cearta.ie – Page 46 – the Irish for rights

Glynis Johns, singing Stephen Sondheim‘s Send in the Clowns
from the original Broadway cast recording of A Little Night Music
via YouTube

Last week, the Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn, announced his intention to “introduce new legislation which will oblige universities to comply with government pay policy”:

Some €7.5 million in unapproved and unauthorised payments paid out by universities from 2005-2009

The Minister for Education and Skills has secured government agreement for the drafting of an amendment to the Universities Act 1997. This amendment will give the Minister the power to require universities to comply with government guidelines on remuneration, allowances, pensions and staffing numbers in the University sector. It will further address issues which have arisen in relation to the non-adherence to elements of the Croke Park Agreement. …

The heads of the relevant Bill are here (pdf), and they are discussed as follows on Steve Hedley‘s Ninth Level Ireland blog:

Universities behaving badly? Send in the clowns!

… The focus is on compliance with a “policy decision made by the Government or the Minister in so far it relates to the remuneration or numbers of public servants employed in that university, or a collective agreement entered into by the Government or the Minister”.

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Fighting anonymity with anonymity: open justice and cyberbullying

4 October, 201216 May, 2013

| 5 Comments

| Defamation, Open Justice, Privacy

Say you are a 15-year old girl. What would you do if you find a fake Facebook profile which contains a photograph of you, a slightly modified version of your name and other particulars which identified you, which discusses your physical appearance and weight in derogatory terms, and which includes scandalous sexual commentary about you? First, you’d contact Facebook, to have the fake profile taken down and to identify the IP address associated with it. Facebook take safety and security very seriously, especially where minors are concerned, and once they have verified the cyberbullying, they will no doubt be quick to help you out. Once you have the IP address, you can identify the relevant ISP, and ask them to reveal the names of the users associated with it, perhaps to identify potential defendants for an action in defamation or invasion of privacy. But what if Facebook or the ISP decline, and require you to get a court order before they give you that information. At this point, you run into a problem. Since justice is administered in public, you will have to disclose your identity and the facts surrounding the cyberbullying if you are to succeed in your claim against the Facebook or the ISP.…

A reluctant transformation – Irish Times leader on reform of the legal profession

4 October, 201228 February, 2013

| No Comments

| Irish Law

THE INTERNATIONAL Bar Association could scarcely have chosen a more interesting location for its annual conference than Dublin at this time. The visitors find their Irish legal hosts undergoing a very reluctant transformation. Reform is being imposed on the legal profession; … the EU and the IMF, and a determined Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, who is intent on reforming the legal profession, have become agents of change. Reform of the lawyers, and a move away from self-regulation, has become a legal and political imperative, with a deadline set for its achievement under the terms of the bailout agreement. EU/IMF insistence on the removal of restrictions to trade and competition in sheltered sectors of the domestic economy – such as the legal profession – is one small part of the price paid to secure €67 billion in financial support.

via irishtimes.com

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What does Equal Access to the Printed Word Mean in the Electronic Age?

27 September, 20125 November, 2012

| No Comments

| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

Among many of its other activities and events, the Centre for Disability Law & Policy at NUI Galway (CDL&P) hosts an annual lecture series on the theme of Disability in the World. It has co-organised this year’s lecture with the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI), as an Inaugural Lecture in Honour of Christine Murphy-Whyte (bio here: .doc), on the topic

What does Equal Access to the Printed Word Mean in the Electronic Age? The Worldwide Process of Copyright Reform & Disability – the debate at the UN World Intellectual Property Organization.

It will be held in the Phelan Room of the National University of Ireland, 49 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 (map), at 6:00pm on Monday 8 October 2012.

The event will be chaired by Desmond Kenny, CEO of the NCBI; there will be a welcome from Dr Maurice Manning, Chancellor of the NUI; and Prof Gerard Quinn, Director of the CDL&P, NUIG, will introduce the keynote speaker:

Professor Justin Hughes, Cardozo Law School, New York, USA, and Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property.

There will be brief responses from me, Samantha Holman, Executive Director of the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency, Eithne Fitzgerald, Head of Policy and Research at the National Disability Authority, and Abigail Rekas, EU Marie Curie Fellow at the CDL&P, NUIG, who has written a significant post on the Human Rights in Ireland blog, explaining the importance of the event (re-blogged here):*

Access to Books for Persons with Disabilities

… Accessible publishing historically has been an expensive proposition, performed by non-profit charitable organizations.

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We need a Privacy Bill, just not this one

19 September, 20121 March, 2019

| 1 Comment

| Freedom of Expression, Privacy

The drumbeats for privacy legislation can once again be heard around Leinster House. I did a radio interview with Matt Cooper on Today FM’s The Last Word yesterday evening; and I have an op-ed about it in today’s Irish Examiner (.doc here):

Flawed privacy bill offers us no protection

… the bill is unnecessary to cover the publication of the topless photographs, as Irish law already provides a remedy. Worse, the bill goes too far in dealing with press invasions of privacy; and it fails to deal with many other important aspects of privacy. …

A privacy bill is necessary. However, the one being proposed by the minister is not it. It will need a lot of work if it is to protect our privacy properly.

Links: here are some links to the cases and materials to which I refer in the article:

The Privacy Bill, 2006 is here. An op-ed I wrote at the time is here.

The Minister’s Press Release is here.

I have blogged about the photograph of the GAA player, Sinnott v Carlow Nationalist, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The nursing home case is Cogley v RTÉ [2005] 4 IR 79, [2005] IEHC 180 (8 June 2005).…

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.…

Shatter to revisit Privacy Bill over photos – The Irish Times

17 September, 201228 February, 2013

| No Comments

| Privacy

The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter is to revisit the Privacy Bill in the wake of the Irish Daily Star’s publication of topless photos of Kate Middleton.

In a statement this evening, Mr Shatter said: … “It is my intention to revisit the provisions of the Privacy Bill 2006 which was reinstated to the Seanad Order paper following the formation of the Government, to consider what changes should be made to it in the context of developments that have taken place since its first publication and to then progress its enactment,” …

via irishtimes.com

The Minister’s statement is here. I’m not surprised at this development. But it is unfortunate. The Bill is a good idea, but very flawed. It would have been better if the Minister had announced that, not only was he going to revive the Bill, but also that he would bring forward amendments to it, to address its flaws.

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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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