Americas Censorship News

El Inca is a 2016 Venezuela romance by Ignacio Castillo Cottin.
Starring Alexander Leterni, Scarlett Jaimes and Miguel Ferrari.

A tragic love story based in the life of the great Latin American boxer Edwin "El Inca" Valero. The only fight he lost, was the one against himself.

On an April morning in 2010, Venezuelan boxing legend Edwin El Inca Valero, an undefeated two-time world champion, murdered his wife. Two days later, he took his own life in his prison cell at 28 years of age.

Now, his violent and troubling story is making headlines again, in a politically charged scandal over a banned film about his life. The movie, El Inca, was a box office sensation when it premiered on Nov 25, rising to become the third-most lucrative film of the year in Venezuela in less than three weeks.

But its run came to an abrupt halt on Dec 13, when a judge ordered it removed from theaters and impounded all copies. The court case was brought by Valero's family, which accused director Ignacio Castillo Cottin of slander. But the director alleges politics had more to do with the ruling.

The film was banned by temporary injunction before the defamation trial even got under way. The judge then postponed the first hearing, scheduled for last Monday, because neither he nor the prosecution had seen the movie.

Connections of the film were not impressed that it was banned before the judge had even seen it.

Two dozen human rights and civil liberty groups have thrown their weight behind Google's challenge of a Canadian court decision it warns could stifle freedom of expression around the world and lead to a diminished internet of the lowest common denominator .

In an appeal heard on Tuesday in the supreme court of Canada , Google Inc took aim at a 2015 court decision that sought to censor search results beyond Canada's borders.

In 2012, Canadian company Equustek won a judgment to have a company banned from selling a counterfeit version of Equustek's product online. Google voluntarily removed more than 300 infringing URLs. But as more sites popped up, Equustek went back to court -- this time seeking a worldwide ban. A court of appeal in British Columbia sided with Equustek in 2015, ordering Google to remove all of its search results linked to the company. It is this ruling that Google is now appealing.

The human rights groups are focusing on the question at the heart of the precedent-setting case: if one country can control what you see on the internet, what is to prevent other countries from doing the same?  Gregg Leslie of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said:

It's a worrisome trend, where we see individual countries trying to regulate the internet worldwide. And of course the consequences of that would mean that even countries like Russia and China could do the same thing and that will really affect the content available on the internet.

The Canadian Parliament has unanimously agreed a motion calling on the Commons Standing Committee on Health to examine the public health effects of the ease of access and viewing of online violent and degrading sexually explicit material on children, women and men.

Kamal Khera, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of health, announced the government's full support for the motion.

Northern Alberta MP Arnold Viersen, the driving force behind the motion told the religious website, LifeSiteNews, loath to raise the issue of internet censorship and that oncentrating on the health implications was a good way to ensure all-party support and also to stress public education rather than legal restrictions. Ultimately, he wants the same kind of widespread condemnation of pornography that has already occurred with smoking. Rather than offering any evidence of harm, he is rather hoping for something to crop up in the future. He said:

Gradually the scientific evidence became known about smoking's impact on the heart and the lungs. Now that kind of information about the health impact of pornography on the user is also being discovered.

When pornography's harms become thoroughly exposed, he hopes that Internet providers will restrict porn use voluntarily.

In Canada, sexually explicit websites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined, with PornHub, the largest free site, alone receiving over 21 billion visits in 2015. Thirty-five percent of all Internet downloads are sexually explicit. Globally, this sexually explicit material is a $97 billion industry. 

With all that porn being used and so little evidence of tangible harm, one wonders what the MPs are hoping to discover. Perhaps they should examine the public health effects of the ease of access and viewing of online violent religious material on children, women and men. The murder and violence caused by religion is far more widespread and apparent than any moralistic hopes that there may be a few moral downsides to porn.

Canadian comedian Mike Ward has launched a crowdfunding appeal to help pay his legal costs after being fined for cracking a bad-taste joke against a disabled teenager.

Montreal's misleadingly named 'Human Rights' Tribunal ordered the comic to pay Jérémy Gabriel  $35,000 (£20,000) for the hurt caused, and another $7,000 (£4,000) to Gabriel's mother, Sylvie.

However, Ward has refused to pay, and plans to launch an appeal. He says his stance has pushed his legal costs up to $93,000 (£54,000) which he is now hoping to cover from his fans and supporters. Writing on GoFundMe, Ward said:

I told a joke. Was it in bad taste? Yes. Comedians should be allowed to tell jokes, even crass, hurtful ones. Hurt feelings shouldn't dictate what a comedian can or can not do on stage.

I've already spent 93 thousand dollars to make sure I don't have to pay 42K... I'm either really bad at math or I take free speech pretty goddamn seriously.

The jokes that landed him in trouble were aimed at Gabriel, who was born with a skull deformity called Treacher Collins syndrome. He became well-known in Quebec after he was flown to Rome to sing for Pope Benedict in 2006. One gag in Ward s'eXpose tour and 2012 special was about Gabriel getting so much attention over his condition but now, five years later, and he's still not dead! ... Me, I defended him, like an idiot, and he won't die!".

'Justice' Scott Hughes found that the French-language routine went beyond the limits that a reasonable person must tolerate in the name of freedom of expression .

Ward will perform a show at the Edinburgh Fringe next week about his freedom of speech battles.

  Quebec's plans to force ISP's to block gambling websites not approved by the province is being put to the test by a federal consumer rights group. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) this week filed an objection to a law, passed by the Quebec legislature earlier in the year.

The bill's supporters claim that its aim is to improve public health by forcing state residents to play on the Quebec's monopoly gaming site, Lotto-Quebec's Espace-jeux.

But critics, which include net neutrality advocates , technology lawyers, and the ISPs themselves, have accused the Quebec government of setting a dangerous precedent by putting commercial gain above the freedom of the internet.

The plans, which were drawn up in the provinces March 2015 budget predict the scheme will boost government revenues by $13.5 million in 2016-2017 and $27 million in subsequent years. These gains will come at the huge expense of ISP companies, which have said that the disruption to their infrastructures would be enormous as they would have to redesign their networks from the ground up. The cost of this would be passed onto consumers.

The PIAC filing states that Quebec is in direct conflict with the1993 Federal Telecommunications Act, which prohibits a communications provider from control[ing] the content or influence[ing] the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public, unless it has approval from the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

Local police in the Caribbean island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis arrested US rapper 50 Cent on 25 June 2016 for using indecent language onstage during one of his songs.

The rapper later pleaded guilty to the offence, paid a fine of USD $1,100 and was released, reported Rolling Stone on 26 June 2016.

According to the nation's Small Charges Act it is illegal to use profane language in public places.

A little-publicized bill that is making its way through Quebec's legislative process will put an end to the concept of a free and open Internet.

Bill 74 includes a provision that seeks to force Internet service providers to block Quebecers' access to online gambling sites that aren't approved by the government.

The province's finance minister claims the bill is necessary to protect the health and safety of Quebecers because illegal sites don't apply the same responsible gaming rules as sites run by the government and pose a risk to the population.

Critics explain that the Internet-censoring legislation is a way for Quebec's state-owned gambling authority to block competition and could lead to governments across the country deciding what citizens can and can't view online. Law experts say the legislation violates freedom of expression, contradicts federal telecommunications law and will likely be challenged in court by Internet companies and civil rights groups.

Quebec's government-run gambling authority, Loto-Quebec, has been losing money to online gaming competitors, according to the 2015-16 budget documents.

A memoir apparently written by a Canadian serial killer has been withdrawn within hours of appearing for sale online.

Former multi-millionaire pig farmer Robert Pickton was convicted in 2007 of murdering six women. Charges relating to 20 other deaths were suspended. Another inmate helped him smuggle the book out of prison.

The publisher requested its removal from retailer Amazon and apologised to victims' families. Officials in British Columbia had earlier vowed to prevent Pickton, who says he is innocent, from profiting from sales of the memoir, entitled Pickton: In His Own Words. Amazon users had also called for it to be removed.

British Columbian officials also asked Amazon to stop selling the memoir, which was published by Colorado-based Outskirts Press, a firm that specialises in helping authors self-publish books.

In the book, the serial killer said he was innocent and was framed for the killings by Canadian police, the Vancouver Sun reported .