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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?
So, what do you have to do in order to be considered a journalist in France?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
And in Soviet Russia, only violence can film journalists!
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?
I wonder if this new law makes video of crimes inadmissible in court, if it was filmed by a non-journalist.
To be a journalist, you should have to publish what you record. What other business does the government have in defining a journalist, except the essential operation that defines them.
And if you don't publish, then how is it illegal to have a record of what your own senses experienced?
Why should media corporations that officials prefer have all the privileges? Already many amateur bloggers are better than practically all the pro journalists working today.
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make install -not war
The French Constitutional Council has a position similar to the U.S. Supreme Court, except it only rules to decide whether or not a law is constitutional (respects the French Constitution of the Vth Republic, Human Rights, etc).
Another difference with the U.S. Supreme Court is that it can actually be seized (by Members of Parliament) before a law is voted on by Parliament itself. For instance, if some people introduce a law saying Linux is illegal and should be banned, it is highly possible that the Constitutional Council would be seized by MPs sympathetic to Linux. It is therefore, considered as the guardian of the Constitution and of Human Rights.
On the other hand, it is sad to note that its evolution has also mimicked the recent evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court: President Jacques Chirac has packed the Constitutional Council with conservative (sometimes ultra-conservatives) judges, people who can be extremely authoritarian (by French standards -- they would be considered as dangerous lefties in the U.S.) and sympathetic to his positions. And these positions probably include a lot of censorship of the Internet.
So, IMHO, it's not a surprise this stupid law is now passed in France. The ultimate appeal, of course, would be for a French Citizen to bring his/her case to the European Court of Human Rights, which could overturn the Constitutional Council decision as well as any and all court decision on such a matter. But that would probably take years of hard legal work, with all legal fees you can imagine.
Yes, this is bad news. As a French citizen, I am personally ashamed the Constitutional Council has taken such a position, especially since, as you mentioned, "happy slapping" videos could already be prosecuted under French Law as not helping someone in danger (Good Samaritan Law?), or even as being an accomplice to assault and battery. In France, if you see something, you have to do something!
In short: stupid, stupid, stupid. And shameful, to boot.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
So under this definition, wouldn't filming the Zidane Headbutt in the World Cup be considered criminal to the cameraman that filmed it?
I guess sports cameramen better start practicing their journalism skills.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Actually ancient Rome "gave" us liberty, "libertas". Other than that you're right.
Global warming is a cube.
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.
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."
In fact, most of western europe denies its citizens free speech rights
Most? There are a few big ones like Germany and France, yes, but I very much doubt most. Do you actually have anything to back this claim up?
Americans can be proud that we are still protecting our most fundamental human right.
Aww, come off it. You have "free speech zones", you've classified some forms of speech as "munitions" subject to export regulation, your corporations have used the law to remove results from Google, to stop hacker magazines from publishing hyperlinks, you're dropping down the press freedom index, the White House censored the New York Times even when the CIA said that there was nothing classified in it... even Slashdot has been censored.
I really should make a list, whenever somebody like you posts a comment like that, I always miss loads out because I'm just listing things off the top of my head. There are many, many instances of freedom of speech being curtailed in the USA. If you think the USA has free speech, then you are (dare I say wilfully) wearing blinkers.
You know, as my Chinese S.O. never fails to point out, the Chinese have just as much freedom of speech as we do! In China, you can say anything you want to.
It's freedom after speech that's not guaranteed...
If France doesn't value freedom of speech as much as America, then tell my why the Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index for 2006 rated America behind France in terms of freedom of the press?
America has fallen sharply as Bush has stayed in office, and ranks 53rd equal in the world for freedom of the press. France is currently 35th equal. There appears to be less censorship in France than in America for media reporting. Kinda the opposite of your statement, right? But don't let that get in the way of your blind jingoism.
Source: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639
Guess they've just outlawed any surveillance camera that films violence, including their own. Oops!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
There is a huge potential problem brewing. And almost nobody in the "online community" understands it.
Let's say there is an altercation between a cop and a young minority person. When the dust clears, said minority person is dead. Two hours later a video shows up on YouTube showing the cop beating the person with a large club. This is picked up, played on the nightly news. Everyone in the town sees it.
Cop is convicted because "everone knows" he did it.
The video is later shown to be an utter fabrication by two college students looking for fame.
Under today's law in the US, the college students can't be charged with anything. The video would never be admitted into court as evidence, but it would be fresh in the minds of all the jurors and couldn't possibly be excluded from their minds.
We have skated pretty close to some TV stations doing this kind of thing in the past, but most know better now. They don't accept just anything. Photoshopping pictures is being done, and some people are getting caught. In the US most news organizations are aware of the problem and are somewhat sensitive about it. It probably would take a case like this to really bring it home to the "profressionals", but we are already seeing a lot of amateur content making it out that cannot be verified and is subject to all kinds of fraud.
But "everyone" knows "seeing is believing" and so they are going to take anything that even looks real as the absolute truth.
Perhaps France is trying to slide away from this, just a little bit? We're ripe for some real juicy stuff in the US and until it happens there isn't going to be any restriction on so-called citizen journalists putting video out that purports to show crimnal activity. And it will be impossible to keep it away from a jury, leading to instant convictions.
The so-called "happy slappers" are a serious problem in the UK and continental Europe. Perhaps you're not familiar with who they are, or what they do. Let me tell you. 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.
For a number of reasons (poor language skills, almost no work ethic, a lack of European cultural understanding, etc.), these youth gather in gangs, and proceed to slap random individuals while videoing them with their cell phone cameras. They tend to target rather helpless victims, including younger children, the elderly, and women. They usually don't severely injure their victims, but it is still assault nevertheless.
Now, as an American I found it to be quite difficult to understand when I first moved to Europe. If a bunch of little punks had tried that sort of bullshit back in Omaha, they'd have likely gotten the living hell beat out of them. But Europe's a different place. People don't dare to fight back against these youth, as they will assuredly be convicted of committing a "hate crime". Politicians won't directly address the problem because doing so may be seen as politically incorrect. It's really pretty sad.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
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.
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 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.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Or like the eight US attorneys who were fired because they were getting a little too close to improprieties by Republicans or because they wouldn't speed up an investigation into one alleged Democrat lawmaker's improprieties to meet an election timetable. They were fired under the pretense of poor job performance even though "at least five of [the U.S. attorneys] received positive job evaluations before they were ordered to step down" and one of the fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay, of the Western District of Washington, received a "glowing performance review" from the Justice Department seven months before he was forced out
Some of their replacements are poorly qualified Republican political flunkies.
Your other line of defense against fascism was the 4th estate and it's pretty clear in whose pocket the media conglomerates are in now.
You may not have fascism yet, but the stage is well set.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
And I find it amazing that someone could think that because France attempted to dissuade the USA from an ill-advised war, it somehow makes them an 'enemy'. Someone who tries to talk you out of doing something stupid is doing you a favour.
Another thing I find amazing is the implicit idea that the USA single-handedly baled anyone out of either world war. The Americans entered WWI too late to have a major impact on the outcome (though they probably hastened the end), and the UK has at least as good a claim to resisting fascism when it counted in WWII. Which isn't to say that the USA didn't make a profound contribution to these struggles, but there were British and Canadian troops storming the beaches at Normandy too, you know.
I would hazard to say less French might have died if they had decided to fight from the beginning and not just after the occupation in a clandestine manner.
Can we please lay this stupid myth to rest?
The French did fight, and fought hard; France suffered more battlefield deaths during WW2 than the US did. They surrendered because they were beaten, by an army -- the Wehrmacht -- that was unquestionably the best in the world at that time; quite possibly, allowing for technological changes over time, the best in history. And had London or Moscow or, yes, Washington DC had the misfortune to be as close to Berlin as Paris is, they would have suffered the same fate. There was simply no one in the world who could beat the Germans on the battlefield at that point; it took the surviving Allies years of catch-up, protected by the Channel, the Atlantic, and the simple size of Russia, to match them.
No one ever accuses the Poles and the Czechs of cowardice for falling to the Blitzkrieg, or the British for Dunkirk, or the Russians for being driven back across a piece of their country far larger than France in its entirety, or the Americans for waiting two years while Hitler ran wild. And anyone who believes that cowardice is part of the French national character should go count the graves at Verdun.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Was it around also before they decided not to support Bush's little adventure in Iraq?
Oh, heavens yes. I suspect it was around from the moment the War ended, although I think it got its biggest boost during the De Gaulle years, when many Americans felt that they were basically being snubbed by a people they had just spent a whole lot of blood and treasure to first liberate, and then subsequently rebuild. (Nonwithstanding that the Russians did also spend a lot of blood and treasure, I think most Americans felt that there was some kinship between France and the U.S., and so when De Gaulle basically spurned the West in favor of playing each side against the other, it was taken a lot worse than had, say, Turkey done the same thing.)
I don't know what the general zeitgeist was in the U.S. regarding France, prior to WWII (I think it was rather favorable, though), but it definitely turned sour during the Cold War.
The recent political situation has certainly exacerbated the situation, but it didn't just start yesterday, or with Bush. (In fact, the Simpsons quote in my Subject, you'll find, predates Bush -- it was from 1995.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Sorry guys, this is going to be a bit long
French are essentially a non-agressive people, the last time we INVADED another country in a formal war was probably in 1804 with Napoleon going all the way to Moscow (and back quicker than he went)
In the meantime (since 1804) and outside of WW periods the US has invaded Mexico (Alamo), Cuba (1905), Vietnam, Grenade, Panama, Irak (2 times), I didn't count Korea because it was a UN mandate and so I could also left aside the first Irak war
France is situated in the heart of Europe and more interestingly on the Atlantic wall, making it a VERY, VERY interesting place of land for Germany for example, check out a map and tell me why Germany has had no navy ? Because it can't take if out of it's harbours without going by England which is traditionally the great maritime power of Europe, and when you're a maritime power you have COLONIES, and when you have colonies you have MONEY
In the 2 WW where the french army was REALLY bad we were "taken by surprise" each time, it's not an excuse, it's a REASON for our defeats, besides the fact that each time the bulk of the German people WANTED war and were prepared for it and that the French didn't the French military command was/is UTTERLY HOPELESS
Since France is not a belligerent country the military career is FAR LESS appealing that in Germany at the beggining of XX century for example, thus Germany produced FAR BETTER soldiers and we had to stick with 70 years old generals using outadated tactics with absolutely NO SENSE of reality
In 1914 the Germans used an excuse to start the war and invade France, they were ready and willing, we were not, after a disastrous summer we managed to stop them some 40km east of Paris before "locking" the front, the same thing happened in 1940, except that the war was going faster, tanks and planes were going faster than in 1914 and we didn't have the place (think Russia) to slow them down and stop them
The French military is DEFINITELY not a great one, but what can we say about the US military in Pearl Harbor, what can we say about the US in 9/11 ?
The bottom line is that when you're taken by surprise you can do what you want but "the fish smells bad"...
Every historian agrees that if the French army didn't commit suicide in Dunkirk to allow the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) to get back to England (or at least a great part of it) WW2 could have had a VERY different outcome, would the US have "saved the world" if England had fallen in 40 ? Would Russia have been able to stop the Germans if England had fallen ?
Personally and looking at the general mood of US society in these days (racial laws and a generally right wing society) I think we ALL got VERY lucky that
1) The BEF got out enough men to make Hitler think twice about a frontal attack
2) Goring was a joke and the luftwaffe couldn't take out the RAF
3) The war started before the US 1940 elections where FDR was reelected when it seemed at the time it would go the other way around
4)And so on
The bottom line is that France is NOT a belligerent country and when you're surrounded by belligerent countries it's no wonder you lose wars, we don't LIKE war, come on, food and women are more interesting.
On top of this there is NO question that the french military in terms of equipment and leadership is not up to par and that poses the question of whether we NEED an army today, what for ? Who's going to invade us (AGAIN) ?
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. France did fight from the beginning. They just weren't prepared for Germany's new strategies and overwhelming force.
Excuse me? Do you know who America's biggest allies in Afghanistan are? France is in the top 3 of countries that provide the most troops in Afghanistan. The US is attacked, its allies are there to help them out. What France criticised was the US's attack on a country that didn't attack the US, and wasn't in any way a threat to US souvereignty.
I personally find it amazing that France was the first to support the US in its war of independence and has continued to be America's ally throughout its existence, and yet some Americans continue to be a tacit enemy of France.
They did. France and Germany have fought plenty of wars over the last couple of centuries. Now what are you gonna do about that anti-French sentiment in the US? How come US politicians were talking about "punishing" its oldest ally? Do Americans have any sense of history at all?
Actually, most of the work to liberate Europe was done by Russia. The entire western front pales in comparison to the scale and the number of casualties on the eastern front. For several years, Russia bore nearly the entire brunt of the German attack. It's the eastern front that exhausted the German war machine. Could the US have accomplished anything without Russia being there? I sincerely doubt it. Could Russia have done it without the US? Very probably (although lend-lease certainly helped).
But back to the comparison of the US and the UK. Could the US have staged an invasion like Normandy without England as a jumping-off point? I have my doubts.
Part of the reason why the US joined in the war was not just to defeat Germany, but to make sure it was defeated by the West. Without them, a much larger part of Europe would have come under Russian influence, and Russia would have emerged as the ruling world power instead of the US. And I'm really grateful for that. Without the US, my country probably wouldn't have been liberated by Canadians, but by Russians. Just don't think WW2 was simply the US versus Germany. The war was much more complicated than that.
That's not quite true. France has had a pretty valuable ally in the US. And vice versa. The problem is that France refuses to become a lackey, and wants to be an ally on equal footing, while the US in recent years has mostly been looking for lackeys.