cearta.ie – Page 175 – the Irish for rights

Irish broadcasting regulation is undergoing a significant change, what with the Department of Communications review of the Television Without Frontiers Directive as part of the EU Commission‘s proposals for a new Audio Visual Media Services Directive and the Department’s Digital Terrestrial Television trial and its attendant Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill, 2006 (see press releases: BCI; Department). A central plank of all of these changes is the Broadcasting Bill, 2006, and the audience at the Dublin Legal Workshop last week were treated to a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses by David McMunn (pictured above left) Director of Government, Regulatory and Legal Affairs for TV3.

Establishing a commercial broadcast sector in competition with RTE in Ireland must have seemed a slow process. …

Family Law Matters

20 February, 200716 January, 2009

| No Comments

| Irish Law

The appointment of Dr Carol Coulter as Family Law Reporter was welcomed here last October. Today’s Irish Times (both on the front page and in a special report inside) reports that she has now produced her first report, under the title used in the title to this post. Thanks, Carol, for shining such important light on crucial, if heretofore opaque, aspects of our justice system.

This comes on the day when there is significant coverage of the government’s plans for a referendum on children’s rights (eg RTE (Mon (yesterday) | Tue (today) | Irish Times front page, inside | Irish Independent | Irish Examiner). As it happens, the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, will tomorrow hold a conference on Children’s Rights and the Constitution.

Update (22 February 2007): My colleague Eoin Carlan has an excellent piece on the Government proposals in yesterday’s Irish Times; and there is coverage by Carl O’Brien of yesterday’s TCD conference in today’s Irish Times.

Update (27 February 2007): Dr Carol Coulter’s report Family Law Matters has now been published on the Courts Service website. It provoked an acerbic attack from the pen of John Waters in yesterday’s Irish Times, which in turn drew a measured response in that paper’s letters column today from Gerry Curran, Media Relations Adviser to the Courts Service.…

CafÃ© Bars and the Privacy Bill

17 February, 200717 February, 2007

| 5 Comments

| Irish Law, Irish Society, Politics, Privacy

Q: What do these two things have in common?
A: They’re both in the news today for the same reason.

Two short quotes. The first one is from the list of motions for the Progressive Democrats‘ national conference today:

Motion 19
Conference calls for a review of the proposed privacy legislation in the Party’s General Election Manifesto in particular to avoid the dangers of muzzling the press through court injunction.
Dublin South East

Motion 20
Conference calls on Government to reactivate the proposal for cafÃ© bars.
Dublin South East

The second is from a story on the RTE news website:

The PD conference in Wexford has voted overwhelmingly for the reactivation of party leader Michael McDowell’s cafÃ© bar proposals. … The conference also voted in favour of a review of proposed Privacy legislation.

I’d say that the delegates from Dublin South East (the constituency of Michael McDowell, PD Party Leader, and TÃ¡naiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Justice) have set several cats among several pigeons with these motions. We’ll have to wait and see whether these policies make it into the forthcoming election manifesto (and any subsequent programme for government).

(Thanks to DaithÃ for tipping me off about this (offblog)).…

Won’t someone please think of the children?

17 February, 200720 December, 2008

| 4 Comments

| advertising, Irish Law, Irish Society, Media and Communications

It is a difficult skill to master, the ability to wrap serious depth in light witticism. Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary in the Irish Times has it in spades. And yesterday’s column is no exception. Lurking within the comedy is a very serious point about advertising to children. Every parent is aware of the pester power of children. A children’s tv channel advertises the latest must-have range of fanciful dolls or transforming superheros, and children everywhere pester their parents until the wretched things are bought. But it wasn’t always thus. Indeed, McNally began yesterday’s Diary with a trip down memory lane: it marked

the 50th anniversary of a fateful event in the history of broadcasting: the end of the so-called Toddlers’ Truce … a 60-minute suspension of all programmes every day between 6pm and 7pm, so that – wait for it – the children could be put to bed.

Wow! Children going to bed at teatime!! Do modern children go to bed at 6.00pm?! More seriously, though, McNally’s point, buried in the comedy, relates not to this golden hour but to its modern possible alternatives, such as banning or regulating advertising aimed at children, (and not to protect adults from children’s pester power, but to protect the children from the advertising):

I used to have high hopes that the Swedes, who ban all ads to children under 12, would spread their enlightenment to the rest of the EU.

…

Anyone can get old …

17 February, 200720 June, 2007

| 4 Comments

| Irish Society, Politics

… all you have to do is live long enough. This quote has been ascribed to Groucho Marx. Goverments too grow old. And when age creeps upon them, they make promises to secure re-election. Mary Harney, the Minister for Health and Children, and former leader of the Progressive Democrats (the PDs) (a small, right-of-centre, political party) has just called for an Ombusdman for Older People at that party’s annual conference in Wexford. She expects (expects? well, she should know!) that a commitment to introduce legislation to this effect in the first year of a new term in government will feature in the party’s forthcoming election manifesto. It is to be modelled on the office of the Ombudsman for Children, which was established by the Ombudsman for Children Act, 2002, and, according to Harney

will provide a focused, statutory office to be an advocate for older people, as well as providing a dedicated service for redress beyond existing organisations. This new office will be a new means to empower and respect older people accessing health and public services. …

It is one thing to establish the office. It is quite another to take it seriously. …

Flying question for copyright lawyers

16 February, 200719 November, 2010

| 2 Comments

| Cinema, television and theatre, Copyright, Fair use

This week’s newspapers bring us yet another Disney movie scenario of ‘plucky little community group’ being faced down by ‘horrible international conglomerate’. But this time, there is no happy ending for the little group; and the conglomerate are Disney themselves. As RuadhÃ¡n Mac Cormaic reports on the front page of Wednesday’s Irish Times (picked up by eircom.net, grand gesture, gcn.ie, queerty.com, mickeynews.com and thedisneyblog.com):

With only two days to go before its opening night, a play to be staged by a gay and lesbian students’ society at NUI Galway had to be pulled yesterday after organisers received notice from entertainment conglomerate Disney threatening legal action if the production went ahead.

It seems that the play was “loosely adapted” from the Disney film Sister Act, and that that Disney took the view that the production “would breach its intellectual property rights”. Presumably, this means that it would, in particular, infringe their copyright in the movie. My flying question is whether that is actually so? …

Law of Blogs; Blogs of Law

11 February, 200723 April, 2007

| 14 Comments

| Blogging, Digital Rights

I’ve offered to speak at BarCamp Dublin. I’ve even got so far as a proposed title. It’s the one I’ve used as the title to this post. “Law of Blogs; Blogs of Law”. But I’ve not really got any further. So, if you have an inspiration or suggestions, I’d be grateful to have them.

Yes, yes; I do know that the suggested title is self-referentially post-modern. I just liked it. But I’ll change it if you come up with a better one.

Update (14 Feb 2007): Thanks to those who have made comments (below), or sent emails off-blog. I think that bloggers face many potential legal problems, from the obvious defamation and copyright issues to perhaps-not-so-obvious privacy and data protection matters. But there will be lots of other legal questions which other, more experienced, bloggers have already encountered that have not come my way yet. And I’d like more about those. Bernard’s query below – whether it will be “Tort 101: Law of tort for blogging?” – may not be too wide of the mark. I suspect that my ‘talk’ will be more in the nature of a freewheeling discussion arising organically from the concerns of bloggers present than a pre-structured presentation dreamed up by me in the quiet moments in my office (in part becuase there are none!);…

Privacy on the beach

11 February, 200711 December, 2012

| No Comments

| Press Council, Privacy

The Press Complaints Commission in the UK can change its mind. And the right of privacy can now be asserted on the beach as a result.

First, the change of mind. In 2000, the PCC held that newsreader Anna Ford did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy sufficient to restrain publication by OK! magazine of photos taken of her and her husband subathing on a private beach. This week, in an all-but identical case, the PCC held that model Elle Macpherson did have a sufficient expectation of privacy to complain about photos taken of her and her children sunbathing on a private beach on a private island. Roy Greenslade says that this “certainly qualifies” for the hackneyed clichÃ© “landmark decision”, and I think he is right. …