under the same Turkish provisions that were found wanting in Akdas – for publishing a translation of another Apollinaire noverl, Les exploits d’un jeune Don Juan (The Exploits of a Young Don Juan).…

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Is Apollinaire obscene? The ECHR says: no!

| 5 Comments
| Censorship, ECHR, Freedom of Expression, James Joyce, Obscenity

Cover of 'Les Onze Mille Verges' via AmazonWhen I was growing up, I read a children’s book called The Arabian Nights, an innocent version of the Islamic classic One Thousand and One Nights. Perhaps surprisingly, a group of Egyptian lawyers has recently called for a ban of a newly-released version of the Nights, on the grounds that it is “obscene” and could lead people to “vice and sin”. At the same time, another Egyptian group has called for a ban on the controversial novel Azazeel (Beelzebub) by Youssef Ziedan, which won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. And, irony of ironies, just in time for Bloomsday, a manga comic book version of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses had almost been banned from the Apple App Store for obscene images, but Apple then relented, and reversed its earlier decision to remove panels containing nude images, though it still continues to reject less famous apps.

These examples of censorship of literature on the grounds of obscenity are simply the latest instances of a long and dishonourable tradition. In an earlier post, I considered whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover is obscene. In Akdas v Turkey 41056/04 (15 February 2010) (judgment in French; press release in English), the European Court of Human Rights was faced with a similar question earlier this year, when it had to consider whether a Turkish ban on Guillaume Apollinaire‘s Les Onze Mille Verges (or, The Eleven Thousand Rods) was consistent with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.…

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Academic Freedom in the Universities Act, 1997

| 6 Comments
| Academic Freedom, Censorship, Freedom of Expression, General, Universities

Academics for Academic Freedom logo, via their siteI’m sorry not to have been able to acknowledge the celebration of AFAF‘s International Academic Freedom Day on the day itself by a wonderful blog carnival on the right to learn, ably convened by Deirdre Duffy, and hosted by the ever-wondrous Human Rights in Ireland blog. I’ve blogged on academic freedom on many previous occasions (see especially here and here), and I’d like here look at some of the Irish legal aspects of the issue.

Section 14(1) of the Universities Act, 1997 (also here) provides that Irish universities have “the right and responsibility to preserve and promote the traditional principles of academic freedom” in the conduct of their internal and external affairs, and that they are entitled to regulate their affairs in accordance with their “independent ethos and traditions and the traditional principles of academic freedom”. This is an important guarantee of institutional autonomy, and is a sine qua non for the right of academics to teach, research, publish and participate in public debate without fear of retribution from their institutions. That right is secured by section 14(2) of the Act, which provides:

A member of the academic staff of a university shall have the freedom, within the law, in his or her teaching, research and any other activities either in or outside the university, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions and shall not be disadvantaged, or subject to less favourable treatment by the university, for the exercise of that freedom.

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Gallimaufry

| 2 Comments
| Censorship, Defamation, Gallimaufry, judges, open access, plagiarism, PowerPoint

GallimaufryDr Johnson defined gallimaufry as

1. A hoch-poch …
2. Any inconsistent or ridiculous medley. …

Here’s a hoch-poch, or hotch-potch (though, of course, not a hotchpot) of links relevant to the themes of this blog that have caught my eye over the last while:

First, an Article 10 Right of Reply? considers the various routes to a legally enforceable right to reply to inaccurate information in the same medium where the original statements were published. In this post, Andrea Martin argued that such a development is neither necessary nor desirable, but that a voluntary scheme operated by broadcast media would have a lot to recommend it.

Second, the Irish judiciary has signalled support for setting up a judicial council, a development anticipated by the ICCL in 2007 which I welcomed at the time.

Third, Slate recently published No More Bullet Points, No More Clip Art (h/t Oisín, offline) arguing that “PowerPoint isn’t evil if you learn how to use it”. But so many people fail to learn how to use it that I have no doubt that my antipathy will continue.

Fourth, a story in the Independent on Plagiarism and PhDs: how to deal with copying says that it “may seem counter-intuitive but postgraduates are more likely to commit plagiarism than undergraduates”.…

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