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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."
Let's hope security camera footage doesn't count.
Were the French tired of all the car-burning footage?
And in Soviet Russia, only violence can film journalists!
Surrender?
How are you supposed to film something you're running away from?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
So, what do you have to do in order to be considered a journalist in France?
Join the army.
In South Korea, only violent old people film journalists!
Ok yeah that was bad
That the US doesn't have a monopoly on stupidity in the world. They just have most of it.
Because the French are so much better.
A riot broke out around the French Academy of General Studies (acronym rarely used) as thousands tried and failed to register as licensed journalists. Amidst the fray the irony was as deep as the blood in the streets, as those who were involved were unsure whether they had yet obtained the rights to film the event. Furthermore, those who had successfully registered found it difficult to film themselves during the incident as they were overcome by the mob. Police had no idea who was legally allowed to film the event and, because they had to turn off their cameras due to not being journalists themselves, no solid proof of the perpetrators has survived.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Sorry. No film at 11.
In France, no one can record your screams...
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
David Gould
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Le Cagot patted the hostess's bottom and sent her after their food. "I don't think we have made a great friend there, Niko. And he is a man to be feared." Le Cagot laughed, "After all, his father was French and very active in the resistance." Hel smiled. "Have you ever met one who was not?"
"True. It is astonishing that the Germans managed to hold France with so few divisions, considering that everyone who wasn't draining German resources by the clever maneuver of surrendering en masse and making the Nazis feed them was vigorously and bravely engaged in the Resistance. Is there a village without its Place de la Resistance? But one has to be fair; one has to understand the Gallic notion of resistance. Any hotelier who overcharged a German was in the Resistance. Each whore who gave a German soldier the clap was a freedom fighter. All those who obeyed while viciously withholding their cheerful morning 'bonjours' were heroes of liberty!"
Militant Islam will make the French into dhimmi.
In Slashdot, titles resemble Soviet Russia jokes.
In South Korea, only old people can film you!
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
The Violence films you. uh, that doesn't really make sense either.
No true leftist/progressive/socialist believes in -individual- civil liberties.
No true rightist/conservative/facist believes that all men are created equal. They pay lip service to everyone competing on level playing fields but in the end all right theory boils down to those not born with a silver spoon in their mouths existing only to feed the rich.
You really can't have civil liberties as we commonly understand them when there are people who are denied even such basic human needs as education and health care because their family incomes are below a certain level. You can't really have the right to free speech when you can't even afford a printing press or to access other mass communication media.
Certainly this new French law suppresses knowledge, but suppressing knowledge is a tool that has been used since the beginning of time to keep those with power in power.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
In Soviet Russia, only film can violate journalists!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.