30 Apr 2014 | Asia and Pacific, Digital Freedom, News and features, United States
A sign saying “trading profits over people” during a rally to protest the proposed TPP trade agreement and NAFTA Agreement on January 31, 2014 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo: Shutterstock)
As President Barack Obama returns from Asia trade talks today, freedom of speech campaigners plan to deliver nearly three million signatures to the White House, gathered over recent weeks on the Stop The Secrecy website.
Freedom of expression campaigners have warned that the Transpacific Partnership trade agreement, which Obama has been negotiating with a dozen Asian governments, will have wide-reaching censorship implications.
With secret negotiations reportedly at a critical stage, campaigners have mounted a global plan to draw the attention to the role that internet providers would play in preventing the free flow of information.
The draft chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement on Intellectual Property— in its current leaked version mandates signatory governments to provide legal incentives for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to privately enforce copyright protection rules.
The TPP wants service providers to undertake the financial and administrative burdens of becoming copyright cops, serving what the Electronic Frontier Foundation call “a copyright maximalist agenda”.
The agreement also proposes wide-reaching alterations to the controversial topic of copyright laws, including laws that require ISPs to terminate their users’ Internet access on repeat allegations of copyright infringement, requirements to filter all internet communications for potentially copyright-infringing material, ISP obligations to block access to websites that allegedly infringe or facilitate copyright infringement, efforts to force intermediaries to disclose the identities of their customers to IP rights holders on an allegation of copyright infringement.
While this might be good news for music, film and TV companies – who have seen profits fall off the back of websites such as the Pirate Bay, but a spokesperson for Electronic Frontier Foundation warned the result could be a “cautious and conservative” internet afraid to run into draconian enforcement policies laid out under the new TPP rules.
“Private ISP enforcement of copyright poses a serious threat to free speech on the internet, because it makes offering open platforms for user-generated content economically untenable,” argue EFF.
“For example, on an ad-supported site, the costs of reviewing each post will generally exceed the pennies of revenue one might get from ads. Even obvious fair uses could become too risky to host.”
EFF also warned that ISPs take-down “ask questions later” approach to copyright infringements could give corporations too much power to remove time-sensitive user-generated content, for example a supporting video for an election campaign.
“Expression is often time-sensitive: reacting to recent news or promoting a candidate for election. Online takedown requirements open the door to abuse, allowing the claim of copyright to trump the judicial system, and get immediate removal, before the merits are assessed.”
TPP, which is currently being negotiated between the United States and a dozen major markets in Asia, It is a key plank in Obama’s much feted “pivot to Asia” and could affect up to 60% of American exports and 40% of world trade.
The US-led treaty has proposed criminal sanctions on copyright infringement and – according to EFF – could force internet service providers to monitor and censor content more aggressively, and even block entire websites wholesale if requested by rights holders.
Backed by a number of groups including Avaaz, Reddit, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Open Media International, the anti-TPP coalition is also employing guerrila marketing techniques. These include projecting campaign slogans onto key government buildings in Washington, in an attempt to draw wider attention to the secretive talks, as well as a digital banner that can be easily installed on any website.
The trade negotiations have controversially gone on largely behind closed doors – and while talks are believed to have stalled between Japan and the United States in the latest round – many countries, including Vietnam and Australia, are vociferous advocates.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, who master-minded the release of a rare leaked chapter of the agreement in November, is adamant the deal’s worst aspects lie in its approach to intellectual property.
Speaking when the documents were first published on the Wikileaks website, he observed: “If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons”
He added “If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
OpenMedia’s Executive Director Steve Anderson, told Index “If the TPP’s censorship plan goes through, it will force ISPs to act as “Internet Police” monitoring our internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites.”
OpenMedia, although based in Canada, has led the charge in co-ordinating the campaign to shed light on censorship aspects of the deal.
“A deal this extreme would never pass with the whole world watching – that’s why U.S. lobbyists and bureaucrats are using these closed-door meetings to try to ram it through. Our projection will shine a light on this secretive and extreme agreement, sending decision-makers a clear message that we expect to take part in decisions that affect our daily lives.”
This article was originally published on April 30, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
22 Apr 2014 | India, News and features, Politics and Society
In 2013, by way of abundant caution, Harper Collins India decided to pixellate a total of nine panels, including all the close-ups of penises in David Brown’s graphic novel “Paying for It.” While the content, in which Brown narrated his encounters with sex-workers, was left untouched, the publishers were wary of India’s laws against obscenity which make the depiction of nudity almost verboten. This is because a sheet of prudery covers any sexual expression and also governs the legal regulation of sexual speech.
Hence, many welcomed the Indian Supreme Court’s February 2014 ruling that merely because a picture showed nudity, it wouldn’t be caught within the obscenity net- “a picture can be deemed obscene only if it is lascivious, appeals to prurient interests and tends to deprave and corrupt those likely to read, see or hear it,” and having a redeeming social value would save it from being censored.
The decision came in an appeal filed in 1993. Sports World, a magazine published from Calcutta, had reproduced the photo on the cover of German magazine Stern. In that photograph, Boris Becker had posed nude with his then fiancée Barbara Feltus; it was his way of protesting against the racist abuse the couple were being subjected to. A solicitous lawyer dragged Sports World to court, alleging that the morals of society and young, impressionable minds were in jeopardy. He cited Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code which prohibits and penalises any form of expression tending towards prurience and encouraging depravity in the readers or viewers. The court rejected the contention, holding that the Hicklin’s Test for determining obscenity has become obsolete, besides imposing unreasonable fetters on the freedom of expression. This test, formulated by the House of Lords in 1868 in Regina v. Hicklin stipulated that ‘‘The test of obscenity is whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.’’
Instead, the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Roth – wherein “contemporary community standards” were held to be a far more reasonable arbiter, was directed to be adopted. The court also affirmatively cited the decision in Butler which, while upholding the test in Roth, added that anything which showed undue exploitation of sex or degrading treatment of women would remain prohibited.
While the Hicklin’s Test being jettisoned is a cause of relief, the judgement by no means can be held as finally freeing Indian law from the shackles of “comstockery.” George Bernard Shaw had coined this term in 1905 while raging against Anthony Comstock who had taken it upon himself to rid American society of vice. For Comstock, lust and sexual desire were abhorrent, and as he candidly proclaimed anything which even remotely arouses any sexual desire was to be dealt with in the most stringent manner. No wonder he had called Shaw an “Irish smut-peddler” in retaliation.
Gymnophobia, or the fear of nudity, isn’t something new to India’s Supreme Court. Also, it has always been female nudity and the fear of sexual desire which have governed the Court’s opinions. Its image-blaming position has repeatedly been used to reinforce the assumption that sexually explicit images trigger urges in men for which they cannot be held responsible. Depictions of nudity WERE condoned only if they achieved some “laudable social purpose” such as encouraging family planning or making people aware of caste-based atrocities. As Martha Nussbaum points out, collapsing the “disgust” for the nude female body with male sexual arousal and regarding sex as something furtive and impure results in the revulsion being projected on to the female body, thereby making the legal definition of obscenity collude with misogyny.
The present decision is no different. Because Feltus’ breasts were covered by Becker’s arm, and also because Feltus’ father was the photographer, it was held that only the most depraved mind would be aroused and titillated by the magazine cover. Most troubling of all is the overt reliance on contemporary community standards. True, that Indian society has evolved since 1993, but as Brenda Cossman details the scene in Canada in Butler’s aftermath, community standards became a rubric for majoritarian sexual hegemony, resulting in persecution and censorship by prudish vigilantes. And of course, it goes without saying that the search for “redeeming social value” usually ends at puritans’ doorsteps.
Comstockery’s tattered banner, emblazoned with “Morals, not art!” flies aflutter in India.
This article was posted on 22 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
17 Mar 2014 | Volume 43.01 Spring 2014
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”In the Spring issue of the magazine, we include a special report, the war of words, on the use of propaganda and censorship during conflicts.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
This theme seems particularly timely with the current situation in Crimea, where we are seeing classic propaganda techniques being rolled out to rally support for the vote to join Russia. Our special report of 15 articles and essays, starts with WWI where the current use of the term propaganda was invented and looks at poster campaigns, and propaganda journalism in the USA, but our writers, who include Lyse Doucet, David Aaronovitch, Rana Mitter, and serving army officer Ric Cole, also look at WWII, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
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Natasha Joseph interviews a journalist who worked in South Africa during apartheid, and what it was like to file stories from a newsroom knowing one of your colleagues was a spy; and Scottish journalist John MacLeod reports on a bombing cover-up in Clydebank, near Glasgow, where a huge swath of the town was flattened, and the rest of the country was left completely unaware because of wartime censorship. This Scottish story is still not that well known, even today. Something that illustrates the power of the cover-up during wartime, is the way details of the wartime flu epidemic was kept from millions of people all over the world.
In the other sections of the magazine, Irena Maryniak looks at the rise of racism and nationalism in Hungary; and Konstanty Gebert reports on hate crime and anti-semitism in Poland. The magazine includes two articles about censorship in science, one from Canada and one from the United States.
Also in this issue:
• Samizdat still going: underground newspapers in Belarus
• First extract in English of a controversial Turkish play
• Film fans go head to head on which decade has seen the strongest women’s voices on film. And don’t miss our competition to votes on the decade, and win tickets to a screening at Rich Mix cinema
• How do you feel about propaganda? Take our survey.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
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7 Mar 2014 | News and features, Religion and Culture, Ukraine, Young Writers / Artists Programme
As the Euromaidan protests gripped Ukraine, French street-artist Roti travelled to Kiev. He was eager to support protesters who were struggling with a violent police response to their government’s tilt toward Russia.
For months Roti had worked on an idea for a sculpture: A woman emerging out of water. The concept, which was originally meant for Paris, took on new meaning as the demonstrators in Kiev became set on revolution.
Roti cast his idea in marble and the sculpture, New Ukraine, became an allegory for Euromaidan protesters. The woman’s face, toes and hands protruded from the block of stone. As she struggled for freedom, she created ripples in the stone surrounding her – after all, discontent spreads.
On January 7, 2014, the artist illegally installed his work at the center of Kiev’s Independence Square. “It’s a gift. Not to a nation but to its people”, Roti declared. His intentions were clear. The work came as attacks on journalists and protesters became more and more regular. New Ukraine was a symbol of hope and progress at a time when resolve could have easily wavered.
The night of the installation, protesters celebrated by dancing and singing in the street. Confidence seemed momentarily rejuvenated. In the following weeks clashes between police and protesters would claim their first lives.
New Ukraine is not the only street-art to offer support to the Ukrainian people. Graffiti decorates Kiev’s main square – crossed out swastikas and the slogan “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” have become common features.
During protest, street-art becomes a barometer of social consciousness. Scrawled words and images on city walls reflect changing attitudes and a disdain for the ruling authority. The stencils of President Yanukovych’s body, punctured with bullet holes, were a more extreme example.
Like the ripples of New Ukraine, street art spread ideas through Kiev and further afield. With Twitter and Reddit offering a more collective version of the news, artists’ efforts escaped the borders of Ukraine and communicated their message to the global community. They achieved impact through imagery and reached a more diverse audience than most newspapers.
It was on Reddit that I discovered a photograph of a police barricade. It had been painted with a cartoon depicting a Ukrainian flag holding hands with a European flag as Russia looks on, scowling. The message was simple but memorable.
Protest posters also played an important role in boosting morale. Displayed around Kiev during the early days of the crisis, they highlighted the government’s inconsistencies and the power of the Ukrainian people. Of course, the country’s flag’s blue and yellow is the overriding color theme. Pairing graphic design with emotionally engaging political statements – “I am a drop in the ocean” – these works were incredibly empowering.
With a selection of these posters currently on display in Edmonton, Canada, it’s easy to see how imagery has the power to spread a political message. The exhibition features 50 designs which were posted around Ukraine. Each work was designed to encourage their audience to identify emotionally while keeping the message clear.
Artists use symbolism to monumentalise protesters’ efforts. With museums and galleries filled with artist’s renditions of historical events, we are programmed to link iconic moments with art. As creativity littered Kiev’s Independence Square, demonstrators were spurred on – the art around them transformed Euromaidan into a very stirring moment. Demonstrators were reminded: Here is the chance to make history.
Although they have since been annulled, anti-protest laws and restrictions on social media revealed the extent of how close Ukrainians came to losing the right to express themselves.
But on the streets, ideas would have continued to appear on walls and barricades. Street-artists cannot be tracked by algorithms. During times of crisis, they will always be on hand to support the people and spread their message.
This article was published on March 7, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
