In France, Only Journalists Can Film Violence

BostonBTS sends word that the French Constitutional Council has just made it illegal to film violence unless you are a professional journalist (or to distribute a video containing violence). The law was approved exactly 16 years after amateur videographer George Holliday filmed Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King. The Council was tidying up a body of law about offenses against the public order, and wanted to ban "happy slapping." A charitable reading would be that the lawmakers stumbled into unintended consequences. Not according to Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi: "The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said [Cohet]. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet."

Comments

In France?!

[mi]

Wait a minute... Is not France, like, the only hope the humanity has to avoid the, caugh-caugh, Fascism of the "single-polar world", in which we all found ourselves after the USSR's (unfortunate, was not it?) collapse?

Trolling? Maybe, but only a little...

Re:Workaround

[SengirV]

Get a state approved license.

So where are all the French loving leftist now?

Re:liberty

[Anonymous Coward]

I like it, when U.S. people rant about their supposed freedom and liberty.

Are you talking about your personal "freedom" taken away by your so-called patriot laws?
Or perhaps the freedom to make everyone else in the world wonder about U.S. mental sanity when they issued the Guantanamo joke?
Or it is the freedom to use torture, indirectly backed by U.S. officials?
Or it is the freedom to use CIA-controlled jails around the world, to avoid legal issues when "interrogating" war prisonners?
Or perhaps the famous "freedom" fries that make everyone in the world laugh at the whole ridiculousness of the idea?
Or perhaps it's the freedom to redefine history (remember the "french victories/defeats" scam? or perhaps the ridiculous "Saddam Hussein is allied with Osama Ben Laden"?) as it pleases the U.S. people?
And what about the freedom of having the worst debt in the known world history?
Or perhaps the freedom to plain arrogance despite evidence (Who in the world, but the U.S. people, swallowed the "Crusade Against the Axis of Evil" sperm?)
Or perhaps, the freedom to make the world a mess just to have the freedom of the american way of life, despite everyone else in the world wondering about the climate change possible consequences to our children?
Or it is the freedom to have your sexual life controlled by people who never understood anything about it (laws against homosexuality and sexual practices considered as deviant by some religious extremists)?
Or it is the freedom of the youth be fed with the hypocrite "no sex before marriage", instead of learning the real facts about sex, condoms, pills, etc.?
Or the freedom to have religious propaganda taught at school, contradicting scientific evidence?
Or the freedom the U.S. President is enjoying when trying to change the law to affect the outcome of a passive euthanasy?
Or the freedom to tell the canadians they should change their national law because some asshole U.S. senators believes the U.S. DMCA should be applied everywhere in the world?

Or is this simply freedom to enjoy another good "french bashing" masturbation, because once upon a time, the french, doubting ridiculous evidence coming from unreliable (i.e.: U.S.) sources, had the arrogance to contradict U.S officials, and use their freedom to say "No" to a stupid war motivated more by greed and imperialistic arrogance than real desire to help people?

Yeah, the U.S. people know a great deal about freedom.

So, please, at least, enjoy the freedom to think with your brain, and not with your (Fox-News) TV.

Merci.