CMLP International Blog

A French court last month stomped on what we in the United States consider a “basic, vital, and well-established liberty” – the right to record and publish the public activity of police.

It is the latest attempt by the country to regulate the speech of its citizens online, prevent access to information deemed harmful to state interests, and create, in the words of President Nicolas Sarkozy, a “civilized” Internet. This particular decision is especially concerning given that it comes just two years after a scathing report by Amnesty International on the country’s ineffective methods of investigating police misconduct.

According to the Jurist, the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, a civil trial court, ordered all French ISPs on Oct. 14 to block access to Copwatch Nord Paris I-D-F, a website that allows citizens to post videos of alleged police misconduct. The police union, Alliance Police Nationale, applauded the decision because it believed the site incited violence against officers. Said the union’s secretary general, the “judges have analyzed the situation perfectly — this site being a threat to the integrity of the police — and made the right decision.”   read more »

The United States is something of an outlier in the world when it comes to hate speech.  Whereas laws prohibiting hate speech in the U.S. are simply unconstitutional (barring the various unprotected exceptions like obscenity, incitement, etc.), the majority of Western countries ban hate speech outright.  Of course, those same countries also generally protect freedom of speech.  The natural tension between hate speech bans and free speech rights can make for some interesting cases, one of which is now playing out in Canada.

Yesterday, Canada's Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of William Whatcott, an "anti-gay activist" in Saskatchewan, who in 2005 was found guilty of promoting hate by the  Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal and ordered to pay the complainants $17,500.  The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned the ruling in 2010, and the Canadian Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Now, Whatcott does not appear to be a particularly pleasant fellow.  As he described himself to the Montreal Gazette, he is a reformed drug addict who once traded sexual favors to his (male) drug dealer to feed his addiction.  He notes to the Gazette that "It's a little inaccurate to say I was gay"; rather, he claims, "if you have no moral boundaries, you can try anything."     read more »

Imagine you live in a country where criminal attacks on civilians are alarmingly familiar, and reliable reporting from the local media is regrettably unfamiliar.  You hear about an attack on your local school, so you take to the Internet to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter to warn people before it's too late.  Mercifully, the report you heard was mistaken, and everything's okay...

...Until the local government comes and arrests you on charges of terrorism.

Welcome to the situation in which Gilberto Martinez Vera and Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola find themselves in their home state of Veracruz, Mexico.

According to the Los Angeles Times report on the incident, on August 25, 2011, Mr. Martinez, a teacher, and Ms. Bravo, a journalist, heard rumors of an attack and kidnapping by a drug gang at a primary school in the port city of Veracruz (which is located in the state of Veracruz).  Considering the city had already seen a grenade attack at an aquarium that killed a man and injured a woman and two children just days before, it's not unreasonable that they thought these new rumors might be true, and so they tweeted about it.

Naturally, the rumors caused a great deal of panic and confusion among parents - a Veracruz official said that many rushed to school to pull their kids out of classes, and that the chaos led to more than two dozen car accidents.  Fortunately, the rumors were untrue, and all the kids were safe.    read more »

On July 11, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University invites you to join with award winning and professional journalists and scholars to discuss challenges and possible solutions for reporting international stories to U.S. and Global audiences in a time of shrinking news budgets.  Inspired by Berkman Fellow Persephone Miel, whose work focused on how compelling narrative and context for international stories could make unfamiliar international news more accessible to American and global audiences, this event will bring together Fatima Tlisova (Voice of America), Pulitzer Prize winner Dele Olojede, Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman Center/Global Voices), Colin Maclay (Berkman Center), Ivan Sigal (Global Voices), Jon Sawyer (Pulitzer Center) and the Miel family for a discussion and reflection on Persephone’s work and the journalistic values she championed. We hope to see anyone with an interest in this subject there for what promises to be a fascinating symposium.

This free event is open to the public and will take place on July 11 at 5 p.m. in the Austin East Classroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School.  RSVP here by July 8 to join this distinguished group tackling the complexities of this issue in a time of great global change and incredible ripeness for news reporting.

Timothy Lamoureux is a 2L at Harvard Law School and believes this will be a great event. 

Social media are abuzz about English Premier League footballer ("soccer player" to us Yanks) Ryan Giggs, who has obtained an order from a British court requiring Twitter to reveal the identity of various tweeters who identified him as having had an affair with model and Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas.

The court's order against Twitter was based on a prior order issued by the court last month, which barred The Sun newspaper from revealing Giggs' name. At the initiative of lawyers for plaintiffs in defamation cases, British courts began issuing such "super injunctions" -- which bar not just disclosure of the information subject to the order, but also ban disclosure of the order itself -- in 2008, with the number of such orders increasing ever since.  (The Guardian newspaper detailed some of the early super injunctions, while the magazine Private Eye lists several recent examples.) The growth of such orders has become a political issue in Great Britain, and there is talk of eliminating them.   read more »

I've been writing about impending British libel reform for almost two years now, putting a post together every time something happens to bring the United Kingdom closer to fixing its quite-literally-backwards defamation laws.  "Ooo, the High Court has tossed a textbook libel tourism case," I cheered in November 2009.  "Aah, the justice minister has publicly endorsed libel reform," I applauded in March 2010.

But now it really looks like libel reform is happening in the United Kingdom.  Finally, FINALLY, the British government has put pen to paper and written a draft defamation bill that addresses at least some of the glaring flaws in the British defamation tort that have earned London the (not-so) honorific of "libel capital of the world."   read more »

The Office of Fair Trading, the British equivalent of the United States Federal Trade Commission, has determined that the hiring of bloggers and other social media contributors to promote particular products without adequate disclosure of the relationship may violate U.K. consumer protection laws. Handpicked Media Ltd (Handpicked Media), Case Ref. CRE-E-25932 (OFT Dec. 13, 2010).  This is the first time these laws have been applied online.

This is similar to the stance that the FTC has taken in a 2009 update to its "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising," which includes disclosure requirements for similar arrangements.  I and others have written extensively about the guides and their application.

"The OFT was concerned that individuals engaged by Handpicked Media were publishing online content which promoted the activities of Handpicked Media's clients, without sufficient disclosures in place to make it clearly identifiable to consumers that the promotions had been paid for. This included publication on website blogs and microblogs (forexample Twitter)," the British agency wrote in its ruling.  "As a result of its investigation, the OFT formed the view that Handpicked Media may be operating in breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs)."    read more »

I recall a Twilight Zone episode with a great twist: a man, in order to win a bet that he could stay quiet for an entire year, has had his vocal cords severed. The idea being, it is particularly gruesome to imagine a human being rendered mute for money. Sadly, this episode has not aged terribly well: the obscenity of modern three-strikes Internet laws takes any sting out of the twist ending.   read more »

I recall a Twilight Zone episode with a great twist: a man, in order to win a bet that he could stay quiet for an entire year, has had his vocal cords severed. The idea being, it is particularly gruesome to imagine a human being rendered mute for money. Sadly, this episode has not aged terribly well: the obscenity of modern three-strikes Internet laws takes any sting out of the twist ending.   read more »

The latest leak of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) came out a few days ago. Before we delve into the more troublesome elements of the agreement, let’s take a few moments to ponder how sad it is that our government continues to craft this agreement in secret.

I have spilt much digital ink over the stupidity of overt secrecy. When you won’t show me what is behind the curtain, I want nothing more than to rend draped velvet. But if you just pull the fabric back and show me the fantastipotamus, I’ll quickly grow bored.   read more »