Three stories from today’s Irish Times caught my eye. First, the good. The Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman launched their first annual report yesterday. The press industry undoubtedly did a good thing in establishing the Press Council and the Ombudsman, and yesterday’s report on the first year of operation shows the wisdom of that decision. The launch of the report is covered in the Home News section of the Irish Times, and welcomed in the lead editorial . From the report [with added links]:

Praise for complaints system after release of Press Ombudsman’s report

AGGRIEVED READERS made over 370 complaints about newspapers and magazines last year during the Press Ombudsman’s first year of work, his annual report reveals. … Reviewing the performance of the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman in their annual report published yesterday, council chairman Prof Tom Mitchell said the innovative and effective regulatory system offered significant benefits to the press and public. …

Moreover, speaking at the launch, the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, said he hoped that the long-delayed Defamation Bill, 2006 would become law by the summer, an aspiration which Prof Mitchell greeted as “wonderful news”.

Second, the bad. Well, it’s no much that it’s bad as that it’s not enough. At present, Irish broadcasting law bans political advertising, and tightly regulates religious advertising. It was originally intended simply to restate this position in the Broadcasting Bill, 2006, but the Minister for Communications, Eamon Ryan, has announced that the restrictions on religious advertisements. This, too, is a good thing. But it is not enough of a good thing. The ban on political advertising should also have been revisited. And the failure to address this issue is a bad thing. From the report:

Controls on religious ads for broadcast to be relaxed

MINISTER FOR Communications Eamon Ryan will soften current restrictions on religious advertisements that are broadcast on television and radio. … “Advertising shouldn’t be used for promoting a particular religion or as an agent for recruitment. At the same time, I don’t want to completely restrict advertising that has a religious connotation.” …

Third, the ugly. And this is downright ugly. When the Defamation Bill, 2006 was introduced into the Seanad, it had an ugly twin, the Privacy Bill, 2006. However, as the Defamation Bill proceeded on its fitful way through the Oireachtas [Parliament], the Privacy Bill seemed to fade. Now, it is back with a bang. I do not for one moment doubt that Irish law on privacy is in need of reform, but I likewise do not think that the Privacy Bill as it was introduced in 2006 is the answer to that need. It was overly-restrictive on the meida, whilst ignoring almost every other aspect of privacy protection (eg, cctv, online privacy, genetic privacy, and so on). It now seems that the revived Bill will address some at least of those other issue, but the tone of the Minister’s comments yesterday suggest that the draconian media provisions will remain. And if they do, that would be an ugly thing. From the report:

Ahern says he plans to revive privacy Bill

MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern has revived plans to introduce laws to protect the privacy of individuals, citing a “worrying trend in media intrusion in order to get a good story”.

Yesterday, however, Mr Ahern announced he planned to inject fresh momentum into the Bill by updating its provisions to reflect recent legal and technological developments. … The violation of privacy was not the exclusive preserve of the media, he said, and many complaints over privacy now concerned actions by individual citizens against others. …

He made these comments at the launch of the Press Ombudsman’s annual report referred to above, and today’s Irish Independent’s report of the launch led with this aspect of his speech. This was where he made his comments on the prospects for the Defamation Bill’s eventual enactment (which I think is a good thing). But he said that he had “misgivings” about the defence of reasonable publication. And if these misgivings translate into the removal of the defence from the Bill, that would be a very ugly thing indeed.

Update (5 April 2009): Leave Press Council to do its work: in the Sunday Independent, Emer O’Kelly argues that the Government’s plan to amend the law on privacy will restrict freedom of enquiry, and it would be better if the Press Ombudsman and Press Council were to develop a body of decisions to cover the area.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) ran an entertaining advertising campaign on London buses last year, and it has just announced that it will run the campaign nationwide. The campaign is built around the slogan:

However, religious groups – including Christian Voice – complained to the Advertising Standards Authority, arguing that the bus campaign broke the advertising code on the grounds of substantiation and truthfulness. The Guardian (hat tip: Media Law Prof Blog) picks up the story:

ASA clears Atheist Bus Campaign ads

… The advertising watchdog has ruled that a controversial atheist ad campaign, which sparked the ire of Christian groups for proclaiming “There is probably no God”, did not break its code …

See also: AFP | BBC | Index on Censorship | Telegraph | TimesOnline. From the ASA statement:

Atheist bus ad campaign is not in breach of the Advertising Code

… The ASA Council concluded that the ad was an expression of the advertiser’s opinion and that the claims in it were not capable of objective substantiation. Although the ASA acknowledges that the content of the ad would be at odds with the beliefs of many, it concluded that it was unlikely to mislead or to cause serious or widespread offence.

The Christian Voice response is here. The best response I have found is on Nick Spencer’s Theos blog on the Telegraph website, returning to a fray he had joined when the advertisements were first posted on London buses.

Back on the (atheist) buses

[The ASA's decision] is terribly long-sighted and rather disappointing. Who would not have relished the sight of the ASA adjudicating on whether or not God probably exists? It could have been the Scopes Trial of the 21st century, calling the world’s leading philosophers, theologians, historians, artists, anthropologists, physicists, biologists, and psychologists to testify, not to mention the legion of ordinary men and women who claim to have had a spiritual experience or two.

The ASA offices in High Holborn would have turned into a media circus, as thousands of correspondents from every country on God’s (”Discuss.”) earth arrived to witness the judgment of this panel of sages. At last the issue would have been decided, probably.

Regular readers of this blog will know that section 20(4) of the Broadcasting Authority Act, 1960 (also here) and section 10(3) of the Radio and Television Act, 1988 (also here) as amended by section 65 of the Broadcasting Act, 2001 (also here) prohibit broadcast advertising in Ireland directed to any religious or political end (see here | here | here | here | here | here).

Edit: The remainder of this long post discusses the validity of such bans in the US, the ECHR, Ireland and the UK, by way of background three recent developments: debate about a failure to take a current legislative opportunity to amend the Irish legislation, another ban on an Irish religious advertisement, and an ECHR decision striking down a political advertising ban. Read the rest of this entry »

The Consumer Protection Act, 2007 (also here), though it is the latest in a long line of piecemeal legislative forays into the area, nevertheless bids fair to provide substantial protection for consumers, provided both that the National Consumer Agency established under it is vigilant and active in that goal, and that it is allowed to be (for example, it may not survive in its current form calls (for example, by Fine Gael) for its abolition as part of the government’s cost-cutting desire to merge various statutory agencies). One important step was taken yesterday with the publication of draft guidelines for the retail sector.
Read the rest of this entry »

It is the error everyone online dreams about – a full-price item for practically nothing; and it happened, in Chile. For those who remember the case of the mistaken flights last April, Andres Guadamuz tells us about a massive pricing error made by Dell on its Latin American website last June:

… One of Dell’s main features is the possibility of configuring computers by adding, removing or upgrading components. On 27 June 2008, this feature went wrong, and started subtracting money for an upgrade instead of adding it. … Apparently, some people in Chile found the mistake, and this being the Web 2.0 universe, left messages in Facebook and blogs advertising the gaffe, .. This resulted in an astounding 66 … times increase in sales in that day for Chile, and apparently thousands attempted to get the exploit (unofficially, 15 thousand laptops!). Needless to say, Dell did not fulfil the orders, and offered the affected customers a 15% discount in future sells. …

Read the rest of this entry »

From today’s Guardian:

What does a heart attack feel like?

… The “Hollywood heart attack” is dangerously misleading and because of it, many of us ignore the real symptoms until it is too late. … The Hollywood heart attack … involves dramatic chest clutching and collapse. But in reality, symptoms vary. They can be woolly, ambiguous and easy to ignore. It is very common to have a central chest pain that can spread to the arms, neck and jaw. You may feel sweaty, light-headed, sick or short of breath. You may simply feel a dull ache, mild discomfort or heavy sensation in your chest that makes you feel ill. Or there may be a chest pain that spreads to your back or stomach. Some people say the pain was like bad indigestion. …

Read more here.

Update The British Heart Foundation’s 2 minute film Watch Your Own Heart Attack shows just what it’s like to have a heart attack first hand.

Look up, it’s Aer Lingus
Aer Lingus used to know how to do public relations – in my youth a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, it had three very powerful advertising campaigns which had a profound effect on me. One used the Gallagher & Lyle song “Breakaway” (YouTube) featuring the lyric “breakaway, fly across your ocean / breakaway, time has come for you”. The second featured the musical tag line “Look up, it’s Aer Lingus, there’s a little piece of Ireland flyin’ by”, with a little girl playing in a field looking up at an Aer Lingus Boeing flying overhead – it gave rise to Aer Lingus’s most enduring slogan, which I have used at the head of this paragraph. And the third was called “You’re Home” (YouTube) and featured Gabriel’s Oboe; it never failed to induce a catch in the voice, a lump in the throat, and a tear in the eye. Judging by a controversy that has flared over the last day or two, however, they seem long since to have lost this knack for connecting with the Irish zeitgeist. Instead, they have flown into a tempest of controversy which they moved to abate only after two days of pressure amounting to a public relations debacle for the airline.

The controversy began when the Aer Lingus website offered transatlantic business-class flights for e5 plus taxes. This was a mistake, and when the airline discovered it, not only did they change the website so that no further customers would be able to take advantage of the offer, but they also sought to cancel the flights already booked (AFP | BBC | Belfast Telegraph here and here | BreakingNews.ie | Forbes | Ireland.com Breaking news | Irish Independent here and here | Irish Times | RTE here and here | Limerick Leader | The Guardian | PA | The Sydney Morning Herald here and here). This caused a national outcry ( Argus Car Hire | Jazz Biscuit | Jet vine | Lost Weekend | Paddy Anglican | Portfolio.com |The Irish World | Temple Bar | Value in Ireland | View from the Wing ) on a par with the drumbeats that go up calling for the head of the manager of a national sporting team at the end of another unsuccessful tournament. There has been much misleading pontification about the legal rights and wrongs of the issue, on the part both of the customers and of Aer Lingus, and I propose to add to that din by looking at the Contract Law issues that arise on these facts.

There are, in fact, at least four sets of legal questions here: (i) is there a contract between each of the customers and Aer Lingus; (ii) if so, is it affected by the mistake; (iii) if not, is there a provision in the terms and conditions on which Aer Lingus can rely; and (iv) if not, what remedies are likely to be available to the customers against Aer Lingus? Read the rest of this entry »

L’Assemblée nationale francaise (the lower house of the French parliament) yesterday passed a “Draft law aimed at fighting incitement to seek extreme thinness or anorexia” providing for fines of to €30,000 and terms of imprisonment of up to two years for inciting to “excessive thinness” and more if the incitement results in death (see Associated Press | Daily Telegraph | Guardian | International Herald Tribune here and here | Irish Independent | Irish Times | Media Law Prof Blog here and here | New York Times; update Volokh, including the French text of the Bill). The Bill will go before le Sénat (the upper house) next month. According to the Guardian, the Bill:

would bar any form of media, including websites, magazines and advertisers, from promoting extreme thinness, encouraging severe weight-loss or methods for self-starvation … [and] is specifically aimed at what French MPs called pro-anorexia “propaganda” websites … [which] support anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather than a medical disorder … The blogs and forums, which have developed in the US since 2000 and grown in France over the past two years, often include talk-boards frequented mainly by teenage girls and young women with advice on how to get through the pain of extreme hunger after eating a yoghurt a day, or how to hide extreme weight-loss from parents or doctors. Some use pictures of excessively thin models as “thinspiration” for self-starvation.

There is plainly an important social issue here, and much good work is done in Ireland by groups such as Bodywhys (especially their online support group). Indeed, more can be done to combat this problem without recourse to censorship. Read the rest of this entry »