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Tag: blogs

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

YouTube logo, via YouTubeIn 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.…

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The Muppets and Contract Law

24 April, 20127 November, 2012
| 2 Comments
| Cinema, television and theatre, Contract

The 'Stardard Rich and Famous Contract' in the Muppet Movie, via the Muppet wikiaI’ve recently had the great good fortune to see The Muppets (2011) (imdb | official site | wikipedia). Like the recent classic movie Shrek Forever After, it is very much a movie about contract law: indeed, both movies turn on cultural assumptions about the binding nature and literal enforcement of written contracts.

Warning: plot spoilers At the end of The Muppet Movie (1979) (imdb | wikipedia), the Muppets are hired by studio executive Lew Lord (played – in a splendid cigar-chomping movie-stealing cameo – by Orson Welles) under “the standard rich-and-famous contract” (pictured above left). It has the generally assumed form of contracts: it is long; indeed, it is vveerry long – it contains a multitude of clauses, and those terms are the heart of the new movie: The Muppets. Nancy Kim on Contracts Prof Blog mentions a few of the issues:

… the star of the new Muppets movie is a long, scrolled, fine print contract signed by none other than Kermit the Frog. The entire plot hinges on … a condition in the contract … A real live condition – but is it a condition precedent or condition subsequent? In addition, there are issues of nondisclosure (there’s oil under the theatre, but the evil Tex Richman isn’t telling).

…

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Freedom of expression in the crosshairs

12 January, 20116 November, 2012
| 3 Comments
| Freedom of Expression, prior restraint

Rifle sight crosshair, via wikipediaIn the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six other people in Arizona last week, a fierce debate has broken out over the heated political rhetoric – often coarse, martial, and vitriolic – that is now distressingly commonplace in US political discourse. The specific background is a map which appeared on Sarah Palin‘s website targeting the seats of political opponents – including Rep. Giffords – in rifle-sight cross-hairs, and which has therefore focussed signficant attention on Palin’s confused response to the tragedy. Of course, politicians and pundits across the political spectrum have used such language and imagery, and the issues of principle arise in the context of the general standard of debate rather than in the context of any particular politician, pundit or party. I want in this post to set out some of the general free speech arguments that I have come across since Saturday. …

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Another Top 10 Online Free Speech Resources

8 September, 201021 September, 2010
| 1 Comment
| Freedom of Expression, law school

Censorship jpg via ReadWriteWebAs regular readers of this blog will know, the right to freedom of expression – broadly interpreted – is one of my main areas of research and teaching. Many of my favourite internet resources relating to free speech can be seen in my blogroll and the list of badges in the sidebars on the right. Via Kate Sutherland on Twitter, I see that Kurt Hopkins has a great post on ReadWriteWeb about his Top 10 Online Free Speech Resources. In particular, he listed institutional resources which are accessible to anyone, provide original news or analysis, and are frequently updated. It’s a great idea; indeed, it’s such a good idea,

I’m going to copy it, and – without overlapping Kurt’s choices – list another top 10 online free speech resources below the jump (in broadly alphabetical order): …

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Too many guides, not enough style

30 August, 201027 August, 2010
| No Comments
| law school, Legal Education, Legal Journals and Law Reviews

New Zealand style guide cover, via the NZ Law Foundation websiteMy previous post on the advent of the Irish Law Journal led to some quite interesting discussion about the nature of citation styles and how crowded the market for legal journals in Ireland is.

By way of supplement, I see that 15 Lambton Quay records the final publication of New Zealand’s uniform style guide. I blogged about it at the proposal stage here. Up until now, Law schools, law firms, publishers and courts have been using their own idiosyncratic and confusing styles when referring to legal material. Now, New Zealand’s six law schools, three main legal publishers, major law reviews, and a number of courts, including the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, have adopted the guide this year. From the 15 Lambton Quay website [with added links]:

The Guide was launched by Justice John McGrath. A uniform guide has been a long time coming! .. The new guide is the result of the combined efforts of many across the profession. Justice Chambers of the Court of Appeal spearheaded the project … The guide was only made possible through generous funding from the New Zealand Law Foundation. …

A web-based version of the guide has been made available on the New Zealand law Foundation’s website.…

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Is Apollinaire obscene? The ECHR says: no!

7 July, 201028 April, 2020
| 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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A Proper Scrabble in today’s Irish Times editorial

10 April, 201010 April, 2010
| 2 Comments
| General

Original Scrabble via the scrabble websiteAn editorial in today’s Irish Times [with added links]:

Proper Scrabble

QUIXOTRY: According to Webster’s, “Quixotism, or visionary schemes”. And 365 Scrabble points for Michael Cresta on a record-breaking night in October 2006, including a “triple-triple”, covering two triple-word scores with one word – worth nine times the value of the word – a double letter score on the X, plus the 50-point bonus for using all seven letters.

Not to put a tooth in it, however, what we were concerned with this week was definitely not a “visionary scheme”. More like crass commercialism, a pandering to youthful ignorance, and the debasement of a great game played in 121 countries and 29 languages. For Scrabble’s manufacturer Mattel, horror of horrors, had apparently announced it intends to make the first major rule changes in 62 years, allowing inter alia the use of proper nouns including geographic names, celebrities and even products and companies “to enable younger players and families to get involved”.

The reports unleashed a torrent of righteous indignation around the world from traditionalist Scrabblers and the press. The Thunderer thundered. An Australian [Canadian?] writer compared the changes to poet Robert Frost’s view of free verse as akin to playing tennis with the net down.

…

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Have you bought a haunted house? Who you gonna call?

31 October, 200913 February, 2018
| 4 Comments
| Contract

Ghostbusters poster (element) via WikipediaFirst, in the context of the formation of contracts, a misrepresentation is a false statement of fact made by one party, which causes another party to enter into the contract, and which gives that latter party the right to set the contract aside. So, if you were spooked enough to ask whether the house was haunted, and if the sellers were skeptical enough to say that it wasn’t, and if a court were to find that it was in fact haunted, then you would be able to set the contract aside for misrepresentation.

Second, whilst there is no general duty of disclosure, particular duties of disclosure can – exceptionally – arise; in such cases, a material non-disclosure by one party, which causes another party to enter into the contract, gives that latter party the right to set the contract aside. So, even if you didn’t ask whether the house was haunted, but if a court were to find that it was, that the sellers knew about it, that they chose not to tell you about it, and that they should have done, then you would be able to set the contract aside for this material non-disclosure.

Of course, both of these hypotheticals turn on the fact that the court would find as a fact that the house was haunted.…

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Hi there! Thanks for dropping by. I’m Eoin O’Dell, and this is my blog: Cearta.ie – the Irish for rights.


“Cearta” really is the Irish word for rights, so the title provides a good sense of the scope of this blog.

In general, I write here about private law, free speech, and cyber law; and, in particular, I write about Irish law and education policy.


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