EU Censorship News

My Scientology Movie is a 2015 UK / USA documentary by John Dower.
Starring Rob Alter, Tom Cruise and Paz de la Huerta.

Louis Theroux documents his investigation into what goes on behind the scenes of the infamous church of scientology.

Film distributors In Ireland have decided not to screen Louis Theroux's My Scientology Movie. And the speculation is that the country's recently enacted blasphemy law could be used to stir up hassle for the distributors.

The law, part of the 2009 Defamation Act states that any person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding euro 25,000 . Blasphemous matter is defined as anything that is insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion , and that intends to cause outrage.

The law also states that blasphemy laws do not apply to an organisation or cult that prioritises making financial profit or manipulates followers and new recruits. Scientology isn't officially recognised as a church in Ireland, but it's unclear whether or not it counts as a religion under the acts definitions.

But even if Scientology doesn't count as a religion, then they can still employ expensive lawyers to make the claim anyway, and that it would then take equally expensive lawyers to counter such a claim.

Under a proposed law supposedly targeting cyber bullying and revenge porn, a website manager of Italian media, including bloggers, newspapers and social networks would be obliged to censor "mockery" based on "the personal and social condition" of the victim -- that is, anything the recipient felt was personally insulting.

The penalty for failing to take action is a fine of ?100,000. Truthfulness is not a defense in suits under this law -- the standard is personal insult, not falsehood.

Let's start with what this won't do: it won't stop bullying, harassment or revenge porn in Italy. The majority of services on which Italians express themselves are not based in Italy, and those with Italian sales-offices, etc, can and will simply move offices rather than face a ?100,000 fine every time someone insults someone else online.

But what it will do is create a tool for easy censorship without due process or penalty for misuse. The standard proposed in the bill is merely that the person on the receiving end of the argument feel aggrieved. Think of the abuse of copyright takedowns: online hosts already receive millions of these , more than they could possibly evaluate, and so we have a robo-takedown regime that lets the rich and powerful routinely remove material that puts them in an unflattering light.

The standard set by the proposed Italian law allows for purely subjective claims to be made, and for enormous penalties to be imposed on those who question them before undertaking sweeping acts of censorship.

Internet-savvy Italian deputy Stefano Quintarelli has proposed an amendment that makes the law marginally saner: under his amendment, failure to act on a censorship notice wouldn't automatically give rise to a fine; rather, it would make the person who ignored the complaint a party to any eventual civil penalty imposed by a court of law.

That is a step in the right direction, but it is really just a plaster over a gaping chasm of bad, reactionary lawmaking. The people who are genuinely aggrieved will continue to struggle for justice; the genuine bad actors (like revenge-porn sites) will continue with impunity out of Italian jurisdiction, and the rich and the powerful will get a force-multiplier for silencing their critics without meaningful penalties for abuse.

The Berlusconi years gave Italy a reputation for political chaos. In the post-Berlusconi era, we'd hoped for better. By seriously considering ideas as bad as this one, the Italian chamber of deputies continues to make Italian politics into a global joke.

Leading French media outlets pledged on Wednesday to stop publishing the names and images of attackers linked to Islamic State group to supposedly prevent individuals from being inadvertently glorified, following a spate of attacks by muslim terrorists.

The decisions, part of a wider French debate about how the news media might be contributing to the extremist threat, come as the French parliament debates whether to enshrine in law restrictions on the way the news media can cover terrorist acts.

The director of Le Monde, Jerome Fenoglio, said in an editorial that his newspaper would stop publishing photographs of attackers in a bid to prevent the possible posthumous glorifying effects and called for news media to exercise more responsibility. The newspaper already has a ban on publishing extracts of Islamic State propaganda or claims of responsibility emitted from its media wing.

Television station BFM-TV also said it will no longer broadcast images of attackers' faces.

The High Court of Paris has decided there's a limit to France's unpopular anti-copying regime: Google and Bing can't be required to block the word torrent from their search results just because BitTorrent is sometimes used for piracy.

The case was brought by the Syndicat National de l'édition Phonographique, France's record industry association, nominally on behalf of several artists. SNEP wanted to use Article L336-2 of France's intellectual property law to force Google and Microsoft to delete searches that included both 'torrent' and any of the artists' names.

The High Court in Paris didn't think filtering torrent in all of France, the Wallis and Futuna islands, New Caledonia and the French Southern and Antarctic territories was appropriate.

In a case against Google, the court found that SNEP was acting on behalf of only three artists, rather than for all of its members:

The case would not protect the interests of the entire profession, but ensure the protection of individual interests of members who produce these three artists.

In a case against Microsoft, the court stated the requests made by SNEP were too broad:

They do not concern an identified site, but all sites accessed by the requested terms, regardless of the identification and even determining the content of the site ... The measures sought are similar to general surveillance measure and could cause the blocking of legitimate sites.

The judgements award costs against SNEP in both cases.

The new movie Bastille Day , has been pulled from cinemas in France in the wake of the terrorist attack in Nice. The film involves a terrorist plot to bomb Paris.

StudioCanal pulled adverts for Bastille Day a day after the attack and have now asked cinemas to stop showing it altogether, according to Variety.

The film's release dates in the UK and Germany were previously delayed in the aftermath of the Paris attacks .

German police have carried out a series of raids, targeting people suspected of posting alleged hate content on social media. The co-ordinated raids on 60 addresses were the first time the authorities had acted on this issue in such an extreme way.

Police comments on the issue suggest that the target of the raids were for comments that were considered right-wing extremism. However it is difficult to interpret the background when both the police and newspaper statements are contorted by the politically correct requirement to not mention islam.

Holger Munch, president of Germany's federal criminal police authority, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) said: Today's action makes it clear that police authorities of the federal and state governments act firmly against hate and incitement on the internet. He said politically motivated hate crime on the internet had increased significantly in the wake of the European refugee crisis.

Under pressure from the German authorities, Facebook, Twitter and Google agreed at the end of last year to delete such speech from their services within 24 hours. Facebook also agreed to a series of further measures including:

Partnering with a German group of multimedia service providers to solve the problem

Launching a task force to deal with hate speech on the internet

A propaganda campaign to promote counter speech in German, drawing in experts to develop ways to combat racism through discussions on social media.

The Maltese parliament has approved, at the third reading stage, amendments to the Criminal Act that repeal legislation that censured the vilification of religion, decriminalises pornography and criminalises revenge porn.

The law punishing the vilification of the Roman Catholic religion had been in place since 1933 and was used by the authorities to censor works of art, theatre productions and prevent films from being screened.

When he originally presented the proposed amendments in February, justice minister Owen Bonnici sought to allay fears that the law would not allow people to incite religious hatred, noting that the incitement of hatred based on religion, gender, race, sexuality, gender identity or political belief was already illegal as per a more recent law and would remain so. He said:

In a democratic country, people should be free to make fun of religions, while not inciting hatred.

The Nationalist opposition had been opposed to the proposed amendments and had accused the government of political atheism , and of adopting policies of forced secularisation .

On his part, Archbishop Charles Scicluna tweeted his dismay at news that MPs had, as expected, successfully passed Bill 133:

Demeaning God and man indeed go hand in hand. A sad day for Malta. Lord forgive them: they do not know what they do.

Three Fianna Fáil senators introduced a private member's bill to the Irish parliament intended to restore the state's copyright to Ireland's national anthem

A Soldiers' Song was composed in 1907, with words by Peadar Kearney and music by Kearney and Patrick Heeney. The song was adopted as the national anthem in 1926 and was protected under government owned copyright until the end of 2012, 70 years after the writer's death.

Since then the anthem has not been under any copyright and Fianna Fáil Senator Mark Daly feels this needs to be rectified, saying:

Having copyright in place is the only way that we can protect our national anthem from being used in an inappropriate manner.

For example, the opening line of the national anthem was used on a range of Dunnes Stores clothing designed by former Kerry footballer Paul Galvin. Senator Daly has said that such commercial use was inappropriate .

The legislation suggest that the copyright can somehow be renewed but opponents point out that copyright is not meant to be a form of censorship. UCD law professor Eoin O'Dell said:

The function of copyright is to incentivise the production of cultural value and to reward the production of cultural value so that we all get the benefit of the things that are produced by the authors, poets and musicians, and then when it falls out of copyright we can all use it.

And the second thing is that, it's not just attempting to legislate respect by means of copyright, he's actually trying censorship by means of copyright, which is not what copyright is about.

Italian stete broadcaster, RAI, cut hot scenes between two men when showing the American legal TV thriller How To Get Away With Murder ( HTGAWM).

The cuts were revealed in a side-by-side comparison shared on Twitter by an Italian viewer. Rai 2 had edited out the flashback cutaway that revealed how Connor came to possess, via his very first hook-up with Oliver, some documents Annalise needed for a court case.

Upon learning of the edit, HTGAWM programme maker Pete Nowalk expressed on Twitter that he was shocked and disappointed, then set out to share a clip of the scene as it was meant to be seen.

Ilaria Dallatana, director of Rai 2 made excuses and explained that a female editor made the edits without his supervision, and that the episode would be rebroadcast in its entirety on Sunday night. She said in a (translated) statement:

There was no censorship, merely an excess of modesty due to individual sensitivity of those involved to package the edition of the series for the first time. I understand the irritation...These controversies help us to take the right steps for the future. As demonstrated by the choices made for the new schedules, RAI-2 will be increasingly sensitive to the complexities of the contemporary world

The Conjuring 2 has proven to be a hit amongst audiences with an impressive box office return. However, it hasn't gone down too well in France, resulting in the film being banned from many theaters across the country.

Le Parisien reports that 262 French theatres had initially planned to show the sequel but the majority have now removed it from their listings due to loud laughter and hysterical yelling in screenings. Some Parisian theatres banned it on its release day following disruptive conduct in screens and to ensure the safety of staff and customers.

400 UGC cinemas also didn't show the film, following anti-social behaviour. Marc-Olivier Sebbag, executive director of National Federation of French Cinemas, said:

Horror films attract a young audience who come in groups to have fun. Cinemas are aware of this and have learnt how to handle these situations. For The Conjuring 2, the problem is limited to some showings in cinemas.

Turkish President Erdogan's lawyer said that he has filed a complaint in a bid to get Jan Boehmermann's satirical poem mocking Erdiogan banned in its entirety. Previously a German court banned just the six verses suggesting Erdogan engaged in bestiality and watched child pornography.

Lawyer Michael-Hubertus von Sprenger said he had filed the complaint to a court in Hamburg and wanted to get a full injunction to replace the preliminary one as well as get unbanned sections prohibited.