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 »

Over on Lex Ferenda, Daithí has highlighted that, in the US, Fox News has written to US Republican Presidential candidate John McCain asking him to stop using a clip of his own words from a debate in a political advertisement. In fact, not content with taking on one presidential candidate, Daithí points out that they have decided to take on all of them, writing to them all in similar terms.

Fox are playing a dangerous game here (well, dangerous for them, at any rate). There is a very strong argument that First Amendment political speech concerns make this advertisment a non-commercial fair use (don’t just take my word for it; Michael Geist thought so too during a similar Canadian flap last January). And an express Federal Circuit Court holding to that effect would certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons for those broadcasters like Fox who continue to insist on restricting copyright in political debates which they host / broadcast. In fact, Fox seem to be the main holdout against Lessig’s petition to the US political parties and broadcast networks to license Presidential debates freely after they are initially broadcast – either by putting the debates into the public domain, or by permitting anyone to use or remix the contents of those debates, for any reason whatsoever, so long as there is attribution back to any purported copyright holder. Fox declined! On the other hand, CNN immediately agreed; MSNBC started a dialogue with Lessig about its policy; and both ABC and NBC have now substantially come on board. Fox looked silly when they didn’t catch this wave; and, with their current actions against political advertising, they now look positively antediluvian.

Update: Lessig has a typically punchy post about this episode here. A sample:

It is time that the presidential candidates from both parties stand with Senator McCain and defend his right to use this clip to advance his presidential campaign. Not because it is “fair use” (whether or not it is), but because presidential debates are precisely the sort of things that ought to be free of the insanely complex regulation of speech we call copyright law.

It is not just the US networks who have heeded the Lessig plea. Michael Geist has made a similar call in Canada; as have I in Ireland; and I now learn from Peter Black’s superb Freedom to Differ and from the ever-excellent House of Commons that a similar call has now been made in Australia:

Election debates should be openly available: Expert

… Dr Matthew Rimmer from the ANU College of Law said that Australia’s political leaders have already embraced new media such as YouTube and Facebook as political tools, and that the ALP has called for a debate to be broadcast on YouTube. He said both parties should go a step further to ensure that digital copyright issues do not become an impediment to the sharing of election debate broadcasts.

“Whichever television networks or internet media end up broadcasting the federal election debates, it’s important to the health of our democracy that people are free to capture and distribute the dialogue of our prospective leaders so that they can make a more informed decision,â€? Dr Rimmer said. “New file sharing networks and technologies mean we have more potential than ever before to choose the time and place in which we consume media – provided we are not restricted by unnecessary copyright requirements.â€? …

I hope his call has a better response than mine did. In the meantime, when will Fox live up to their motto “We Report. You Decide”?

I don’t usually do this, but an Editorial in yesterday’s New York Times (13 June 2007; sub req’d) is so important, and so perfectly reflects my views, that it’s worth reproducing in full (in fact, I wish I’d written it). The headline is the title to this post: “Watching Your Every Move”, and the strapline on the electronic front page makes the point perfectly:

Privacy is too important to leave up to the companies that benefit financially from collecting and retaining data.

The Editorial itself ran as follows:

Watching Your Every Move

Internet users are abuzz over Google’s new Street View feature, which displays ground-level photos of urban blocks that in some cases even look through the windows of homes. If that feels like Big Brother, consider the reams of private information that Google collects on its users every day through the search terms they enter on its site.

Read the rest of this entry »

The headline in today’s Sunday Independent says it all: Shock as ad on autistic children banned. Niamh Horan reports:

A new advertisement highlighting the urgent needs of autistic children in Ireland has been banned from radio stations on the grounds that it is too political.

Now Irish Autism Action [IAA], which champions the rights of Irish children suffering from autism, has said they are surprised that the ad was banned by both the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) and the national State broadcaster, RTÉ.

We have been here before. Read the rest of this entry »

My, but the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) is being busy. Two important developments deserve comment: this week’s new codes and today’s announcement of a new christian radio channel. And they are linked.

First, the Codes. Read the rest of this entry »

This message is by way of catching up with two important developments this week, and thanking those fellow bloggers who brought them to my attention.

First up, political advertising. Read the rest of this entry »

Trócaire have just posted a statement on their website, under the headline “BCI upholds its decision on Trócaire advert”, in which they say that they have agreed to revise their controversial radio and television advertisments:

Trócaire has been informed today by the BCI that it is confirming it’s initial decision in relation to Trócaire’s Lenten advertisement on gender equality, deeming that the campaign is toward a political end.

The BCI has proposed an amendment to the script of the broadcast as follows:
“Support Trócaire to help end gender inequality.”

The original script stated:
“Support Trócaire’s Lenten Campaign to help end gender inequality.”

Despite this change Trócaire is satisfied that the three elements of our Lenten campaign namely, fundraising, awareness raising and campaigning on UN Resolution 1325 [link] (including the online petition [link]) are still fully intact. All these activities continue as before. Read the rest of this entry »

Trócaire is the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It runs several campaigns challenging the root causes of poverty and injustice. And every year during Lent (BBC | wikipedia), to raise both much need funds and public consciousness about its work, it runs a Lenten campaign, distributing collection boxes through churches and so on to schools and homes in the hope that the boxes will be filled during Lent and their contents donated to Trócaire after Easter. The image (top, left) is on this year’s box (discussed here by Brian Greene); and the advertising campaign that goes with it focuses on gender inequality to promote equal rights for women and men around the world. You can view the television advertisment here. However, that advertising campaign is now getting Trócaire into hot water. Various newspapers report this morning (Irish Examiner | Irish Independent | Irish Times) that the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) has banned these advertisments. Read the rest of this entry »