EGYPT
How free are Egypt’s new voices?
Two years after the 2011 revolution in Egypt, a growing number of satellite TV channels are expressing a range of views – from liberal to ultra conservative. (BBC)

INDIA
Debate on free speech limits at Mario Miranda Cartoon Festival
After joining The Current in 1952, Mario Miranda drew his first political cartoon poking fun at Bombay’s home minister at the time, Morarji Desai. The cartoon delighted Miranda’s editor, DF Karaka, but annoyed Desai and elicited angry responses from the public. “That experience taught Mario the lesson that in India for an ambitious cartoonist to lampoon some political personage was to invite trouble,” wrote author Manohar Malgonkar in the book “Mario de Miranda”.
(The Times of India)

Resisting the impunity
The agency of journalists to push the envelope and the wider public’s demand for credible, trustworthy news sources are the positive development. On the flip side, there is a real fear of casting away the hard-won freedoms, and, as its extension, a vibrant, common forum for dialogue and debate is under severe strain. The challenges come from multiple sources.
(The Hindu)

Bollywood censorship to be relaxed
India’s all-powerful censor board is planning a lighter approach to Bollywood after decades chopping tens of thousands of film scenes, from onscreen kisses to violent endings.The Himalayan Times)

IRELAND
A crock of gold for libel tourists who bring cases to Emerald Isle
Ah, the good old law of unintended consequences pops up again. Who would have thought that Irish jobs could be affected by the passage at Westminster last week of the Defamation Act?
(Ruth Dudley-Edwards, Irish Independent)

MALAWI
President Joyce Banda waiting for advice on press pact
President Joyce Banda has said she is waiting for expert advice from the Attorney General (AG) and the Minister of Justice on whether to sign the Table Mountain Declaration. The President has come under fire from the press as well as human rights activists over her refusal to sign the accord which proposes abolition of insult laws in Africa.
(The Daily Times)

RUSSIA
A year into Russia crackdown, protesters try again
A year ago, Russia’s political opposition was on the rise and aiming for new heights at a demonstration on the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. Instead, authorities cracked down, ending their tolerance toward the thousands of Putin opponents who presented him with the greatest challenge to his rule since he took over the country in 2000.
(Washington Post)

UNITED KINGDOM
Why Britain Refuses To Publish Amanda Knox’s Memoir
We flatter ourselves when we boast of mastery of the ironic style. Unlike literal-minded Germans and Americans, we are not ashamed to live behind masks and speak in riddles. (Nick Cohen, the Observer)

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This year’s theme is “Creativity: The Next Generation”. Debate around whether copyright encourages or actually hinders creativity has intensified in recent years as laws designed to address offline infringement have struggled to keep up with digital technologies and the internet. Also struggling to keep up are artists, most of whom have seen slower revenue streams due to mass online piracy of their work. Many copyright laws and treaties already exist or are in the works to protect artists and the broader intellectual property industry against digital piracy, but some of their implications for free speech are troubling.

The 1998 US Digital Millenium Copyright Act criminalised the production, distribution and use of tools that can circumvent digital copyright controls. It also limited the liability of internet service companies for their users’ copyright infringing activities if the companies agreed to implement notice and takedown procedures for copyright holders to seek redress.

Circumvention tools can be used for fair use activities that do not infringe copyright, making the criminalisation of tools without regard for intent potentially chilling in its broadness. Copyright holders from the recording and film industries also sometimes abuse notice and action systems by flooding them with bogus claims where fair use is clearly protected. The undue burden this places on service providers can encourage them to over-comply with requests in order to stay on the safe side of copyright laws. Such over-compliance can mean unnecessary censorship. The Centre for Internet and Society documented this to be the case in India, sending flawed takedown requests to seven web companies, six of which over-complied and removed more content than legally required under the country’s Information Technology Act.

Major companies including Google, Twitter and most recently Microsoft issue regular reports showing how many copyright removal requests they receive and comply with. Google received nearly 20 million URL removal requests on its search product alone last month, the majority of which came from copyright owners in the recording and motion picture industries and organisations that represent them. A big company like Google might have the resources to sort legitimate requests from the rest, but many small companies certainly do not.

A recent flurry of intellectual property bills and treaties on both sides of the Atlantic pose further challenges to freedom of expression. The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act both failed in the US, and the European Parliament rejected the the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in 2012 following global campaigns by internet activists and web companies opposed to their provisions. These bills and treaties have all been put on the backburner but run the risk of flaring up again if legislators move to push them forward a second time. The US bills would create a blacklist of websites accused of providing illegal access to copyrighted content, which could kick off a digital witch hunt from overprotective copyright holders that wish to censor sites even in cases of fair use. ACTA aims to shift the current IPR debate from international fora to secretive backrooms. It would also increase intermediary liability, making websites more responsible for user activity and more likely to restrict users’ online expression.

Important to note is that many people simply don’t understand copyright, causing them to unknowingly break these laws. About half of participants in a recent survey were confused about the legality of uploading and downloading copyrighted materials online. Major prosecutions, including that of a US woman who was fined $1.9 million for illegally downloading 24 songs in 2009, have increased awareness of copyright laws and their sometimes disproportionate consequences. A new Copyright Alert System in the US aims to do the same, relying on ISPs to voluntarily slow down internet speeds for users who regularly pirate copyrighted content.

Legal reforms and public knowledge alone will not stop pirating. Artists who have traditionally relied on rich patrons, governments and organised industries to bring their work to fruition are experimenting with new funding and marketing models to meet online challenges and to take advantage of new opportunities. Small donations from more than 3 million people on the crowdsource funding platform Kickstarter have financed more than 35,000 creative projects, bringing in $500 million in the past four years. Many musicians are also shifting their business focus from singles to concert sales, an experience that cannot yet be replicated online and that many fans are still willing to pay for.

Artists need to eat, and pirates should be punished. But for this to happen, copyright laws and their enforcement should to be just and proportionate and new funding models for creative industries should be pursued. Perhaps next year’s World Intellectual Property Day theme should focus on reforming copyright laws and exploring new business models to safeguard the next generation’s creativity and freedom of expression.

The post World Intellectual Property Day: Copyright and creativity in a digital world appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Opposition protesters in Minsk in 2010. Kseniya Avimova | Demotix

Europe’s last dictatorship plans even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world, Index shows in a new report

Belarus has one of the most hostile media environments in the world and one of the worst records on freedom of expression. New digital technologies, in particular the internet, have provided new opportunities for freedom of expression but have also given the authoritarian regime new tools to silence free voices and track down dissent. As the internet has become an increasingly important source of information, the Belarus authorities have used a variety of different means to control it. Keeping a tight rein on information remains at the core of their policy of self-preservation.

This report explores the main challenges to digital free speech in Belarus, concentrating in particular on the ways the state authorities restrict freedom of expression online.

Firstly, it is done by applying a repressive legal framework, including draconian laws such as criminal libel, legal prosecution and the misapplication of the administrative code. Secondly, free speech is restricted by the use of new techniques, such as online surveillance, website blocking and filtering, and cyber-attacks against independent websites and content manipulation.

Our research indicates that the authorities now plan even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world.

New legislation gives the authorities wide powers to censor online content, in particular on the catch-all grounds of “distribution of illegal information”, and to implement mass surveillance of citizens’ activities online. The government is spending heavily on the development of software that will allow the tracking of nearly all the activities of every internet user in the country. Western firms have been instrumental in providing equipment that has facilitated state surveillance. Since the growth in use of social networks, there have been several waves of arrests of moderators of popular online opposition groups and communities. Journalists and activists who express their opinions online have found themselves subject to criminal prosecutions for libel. Denial of service attacks have been used frequently against independent online media and opposition websites, especially on the occasion of elections and other major political events.

Protesters at the Revolution through Social Networks demonstration in Minsk, summer 2011. Photo by Siarhei Balai.

Index on Censorship calls on the government of Belarus to stop all disproportionate and unnecessary legal and extrajudicial practices, online and offline, that compromise freedom of expression. We call for immediate reforms to be launched to ensure free speech, as outlined in the conclusions and recommendations chapter of the report.

The European Union (EU), its member states and other European bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), should further push the Belarus government to respect human rights in general and freedom of expression in particular and call for immediate reforms to facilitate the development of Belarus as a democratic state.

You can read the report in full in English here.

Доклад о цензуре интернета в Беларуси можно прочитать здесь.

Даклад аб цэнзуры інтэрнэта ў Беларусі магчыма прачытаць тут

More on this story:

Press Release - Internet explosion backfires for Europe’s last dictator

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In August [2007], the 58-year-old actor and writer Chris Langham was found guilty of downloading 15 videos and pictures of child pornography (graphic and violent enough to fit the characterisation of all child pornography as child abuse). Two weeks earlier, five young British-Asian men — one was a school-leaver from London, four were students at Bradford University — were sentenced to various prison terms. They had been found guilty of possessing material for terrorist purposes (mostly downloaded from websites) that glorified Islamic terrorism, martyrdom and holy war.

Besides being suitable candidates for moral panics, these two cases have little in common. But they raised similar public issues: about the causal role and power of the mass media and especially the internet; demands for stronger regulation and control, especially through the criminal law; and, of course, serious questions about the limits of liberal tolerance and freedom of expression. Other common problems include finding viable definitions — of “pornography” (and grading its seriousness on a five-point scale, like classes of dangerous drugs) or “incitement” — and the technical obstacles to monitoring and controlling the sources of internet material.

Behind these familiar debates, there lie vital background assumptions — seldom made explicit – about the links between thinking and doing. In the holistic view, there is no clear difference between image and action. The production of a pornographic video (with its standard depiction of women as sexual objects) and the use of these images (whether in fantasy, “ordinary” sexuality or sexual abuse and rape) are part of the same social reality. We don’t find one without the other or else the one leads inexorably to the other. There is a symbiosis between the producer, source and nature of the message (whether pornography or religious fanaticism) — and the receiver, consumer or “offender”. A seamless web of values, roles and relationships binds production and consumption. In the case of porn, the image/action connection goes further: the very thing itself is made up of the reproduction of images. No representation, no pornography.

The separatist view, on the other hand, draws a clear distinction between the thought (or image) and the deed. Thus Langham had watched and downloaded images of child pornography, but he had not actively created or distributed these, nor was he guilty of sexually assaulting a child. The Bradford jihadists watched, read, discussed and agreed with poisonous incitements to mass killing; but they had not committed any acts of violence. (The 17-year-old schoolboy did get as far as leaving his parents a note that he was off to fight as a soldier of Islam and would see them next in the garden of paradise).

These opposing views run through the debate about both modes of legal control — first, to prohibit, censor or regulate supply and/or second, to criminalise demand (notably, by making possession illegal). The philosopher Mary Warnock used the Langham case to reassert the traditional liberal separatism between thought and action (Observer, 5 August 2007). Watching pornographic internet pictures of child abuse, she argues, does not necessarily entail that one is a paedophile.

Terrified as they are of paedophilia, most people do assume — as they would not for adult porn — that viewers who enjoy watching those images, will practise what is depicted. She concludes:

. . . though we feel the strongest moral repugnance both towards those who make and those who watch the images we should not use the force of law against a man’s thoughts but only against his actions.

In moral and legal terms, this is a tenable application of the traditional liberal position. But as a theory it looks a little threadbare compared with sophisticated feminist versions of holism. And it can hardly be used for an activist social policy to combat the depredations of the free market.

The whole project of protecting the individual right to self-expression must look quite anachronistic in the internet world. The sheer amount of people, money, technology and global networks that are needed to create an interface of millions of messages exchanged each minute can hardly be grasped, let alone controlled by the liberal model of civil liberties. We can almost literally “see” the rights of a government critic in Zimbabwe being violated as a radio broadcast is jammed. But where exactly in cyberspace are the free expressions of an underground website?

Some imagination is also needed about matters of motive and intent. The creators and distributors of the jihadi message obviously intended to attract, convert and recruit just the type of people they targeted — and get them primed to act (or actually plan to act) in just the ways they wanted. Producers of child pornography do not necessarily intend their viewers to be or become child abusers. They only want the audience to be stimulated enough to purchase more and more porn. They are too amoral to care about other possible outcomes and they can operate without restrictions, making profits in a largely unregulated market. In the legal sense this is a strict liability offence — neither motives nor consequences matter. There can be no defence, that is, in terms of good intentions, nor does the prosecution have to prove actual harm or increased risk.

The same logic is applied to the consumer. The jury in the Chris Langham trial rejected his motivational stories (doing research; reliving his own victimisation). They agreed with the prosecuting barrister Richard Barraclough QC:

The statement he made to the police was nothing but hypocrisy and cant. Each of his statements is a lie. He downloaded these images. They didn’t happen automatically; he chose them. That makes him guilty in law. It doesn’t matter why he did it.

It may not matter in court. But motives surely do matter in considering the likely effects of legal controls. Compare the response of ideological (convictional) offenders who proudly justify their action and reject the legitimacy of the law with those offenders who tell “sad tales”, offer excuses, feel stigmatised and profess to be ashamed of their action.

Furthermore, because the law is such a blunt instrument of social control, it cannot register the wider social effects of mass, anonymous and cheap access to the internet. Such effects — whether in the case of pornography or ideological violence — do not occur directly and immediately. Increases in rates of sexual violence, for example, cannot be proved to be caused by internet porn consumption. But only the most unimaginative separatist view, the most literal legalism or the most orthodox libertarianism can ignore the more general sexualisation of our culture. In a sense, it is too late for any empirical study of the “effects” of any medium, such as internet porn. There is no “before” from which to study an “after”. The full “pornification” thesis (Pamela Paul’s vision of the porno-sphere moving into the public sphere) is muddled and exaggerated, but there can be little doubt that as images become more accessible, affordable and anonymous, they also become more acceptable.

But how do these images influence the action of any particular individual?

Imagine the causal steps that lead to the breaking of moral and legal rules as something like religious conversion. For some converts, the new spiritual conviction seems to come from within; the role of other people (friends, counsellors, missionaries) and cultural texts (the Bible, the Koran, conversion videos) is only to confirm the initial commitment. Yet other people have not yet reached this stage; they are still standing at the “invitational edge”. For them, new friends, a prayer meeting in the local mosque, the mass rally attended out of curiosity, the website entered just about by chance, the university discussion group — any of these might tip you over the edge. There are yet other people who have the “right” backgrounds and opportunities — but have not shown even the beginnings of commitment. They indeed have to be converted or turned on by those “external” messages or sources.

In the Bradford jihadists’ case, the judge explicitly tried to remove the offences from the discourse about freedom of speech. The defendants were being punished for “being prepared” to train in Pakistan to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Five men who were jailed in 2007 for being found in possession of jihadist literature. Their conviction was quashed in 2008.

Why had they broken the law?

Because in my judgment you were intoxicated by the extremist nature of the material that each of you collected, shared and discussed . . . So carried away by the material were you that each of you crossed the line. That is exactly what the people who peddle this material want to achieve and exactly what you did.

The judge was right to evoke the metaphor of crossing the line. The language and procedures of the law require this clarity. Just a step away from the legal model, however, the metaphor becomes difficult to sustain. In particular, there is little consensus about why certain lines should be drawn in criminal terms.

Is the justification primarily deterrence (preventing worse future dangers to society), justice (people should have to pay a price for this), or revulsion about the material itself?

For legal purposes, the standard liberal line between words and deeds might still be drawn. But this does not require tired and overused cliches about “thought control”. The post-modern surveillance state may indeed be invading the boundaries of privacy, but it does not concern itself too much with people’s thoughts about morality and sexuality. These thoughts are “controlled” more by global market forces, operating not in the secret underworld of internet porn, but right in the open on prime-time TV. Talk shows, reality TV, teenage drama: these are the sites where moral lines about sexuality are being redrawn.

As for ideological violence, no one can pretend that the debate is about the integrity of a private sphere (where you live as you please) and a public sphere (where you can express what you like as long as it does not libel anyone or incite hatred). The continuing legacy of last century’s ideological violence — state crimes such as genocide, torture and mass killing; massive ethnic and religious slaughter; terrorism and suicide bombing — does not easily fit the emblematic vision of earnest citizens calmly discussing the abstract right to condone the use of violence.

Debates about internet pornography and violence are landmines in the current struggle for the survival of liberalism itself.

Stan Cohen, who died on 7 January 2013, was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the London School of Economics, and a contributor to Index on Censorship magazine

This article appeared in Index on Censorship magazine, volume 36, number 4 (2007)

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Under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt‘s press freedom and general freedom of expression were a convoluted issue at best. In theory the media was fairly free, but it was often impossible to set up an independent newspaper or get a television broadcast licence. The government couldn’t truly prevent the independent papers from printing something, but they could punish and intimidate them after the fact in multiple ways.

Well into the 21st century, it was forbidden to speak or write critically of Mubarak or his family. That taboo was eventually breached and Mubarak’s final years featured a parade of direct abuse from the opposition and independent press. But other barriers held firm. Every editor in the country could expect the occasional visit from the dreaded State Security Investigations agency. And they all knew that any mention of the military or Muslim-Christian tensions had to be dealt with very carefully to avoid the wrath of the government.

Nearly two years after the revolution that ousted Mubarak from power, the media scene is still something of a mixed bag. In some ways, being a journalist in post-revolutionary Egypt is even more complicated and treacherous than it ever was under Mubarak.

A media war in the new Egypt

As 2012 came to a close, the issue of public expression was particularly relevant, as the country’s main political factions seem destined to spend most of 2013 publicly screaming at each other.

Egypt’s public debate has become shrill and bitter as the country has split into deeply polarised camps: Islamists versus everybody else. President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies have succeeded in forcing through a rushed and controversial constitution — a process that has burned almost all bridges with the largely secularist opposition.

Protest outside the Presidential Palace in Cairo, 4 December 2012. Mohamed El Dahshan | Demotix

This polarisation is reflected in the country’s media. As Egypt has broken into warring camps, much of the media has followed suit and taken sides — leaving very little in the way of objective journalism. At times different media outlets seem to be reporting from alternate universes. One classic example of this came on 23 December, the day after a nationwide referendum on the new constitution.

Al Ahram, the venerable state-owned flagship daily paper, proclaimed in a front-page headline: “The People Sided With Democracy.” Meanwhile, from across the ideological divide, Al Masry Al Youm — the largest independent daily and Al Ahram’s strongest competitor — covered the same event with the front page headline: “Wholesale Violations.”

The fall of Mubarak and the collapse of his regime’s many restrictions on the media have certainly led to an explosion of new media in Egypt. Immediately after Mubarak’s ousting, a wave of new newspapers and satellite television channels appeared, kicking off a raucous new era of freewheeling expression. Much of the independent media — including several major satellite channels—feature talk shows that are heavily anti-government and anti-Islamist.

We’ve seen the creation of new media stars such as Bassem Youssef — a heart surgeon by training who has become the Egyptian equivalent of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. Youssef started out posting videos on YouTube in the midst of the revolution and immediately drew a huge audience. He now hosts a weekly show called Al Bernamig (The Programme) that has become essential viewing across the country.

In the realm of the state-owned media, the picture is far less encouraging. Critics charge — with some merit — that Morsi and his allies haven’t even tried to reform journalistic standards at state-owned newspapers and television channels; they’ve simply co-opted Mubarak’s old media machine for their own ends. State journalists — who were accustomed to dispensing Mubarak propaganda under the old regime — have smoothly shifted to dispensing Muslim Brotherhood propaganda under the new regime. This is less of a problem at newspapers such as Al-Ahram, which faces stiff competition from independent papers and whose readership is widely believed to be dwindling fast. But the dozens of state-owned television channels continue to hold tremendous sway over a population with a high rate of illiteracy.

Free expression under attack

The government has struggled to maintain a consistent policy on this newly liberated media. Despite proclamations of a new post-Mubarak era of freedom, prosecution of journalists has continued on-and-off since the revolution — both under Morsi and under the military government that immediately followed Mubarak. Most recently, prominent television talk show host Wael al-Ibrashy was interrogated for eight hours and released on LE100,000 bail (about GBP £10,000) on charges of insulting Egypt’s judiciary. And dozens of other journalists have been called in for questioning on similar grounds.

In August, firebrand anti-Islamist television host Tawfiq Okasha was arrested and the channel he owns shut down. His televised rants against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood often verged on incitement to violence and the episode that landed him in jail featured Okasha stopping just short of personally threatening the president.

Aside from the occasional journalist prosecution, there’s a disturbing new trend emerging in the past few months: direct intimidation of and violence against journalists in Egypt. Hazem Abu Ismail — a charismatic ultraconservative Salafist preacher has repeatedly rallied his slightly fanatical followers (known locally as the Hazemoon) against journalists who criticise him. They recently held a noisy several day-long sit-in outside Media Production City — where many of the most popular satellite talk shows are broadcast — openly intimidating the hosts and station employees as they came to work. Even more disturbingly, Abu Ismail’s followers were alleged to have recently attacked the offices of a heavily anti-Islamist opposition newspaper with petrol bombs, though the preacher took to Facebook to deny any involvement.

It’s not just the Islamists who are targeting journalists they dislike. Egypt’s secularist protestors are guilty of the same crime. The anti-Islamist forces absolutely despise the Al-Jazeera satellite news channel, regarding it as completely biased towards the Brotherhood. That antipathy came to a head in late November during a string of violent protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The anti-Islamist protestors firebombed a street-level studio of Al Jazeera Live Egypt — an offshoot Al Jazeera channel devoted to 24/7 Egypt news.

Earlier this year, we learned that there are limits to just how much freedom of expression the Egyptian public is willing to stomach. An amateurish YouTube video trailer for The Innocence Of Muslims, a film that insulted the life and legacy of the Prophet Muhammad touched of a week of angry protests outside the US embassy in Cairo. At one point, a small group of protestors invaded the embassy grounds and took down the US flag. The rage toward the makers of the film was understandable, but the anger directed at the US government was based on a widespread misunderstanding. Many of the protestors were angry at US President Barack Obama for “allowing” the film to be made and not immediately prosecuting those behind it. The protestors here simply didn’t understand or believe that blasphemy is not a crime in the United States and most of Europe.

Indeed there seems to be absolutely no sort of public appetite for that level of freedom of expression. A young and outspoken atheist activist named Alber Saber was arrested and eventually sentenced to three years in prison for allegedly promoting the offensive film on his Facebook page.

15 December: An Egyptian woman votes on the new constitution in Cairo. Sniperphoto Agency | Demotix

An uncertain future for free speech

The country’s new constitution — which was approved in late December by a 63.8 per cent vote in a national referendum — makes it clear that blasphemy will not be considered a freedom of expression issue. Article 44 of the constitution bluntly states that:

Defaming all religious messengers and prophets is prohibited.

But the constitution is far more murky when it comes to safeguarding the rights of journalists. Morsi and his supporters have hailed the document as enshrining unprecedented press freedoms. However an examination of the text reveals some potentially dangerous built-in loopholes to that freedom.

One article on freedom of the press clearly states:

The freedom of the press, printing, publication and mass media is guaranteed … The closure, prohibition or confiscation of media outlets is prohibited except with a court order.

But another article seems to open the door to a very broad interpretation of what exactly constitutes defamation and irresponsible public speech. Under the strangely-worded title of “Dignity and the prohibition against insults,” the article states:

Insulting or showing contempt toward any human being is prohibited.

Even in a healthy political environment, it’s impossible to imagine a free media functioning without somebody getting insulted or shown contempt. But given the absolutely toxic state of the modern Egyptian political playing field, this constitutional paradox seems likely to be tested almost immediately.

Ashraf Khalil is a Cairo-based journalist and author of Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation

The post What future for free speech in the new Egypt? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Guidelines issued by the Crown Prosecution Service today could give greater weight to free speech online by establishing a high threshold for prosecutions for offensive or abusive comments made on social networking sites.

Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has expressed concern over “the potential for a chilling effect on free speech” for prosecuting people who send communications that are “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing.”

Starmer said that a prosecution was unlikely to be necessary, proportionate or in the public interest if the communication were “swiftly removed, blocked, not intended for a wide audience or not obviously beyond what could conceivably be tolerable or acceptable in a diverse society which upholds and respects freedom of expression.”

Prosecutors will now be required to differentiate between such messages and communications that amount to credible threats of violence, a targeted campaign of harassment or those which breach court orders.

The age and maturity of a suspect will also need to be taken into consideration, particularly if they are under 18. The guidelines state that prosecutions of children would rarely be in the public interest, as children may not appreciate the potential harm of their communications.

“We welcome these guidelines and hope that they will be used to end the excessive prosecutions that we have seen in recent years,” said Index CEO, Kirsty Hughes. “In a plural society that respects free expression, there is no right not to be offended, and these guidelines acknowledge that.”

The UK has seen a recent rise in social media prosecutions. In October, Lancashire man Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for making “despicable” jokes about missing five-year-old April Jones on Facebook, having pleaded guilty to “sending by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive” (section 127 (1)a of the Communications Act 2003). Also in October, Azhar Ahmed, who posted on Facebook that British soldiers should “die and go to hell”, was given a community order and a fine.

Paul Chambers, the man at the centre of the Twitter Joke Trial who was convicted in 2010 of sending a “menacing communication” after jokingly tweeting that he would blow an airport “sky high”, told Index: “I’m far more heartened than I expected to be. All the noises coming out of the early discussions suggested that lessons had not been learned, but it appears the DPP has finally taken a step in the right direction.”

He added:

I’d like to know, however, are how this is to be applied to arrests, given that this is more geared towards prosecutions. Users shouldn’t face arrest for the same reasons they shouldn’t face prosecutions in these situations. Secondly, given that the guidelines make mention of users who immediately take down the posts and show genuine remorse, where does this leave Azhar Ahmed, who did exactly that yet still finds himself with a criminal conviction. There should be moves to rescind this immediately.

The guidelines are open to public consultation, which is available on the CPS website and closes on 13 March 2013.

More on this story:

Read the guidelines in full here

Graham Linehan on the Twitter Joke Trial

Padraig Reidy: We cannot keep prosecuting jokes

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