5 May 2010 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Nigel Warburton
Zoo Magazine’s illustrious Agony Uncle Danny Dyer‘s advice this week to a broken hearted correspondent was to go out and break another woman’s heart. Either that or “the other option is to cut your ex’s face, and then no one will want her”. This is neither funny nor nice.
The Sun reports that Dyer claims he was misquoted. But whether or not that’s true, should such comments be legal? If this were a genuine incitement to violence, then clearly not. But it reads like a bad attempt at a sick joke. And do we really want to censor sick jokes?
The difficulty here is that literal readings are no good when we are in the realm of humour and irony. This is one of those classic problems of drawing the line.
The patron saint of free expression, John Stuart Mill, recognised that it’s not the words but the use that makes all the difference. “Corn Dealers Are Starvers of the Poor” was fine in a newspaper editorial, but waved on a placard in front of a corn dealer’s house would be an incitement to violence and so should not be tolerated.
But deciding in the Zoo case isn’t that simple. Imagine what we would feel if the correspondent took the advice literally. Would we say he just didn’t get the joke? Or would that advice then, retrospectively, have morphed into an incitement to an evil action?
Should all speech delivered in an ironic tone be tolerated even when it literally incites violence? The trouble with written words, as Socrates noticed, was that when the author is not present, they can’t tell you exactly what he or she meant. So no easy answer here (and I mean that literally).
Update: Zoo has issued an apology, blaming an “extremely regrettable production error”.
20 Apr 2010 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized
The anti-internet filtering software, Haystack, received the necessary export license from the US government last week to sell their product to Iran in an effort to help Iranian citizens gain free speech. Inspired by the internet restrictions during the June 2009 elections, the software uses mathematical formulas to mask users’ identities and to allow them to access and post items on government blocked websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and YouTube. Haystack was created by the non-profit Censorship Research Center in San Francisco, and according to the company’s executive director, Austin Heap, the only way to disable the software is by disabling the entire internet.
30 Mar 2010 | Uncategorized
This is really quite brilliant. Philip Pullman is asked whether his new book on Jesus is “offensive”.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ3VcbAfd4w&feature=player_embedded
“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That’s all I have to say on that subject.”
Hat tip: Cory Doctorow
10 Mar 2010 | Uncategorized
ISPs, Google, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo and the Open Rights Group sign letter saying bill threatens free speech
In a letter published in the Financial Times today, digital rights campaigners and consumer and industry groups argue a key amendment in the
Digital Economy bill is “poor law making” that will encourage site blocking and damage free expression.
Dear Sirs,
We regret that the House of Lords last week adopted amendment 120A to the Digital Economy Bill. This amendment not only significantly changes the injunctions procedure in the UK but will lead to an increase in Internet service providers blocking websites accused of illegally hosting copyrighted material without cases even reaching a judge. The amendment seeks to address the legitimate concerns of rights-holders but would have unintended consequences which far outweigh any benefits it could bring.
Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other Internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take. There are myriad legal, technical and practical issues to reconcile before this can be considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option. In some cases, these may never be reconciled. These issues have not even been considered in this case.
The Lords have been thoughtful in their consideration of the Bill to date. It is therefore bitterly disappointing that the House has allowed an amendment with obvious shortcomings to proceed without challenging its proponents to consider and address the full consequences. Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the Internet in the UK and elsewhere, threatening freedom of speech and the open Internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a Parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor law making.
We are particularly concerned that a measure of this kind as a general purpose policy could have an adverse impact on the reputation of the UK as a place to do online business and conflict with the broader objectives of Digital Britain. This debate has created a tension between specific interest groups and the bigger prize of promoting a policy framework that supports our digital economy and appropriately balances rights and responsibilities. All parties should take steps to safeguard this prize and place it at the heart of public policy in this area.
Yours sincerely,
Tom Alexander, CEO, Orange UK
Richard Allan, Director of Policy EU, Facebook
Neil Berkett, Chief Executive, Virgin Media
Matt Brittin, Managing Director, Google UK and Ireland
Charles Dunstone, Chairman, Talk Talk Group
Stephen Fry
Jessica Hendrie-Liaño, Chair, Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA)
Jill Johnstone, International Director, Consumer Focus
Jim Killock, Executive Director,
Open Rights Group
Mark Lewis, Managing Director, eBay UK Ltd
Ian Livingston, Chief Executive, BT Group
Professor Sarah Oates, University of Glasgow
Dr Jenny Pickerill, University of Leicester
Mark Rabe, Managing Director, Yahoo! UK and Ireland
Dr Paul Reilly, University of Leicester
Jess Search, Founder, Shooting People independent film makers
Professor Ian Walden, Queen Mary, University of London
Tom Watson MP
