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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."
Sounds like their intent was to create something more like the Good Samaritan laws, when something went horribly wrong. Trying to get people to help citizens in need is one thing, but this goes a bit too far... I'm not too clear on the workings of the French government, does the Constitutional Council the last step in the process of becoming a law, or are there additional hurdles?
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If you don't record violence, then it never happened.
Right?
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France gave us the word "liberty," yet the french do not value freedom of speech nearly as much as Americans do. In fact, most of western europe denies its citizens free speech rights (especially when discussing things the government can subjectively determine to be "hateful" concepts).
The US government has made a lot of mistakes recently, but at least Americans can be proud that we are still protecting our most fundamental human right.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect that politicians draft overly broad laws on purpose, in an effort to criminalize as much as possible. They can create so many complicated laws that it is impossible for most citizens to even be aware of what is and what is not legal. This later allows them to selectively apply the law for political ends. As Cardinal Richelieu said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
They do indeed have something akin to the constitution which guarantees human rights as well as freedom of speech.
As someone that loves france (I lived there for a few years) I'm so deeply saddened by this horrible choice they've made. I suspect it won't stand but that remains to be seen. France has been a forward thinker in human rights for so many years(they're one of the only nations in Europe to accept refugees and grant asylum) which just adds the the craziness of this law.
France's motto, Liberté, égalité, fraternité or (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood) doesn't seem very well upheld by this new law which does not grant liberty, removes equality and is very unlikely to foster any brotherhood.
Mod me up, mod me down, do your worst you modding clown.
France has been a forward thinker in human rights for so many years(they're one of the only nations in Europe to accept refugees and grant asylum) ...
That's the exact reason why they're running into so many problems these days. The French have been gracious and kind enough to give so many people a chance to better their lives. And the vast majority of those immigrants and refugees have. They get jobs, they start businesses, and they try to become self-reliant, productive members of French society.
The problem is usually the children of these refugees and immigrants. Their parents came to France with little to their name, and thus had to work long and hard to make ends meet. The result of this is that those parents weren't able to properly discipline their kids. As such, many of these kids neglected their school work, dropped out of school without an education, and found themselves unable to perform any useful task in life. So they form gangs, and since they have nothing productive to do, they happy slap for shits and giggles.
These children are ruining the image and reputation of all immigrants and refugees. And that's unfortunate. Many of those people can and have contributed much to France and the French society. But all of the good they have done is being demolished day in and day out by their children.
I suspect the EU will have something to say about this. I can't imagine this will not be shot down as a violation of free speech.
No, this opinion is based on simple reason, the kind recognized universally in France and the US by reasonable people. The French just made up a seriously defective ruling in a new exercise of "jurisprudence" that defies sensibility. They've got the French constitutional credentials, but not the basis in legitimacy.
You might want to google for droit de regard, the long French controversy over rights to public photography. And if you speak French, you should explain it to these French lawmakers. But first you should probably read about the French Declaration of the Rights of Man on which the French based their revolution, inspired by ours. If their government is defining arbitrarily, not functionally, who is a journalist with privileges, they need to read it, too.
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I'm not sure how a law against filming actual violence would help with a situation of fabricated violence. (And if you say it should be illegal to film pretend violence, then that opens up a whole new set of problems!)
What you describe sounds more like an issue of defamation, just like slander and libel laws - I'm not sure how such laws apply to fabricated images/videos, but I find it hard to believe that such things would be legal, when conveying the same false and damaging message in text is illegal?
Also I'd say that the TV stations share much of the blame here.
And I'd question why, if the video is the only evidence, the case gets to a jury in the first place.
What's pathetic is your knowledge of history. Do you know how many French citizens died fighting the Nazi invasion? Do you know how many French people participated in the resistance? Go ask the US military whether the French Resistance was a myth!
The only people who sympathize with the Vichy regime in modern France are the tiny far-right parties and they are completely marginalized.
I had never heard of it before, but based on the WP entry on the subject, I'm guessing that the term "happy slapping" is similar to "pretexting": A term invented by the perpetrators of the crime to make it seem less criminal. Then the idiot media picks up and happily repeats the terms until they become common parlance.
The enemies of Democracy are
As usual. Instead of finding the root of the problem and eliminating that, they issue a law that not only is pointless, it actually can be helping the criminals.
It's not like beating someone up in the first place is legal, and the punishment for doing this outweighs by magnitudes the taping. Still, people do it. Does ANYONE think outlawing taping it would change anything? Does anyone think the 'happy slappers' are gonna think now "Hey, beating up is fun but noooooo, we can't tape it anymore so it ain't fun no more"? Does anyone really think this is changing anything AT ALL?
Instead, it's now illegal to tape someone beating up someone and thus creating evidence against the thug. Nice work, France. Protect your criminals.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The most pathetic thing is the USA has never learned from WW2, the Viet Cong, Saddam Hussain, Osama Bin Laden, Augusto Pinochet and many more, all one time allies and then enemies of the US, and there's twice as many tyrants that are still loyal to the US, all financially backed by the USA, trained and armed without thought to their politics, because they served to fight some real or imagined enemy when it was convenient to the US. The USA's short sighted enemy of my enemy is my friend foreign policy still causes war and suffering across the world, and still the USA stabs it's closest allies in the back in favour of whatever tin pot dictator it thinks will give it an advantage against whoever their boggy man of choice is or will help snatch some economic resource.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Remember, the left-right spectrum is an economic spectrum, ranging from pure communism at the far left to pure capitalism at the far right, and everything in between. Not all leftists believe in civil liberties (look at Stalin, Mao, and Castro, for example). Respect of civil liberties are represented on a different scale.
The left-right spectrum is not a purely economic one. In its original sense, the Left were those in favor of individual liberty (of both the economic and civil variety), what we today would call Libertarians in America, or Liberals in Europe; while the Right were those in favor of maintaining elitist control of both person and property. After that original Left pretty much won in most of the world, a new Left emerged advocating socialist/communist economic policies; and for a while, the Left-Right divide was almost a purely economic one, with everyone generally in favor of civil liberty, and the Right now those opposed to the socialist reforms, as opposed to the new Left. Some of those on the "new left" even went so far as to completely reverse most of the benefits gained by the old Left, like those totalitarians you named.
But there are still vestiges of the older Right around, though they now ostensibly support capitalism (though what they really support is themselves being rich and powerful), and in recent years they've been gaining power again (ironically under the banner of the "new Right"). Trying to fit all four of these positions (the old Left; the new Left; the new Right; and the totalitarians you mentioned, who are not too different from the old Right) onto a linear spectrum is futile; the new Left and Right aren't further along the same axis as their old counterparts, they're along a different axis entirely. The old Left-Right was a pure battle between authority and liberty. The new Left-Right is, quite literally, orthogonal to that (on a Nolan chart at least). The modern Right sides with the old Left on economic issues, and the modern Left sides more with the old Right on economic issues; and more perplexingly, those with authoritarian positions most similar to the old Right are now most often considered Leftist (like those you mentioned), while those with libertarian positions most similar to the old Left are now considered Rightist!
But it's all a big bag of hooey anyway. The only consistent meaning to "Left" and "Right" are "progressive", generally support by the underdogs, who want a change for their own betterment; and "conservative", generally supported by the big dogs on top who don't want their comfy spot in life disturbed. These notions map well to the origins of the terms (the commoners on the Left of parliament and the lords on the Right), but they don't evaluate consistently into any particular position on either civil or economic matters, because what's new today will be old in a few generations, and what's old today will become new again.
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I highly doubt a rural farmer could afford an infrared camera. The bottom line should be:
If you break into someone's house, you forfeit your personal safety.
What would you do if you and your wife heard a crash in the middle of the night, and men rummaging around your house? There is no time for the overworked police to arrive, and you might get shot, stabbed, beaten, you stuff stolen, and your wife raped in the meantime.
It is a basic human right to strike back at someone who threatens you and/or your property. According to US police surveys, the number-one fear of a criminal is that the victim might have a gun [citation needed]. And it has been statistically proven, many times, that the more trained citizens carry guns, the lower the crime rate in the area is. With a gun, suddenly the littlest old lady can fend off the biggest thug, and you usually don't have to shoot it.
The government can't save you.
Here is the actual text:
;o)
" Section 4 bis
Dispositions générales
Art. 222-43-2. - Est constitutif d'un acte de complicité des atteintes volontaires à l'intégrité de la personne prévues par les articles 222-1 à 222-14-1 et 222-23 à 222-31 et est puni des peines prévues par ces articles le fait d'enregistrer sciemment par quelque moyen que ce soit, sur tout support que ce soit, des images relatives à la commission de ces infractions.
Le fait de diffuser l'enregistrement de telles images est puni de cinq ans d'emprisonnement et 75 000 d'amende.
Le présent article n'est pas applicable lorsque l'enregistrement ou la diffusion résulte de l'exercice normal d'une profession ayant pour objet d'informer le public ou est réalisé afin de servir de preuve en justice. ""
This translates to (there are no doubt a few approximations in the terms, I'm no lawyer, but the translation is otherwise valid):
" Is considered an accomplice act to voluntary assault of a person's integrity as specified in articles 222-1 to 222-14-1 and 222-23 to 222-31, and is punished with the sentences specified in these articles, the act of knowingly recording, using any means, under any format, images relating to comitting these offenses.
The act of publishing recordings of such images is punished by five years imprisonment and a 75,000 fine.
The present article does not apply when the recording or publishing is a result of the normal activity of a profession which invovles informing the public or is done to serve as proof in court."
So filming your local police officers beating people up remains legal, as it can be used as proof in court. Filming any scene of violence where you're not an accomplice remains legal, as it can always be used in court... I'm not saying this law is good. It's just far from what the english web seems to be making it out to be.
Oh, and for all the WWII comments before... Why don't you find a real reason for hating the french? Even better yet, why don't you make your OWN opinion on the french? Generally, if you have a bad time with the french, you probably only have yourself to blame (or a run of bad luck, like any nation, the french have morons too...). French bashing just for the sake of it is *so* last season
Sounds pretty bizarre to me. Obviously the slapping is the crime, not the filming. I assume the French already have laws against slapping. But if the anti-slapping laws aren't effective, what makes them think the anti-filming laws will be effective?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
".....The vast majority of them are the children of immigrants and refugees who moved to Europe from countres in Africa, Central Asia, India and the Middle East. Of course, there are domestic "happy slappers", but they tend to be in the minority......"
And you have supporting statistics for this assertion? I doubt it very much. What a statement. Please provide evidence for this or withdraw the assertion. I suspect but have no fact that it is the opposite. I suspect but cannot prove that you might have some racist leanings
You're kidding, right? that's like saying that paying council workers to fix the road before a terrible car accident is 'protection money'. I'd instead call it investment in society for the benefit of everyone.
What a specious arguement...
Let me first point out that I do not personally own a gun or plan to get one in the future. But the issue about Gun Control is an issue of Public Safety vs. Personal Freedom, and for this case they are opposing goals for governments who in general are trying to the right thing. Are we safer without guns? Yes in general we are. Can we stay just as free with a ban of guns? No. If you want to put Public Safety as a top issues get rid of all liberties and put everyone in prison, control who they can talk to and who they cant, any one who shows signs of being dangerous you imeadtaely block them away from all human contact. Now Gun control is not that extreme but it is a Freedom loss due to an attempt to improve public safety. I bet that if we stopped going nuts spinning our wheels back and forth on gun control and put the money and effort into teaching kids (Yes I mean kids from 10 - 18) how to safely use guns, you will probably see a drastic reduction in gun accidents, and the fact that criminals know that everyone else knows how to use a gun just as well if not better then they do, is a large deterrent. As well as a deterrent to a government who want to cease to many liberties from the citizens. For most violent crimes with guns I bet most of the time it is from Gang members, not NRA Toting Gun Nuts who go hunting every day. I am sure more accidents come from the Gun Nuts though. That is why proper education on gun use is so important. If we can reduce the accidental harm we can improve Public Safety. If Gang Members realize if they start shooting people there could in good probability be a guy who is a good shot up in building next to them and they community is not afraid of a gun. Then a lot of there power is gone. Most Gangs and Crimes work on fear. If people knew they had the upper hand over some stupid kids who think they are men because they have guns and sell dope, then the Ganges will be a lot more careful...Or dead. But either is an improvement.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.