Posts Tagged ‘Politics and society’
April 22nd, 2013
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has released this handy flowchart illustrating who will and who won’t be covered by the proposed new press/web regulator. Suffice to say, Index has one or two problems with it.
UPDATE: This, from the DCMS website, is also a little confusing:
Despite not falling under the definition of relevant publisher, any publication that is exempt as a micro-business as a result of these amendments could still choose to join a regulator and receive the legal benefits otherwise only available to relevant publishers in the regulator. That means protection from exemplary damages.
If you’re exempt as a “micro-business”, aren’t you supposed to be protected from exemplary damages anyway?
April 18th, 2013
The Queen’s Speech is set to take place on 8 May this year, and according to UK-based campaigning group 38 Degrees, Home Secretary Theresa May is still pushing for the controversial Communications Data Bill to go through.
The £1.8 million plan — known as “the Snooper’s Charter” by opponents — would require that all telecommunications companies monitor the phone, e-mail, and web usage of citizens. Index has previously called the draft bill “unacceptable”, and said last year that “the decisions the UK Parliament takes on this bill will impact on human rights both in the UK and beyond, not least in authoritarian states.”
Write to your MP to and let them know that the bill should be dropped.
April 18th, 2013
A photojournalist was gunned down on 14 April in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Photographer Walgney Assis Carvalho was shot in the back during a day spent fishing in the town of Coronel Fabriciano.
According to the police, Carvalho was accosted by a hooded man on a motorcycle who shot him several times before fleeing. The crime has been linked to the killing of a radio presenter last March.
Police have not confirmed the cause of the crime. However, state deputy Durval Ângelo, who is president of the Human Rights Committee for Minas Gerais’s Legislative Assembly, posted on Twitter that the photographer had information about the shooting of radio presenter Rodrigo Neto, who was killed in the town of Ipatinga on 8 March.
Although Neto’s murder remains unsolved, state deputy Ângelo claims the presenter had given Carvalho information about policemen involved in crimes on the Ipatinga area. The case is still being investigated by police.
Walgney Carvalho worked freelance for 5 years at Vale do Aço’s Police desk. Rodrigo Neto had started working on the same newspaper one week before getting killed.
Both Brazil’s National Newspapers Association and the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism issued statements denouncing the photographer’s killing.
April 17th, 2013
This is a statement from the Libel Reform Campaign
How can it be right that companies delivering public services can’t be criticised by citizens?
At a debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday 16 April 2013 the Government rejected attempts to reform the libel laws to limit companies’ ability to use sue individuals. The reform would have asked companies to show they had been harmed before they would be allowed to take it case. It would also have put the Derbyshire principle, which prevents public bodies from suing individuals for libel into law, and would have extended this principle to private companies performing public functions. Labour pushed the Government on this clause and forced a vote which the Government won 298 to 230.
But Minister for Justice Helen Grant MP said the Government would “actively consider” amendments to the Defamation Bill that would require corporations to show financial loss before they can sue for libel, following pressure from Shadow Minister for Justice Sadiq Khan MP. The Defamation Bill will be debated in the House of Lords on Tuesday 23 April.
Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship: “It is a very unwelcome blot on an important bill that the Government voted to allow corporations to continue to pressurise and sue in ways that chill free speech”
Tracey Brown, Sense About Science: “We are pleased that so many MPs recognise the need for corporations to show actual financial harm and grateful to the MPs who worked for this. While it is deeply disappointing that the corporations’ clause has been removed, their efforts have at least led the Government to concede that this should be revisited in the Lords. It cannot be right that the court is not asked to consider whether companies have faced loss, or are likely to, before a case can go ahead. It cannot be right that citizens can’t criticise delivery of public services whether by private companies or by the Government.”
Jo Glanville, Director, English PEN: “The Government needs to do more than “actively consider” amendments. Ministers in the House of Lords should now table an early amendment, requiring corporations to show financial loss before they sue. We’re depending on the Lords now to deliver the reform that all the parties signed up to. It’s essential that companies are no longer allowed to exploit libel law to bully whistleblowers into silence. This has always been a key demand for the campaign.”
Simon Singh, defendant in British Chiropractic Association v Singh: “The majority of the cases that galvanized public support for libel reform involved corporations, so the final Defamation Bill must include a clause that limits the powers for corporations to bully their critics into silence. The proposal on the table is reasonable, modest and fair. Ignoring this proposal on corporations would leave the door open to further abuses of libel law by those who want to block the public’s access to information concerning everything from consumer issues to medical treatments.”
April 16th, 2013
The Libel Reform Campaign is concerned that the government will force through an amendment tabled by libel barrister Edward Garner QC allowing corporations to sue individuals for libel
(more…)
April 15th, 2013
Digital rights activists from around the UK met in Manchester for Open Rights Group’s first ever ORGCon North on Saturday.
John Buckman, chair of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), delivered the keynote speech: “Britain, under the thumb of…”
He filled in the blank with references to the copyright industry, the new Royal Charter on press regulation, overreaching child protection restrictions, the EU, the US, and private web companies, all of which pose significant challenges to digital freedom of expression in the UK.
The rest of the day was split between four panel sessions and eight impromptu “unconference” sessions for which participants pitched ideas and convened small groups to discuss them.
I spoke on a panel about the right to offend, alongside ORG’s Peter Bradwell and The Next Web’s Martin Bryant. Overly broad and outdated legislation, most notably Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act and Section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act, are regularly used to criminalise freedom of expression both online and offline in the UK. Despite a successful campaign to drop “insulting” words from the grounds on which someone can be prosecuted for offence under Section 5, the fact that neither of these provisions address the speaker’s (or tweeter’s) intentions continues to chill freedom of expression in the UK.
Also troubling is the fact that other states, India and the UAE for example, point to these and other British laws as justification to prosecute offensive expression in their own jurisdictions. I argued that protecting everyone’s fundamental right to freedom of expression is more important than protecting the feelings of a few people who might take offense to satirical, blasphemous or otherwise unsavoury views. For freedom of expression to be preserved in society, potentially offensive expression requires the utmost protection.
Another panel addressed the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation, which intends to strengthen existing privacy principles set out in 1995 and harmonise individual member states’ laws on data protection. Provisions in the proposal around consent, data portability and the “right to be forgotten” aim to give users greater control of their personal data and hold companies more accountable for their use of it. Many companies that rely on user data oppose the regulation and have been lobbying hard against it with the UK government on their side whereas some privacy advocates argue it does not go far enough.
There were also discussions on the open rights implications of copyright legislation and the UK’s Draft Communications Data bill (AKA Snooper’s Charter), which looks set to make a comeback in the Queen’s speech on May 8.
The “unconference” sessions addressed specific causes for concern around digital rights in the UK and abroad. I participated in a session on strategies for obtaining government data in the UK and another on the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008. This Act, along with the Protect America Act of 2007 legalised warrantless wiretapping of foreign intelligence targets. Digital rights activists took notice of the laws because the rise of cloud computing means even internal UK and EU data is potentially susceptible to US surveillance mechanisms.
Other “unconference” sessions focused on anonymity, password security, companies’ terms of service, activism and medical confidentiality.
The full OrgCon North agenda is available here. ORG’s national conference will take place on 8 June and will feature EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow who wrote the much circulated and cited “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996.
Brian Pellot is Digital Policy Adviser for Index on Censorship. Follow him @brianpellot
April 12th, 2013
This is a statement from The Libel Reform Campaign
Four days before the Defamation Bill has its final and decisive debate in the House of Commons we find ourselves writing to you about disgraceful behaviour from politicians that will put everything we’ve worked for at risk.
Conservative MP and libel barrister Sir Edward Garnier is trying to remove the part of the Bill that would limit companies’ ability to use libel threats to intimidate critics into silence. His attempt to remove this will be voted on during debate on the Bill on Tuesday 14thApril. Please write to your MP and tell them not to support Garnier’s amendment.
We’ve heard that the Conservatives might back Garnier on this, and that the Lib Dems will join their Conservative colleagues even though restricting corporations from suing individuals unless they can prove harm is Lib Dem party policy! It was voted for overwhelmingly in the House of Lords. Please write to Nick Clegg and David Cameron and urge them to tell their parties not to support Garnier and to make sure the clause on companies becomes part of the Defamation Bill.
Read our briefing for MPs on why this along with a clear strong public interest defence would do the most to lessen the damage the laws are doing to free and open debate. A Bill without either reform would be a wasted opportunity. Please point your MP towards our briefing when you write to them.
We’ve seen the best of democracy in action – we have forced libel reform onto the political agenda and when politicians have listened to us all we’ve seen the best improvements to the Defamation Bill. But behind closed door dealing and cowardly behaviour threatens everything we’ve worked for. Please tell your MP not to support Garnier amendment and tell David Cameron and Nick Clegg that the Government shouldn’t either.
April 12th, 2013
The Department of Culture Media and Sport this week held a “mini-consultation” with the aim of soothing fears that bloggers may find themselves caught in the net of the proposed post-Leveson press regulator.
The fears stem from the initial drafting of the scope of the new regulator, which suggested that any “relevant publisher” of “news-related” material would be expected to join the regulator, and could face the “stick” of exemplary damages if they did not have a “reasonable” excuse for not being part of the regulatory system. These definitions applies to vast swathes of the web, as well as the traditional newspaper industry.
For many, the realisation dawned that the new regulator would not simply cover the “bad guys” of the Murdoch papers and the Mail; rather, in an age when anyone can be a journalist, so too can anyone with an online presence be regarded as a publisher of “news-related material”.
The task of defining who’s in and who’s out was brought into focus when leading site Mumsnet asked the DCMS whether it would be seen as a relevant publisher of news-related material. “We don’t know”, came the reply, reflecting the ill-thought nature of the whole process. Shortly afterwards, Mumsnet were told they would “probably not” be covered, but that ultimately, it would be for the courts to decide.
The DCMS then set out to develop a list of who would not be covered: Wine magazine Decanter was mentioned as not being a news publisher. This, frankly, is an insult to Decanter, which publishes wine news for people who are interested in wine.
Then we were told individual bloggers would not be covered, but that blogs that had multiple writers, or an editorial process, might. So that’s group blogs regulated, while, for example, the extremely influential and widely-read Jack of Kent blog, run by a single person, lawyer and journalist David Allen Green, is not.
“Small-scale” blogs are now, we are told, to be protected, but how does one define this? On what scale do we measure “small”?
Confusing? Yes. Because the whole thing is confused. The entire proposal is flawed, which is why Index had no wish to take part in this week’s consultation: we believe the whole situation to be irretrievable. The principal Index has consistently held — that only non-statute based regulation can guarantee a free press — has only been reinforced by the current fiasco.
Politicians and campaigners are desperately trying to keep this ill-conceived “press reform” momentum afloat, having seen it dragged out to sea on a self-generated wave of something-must-be-donery. These blogger consultations — the latest attempts to make sense of a nonsensical law — are the actions of a government, and a movement, not waving but drowning.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer at Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
