Daily Archives: March 27, 2013

Index on Censorship opposes recommendations for the statutory underpinning of press regulation

Index urges that there is a serious, considered debate about Lord Justice Levesons recommendations. The free speech organisation opposes the statutory underpinning of press regulation proposed by Lord Justice Leveson.

Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship said:

We consider that the statutory-voluntary approach to independent press regulation would undermine press freedom in the UK. However, we support the proposal for cheap, effective arbitration, which would help victims get swift redress to their complaints.

Index welcomed the response of the Prime Minister to the Inquirys findings. In a statement to parliament, David Cameron said that he had serious concerns about passing legislation in relation to the press, which he rightly said would be an enormous step.

Kirsty Hughes said: We share David Camerons concerns that statutory underpinning would undermine free speech, and could be the start of a slippery slope of government interference in the media.

Indexs response to Lord Justice Levesons main recommendations are:

Statutory underpinning of an independent regulatory body: Statutory underpinning of an independent and voluntary regulator is a contradiction in terms. Any law which sets out the criteria that the press must meet, by definition introduces some government or political control of the media. Politicians of all hues have an interest in getting the most positive media coverage they can. Keeping print media independent of government so journalists can report on political debate and decision-making, robustly and without fear, is fundamental. Even light statutory regulation could easily be revisited, toughened and potentially abused once the principle of no government control of the press is breached.

Arbitration service: Index welcomes Lord Justice Levesons proposal for cheap, effective arbitration.

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Index on Censorship ’s response to the Leveson report

Censorship Art law News Switzerland Zurich court bans book after church members file legal complaint

By Gareth Harris and Christine Coste. Web only Published online: 27 March 2013

A row over photography censorship has broken out in Switzerland which could, says the director of a major Swiss museum, lead to institutions backing down from mounting shows that focus on real-life situations. Sam Stourdz, the director of the Muse de lElyse, has spoken out in defence of the photographer Christian Lutz whose book, In Jesus Name, has been withdrawn from sale in Switzerland.

The volume includes images of a Swiss religious group called the International Christian Fellowship (ICF). Twenty-one of the churchs members who feature in the book, which depicts baptisms and other church celebrations, subsequently filed a complaint. They consented to being photographed but not to a publication, says their Zurich-based lawyer Marc Weber.

In January, the Zurich District Court banned the sale and distribution of the book. The 21 plaintiffs are due to file another lawsuit with the same court by the end of March in order to uphold the ban; the case could eventually end up in the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The final decision will certainly have an impact on the photography profession in Switzerland, says Weber, who describes the 21 plaintiffs as visitors on events and trips organised by the ICF.

Stourdz told our sister paper Le Journal des Arts that there is a risk that self-censorship could now creep into this type of reportage, and that institutions become more wary of showing such works. In Jesus Name forms part of a trilogy focusing on the issue of power, which was due to go on show at the Muse de lElyse this summer. The museum says that the exhibition of Lutzs work will go ahead as planned, although the content has yet to be decided.

Lutz allegedly failed to ask the sitters permission to publish the photographs, Weber says. The court said that a consent for being photographed does not lead automatically to a implicit consent to a commercial use of the photographs and a publication respectively. Further, since the book predominantly contains personal and intimate pictures, the plaintiffs could have expected in good faith that the photographer would inform them in advance regarding his choice of the pictures, and ask them for an explicit approval, he adds.

Lutz, however, told The Art Newspaper: I am surprised as they [the ICF] know the project in depth. I showed [the ICF] my previous works and explained my approach. They gave me their permission verbally and allowed me to follow its members. No image was taken without their knowledge. The book subsequently does not contain any damaging images.

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Censorship row breaks out in Switzerland over photobook

A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to punish Chinese Internet company Baidu for blocking pro-democracy works on its search engine, with one legal expert stating that the case was more of a publicity stunt than an actual legal challenge to Chinas online censorship.

It is well known that China regularly censors anti-government content on the Internet, with local companies such as Baidu required to comply. But the U.S. lawsuit, filed two years ago by eight pro-democracy activists, claimed that both the company and the Chinese government had violated New Yorks free speech laws. This was because Baidus censorship extended to users accessing the site from New York, the lawsuit argued.

On Monday, however, Baidu won dismissal of the case after Judge Jesse Furman of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that the company had not been properly served the court document papers. China, invoking an international treaty, refused to comply with serving the court papers, stating that it would infringe its sovereignty or security.

The lawsuits plaintiffs have 30 days to propose another way to serve the court papers to Baidu. Attorneys for the plaintiffs could not immediately be reached for comment. The lawsuit had originally demanded Baidu pay US$16 million in damages for censoring pro-democracy works from the eight activists.

Although the lawsuit had initially grabbed the media spotlight when it was first filed, the case had little chance of holding up in court, said Stan Abrams, a legal expert in China. Baidu is a private foreign company, and has no legal duty to serve users in New York, he added. Instead, the plaintiffs were likely hoping the lawsuit would draw attention to their pro-democracy cause.

Did they succeed in that or not? I guess were talking about it, so to that extent they did. But I dont see this as headline news, Abrams said. Its hard to keep people paying attention because you knew this case was going to lose.

Michael Kan covers IT, telecom and Internet in China for the IDG News Service. More by Michael Kan, IDG News Service

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US censorship lawsuit against China's Baidu dismissed

26 March 2013 Last updated at 20:23 ET

You have written something politically sensitive on one of China's "weibo" microblogging sites. So how much time passes before it gets deleted? And what does it reveal about how Chinese censors work? Computer scientists Jed Crandall and Dan Wallach explain the findings of a study they conducted.

In China, internet penetration has grown massively in the last decade - from 4.6% in 2002 to 42.1% in 2012.

Microblogging site Sina Weibo only launched in 2010, but it now has 300 million users and about 100 million messages are sent daily. It clearly plays an important role in the discourse surrounding current events in China.

The Chinese government seems to require Chinese companies to maintain internal censorship regimes.

There have been several interesting studies on how Chinese censorship works and how to work around it, but we wanted to know how the censors do it and how they make their censorship scale to manage hundreds of millions of users.

We found a landscape in which a post could be deleted as quickly as five minutes after being put online and where the censors appear not to work a regular day, but seem to take a break when China's all-important 19:00 news comes on.

So how did we make such observations?

Last year - along with several colleagues - we spent 30 days observing 3,500 users on Sina Weibo to track the fate of their posts. During this time around 300 of the accounts were deleted - that's about 12% of the total. We further examined data about the posts and that provided some fascinating insights into how the censors go about their job.

We looked at users who have been censored and then see how long their to-be-censored posts survived. Those who are more often censored are also censored faster which shows they are getting more scrutiny than other users.

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The astonishing speed of Chinese censorship