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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)
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
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.
David Gould
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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.
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.
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.