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France Bans Violence

Don’t like your public image? The solution is simple, ban your citizens from speaking ill of you.

Macworld reports:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

Seems all those images of the dis-enfranchised youths of France burning thousands of cars has gotten under the skin of the French authorities. What better way to address the problem then to ban the reporting of it? Notice how this law co-ops the “legal and approved” sources of the paid media? Paid media sources are so much easier to control then the wild un-registered and free public armed with cell phones.

But wait there’s more!

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.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

“Government approved”, wow, how can I become government approved?

Now I realize this somewhat off topic for a site dedicated to matters of Connecticut taxation, but freedom of the press is a central liberty of the Western World and when one of the Western World strays over the line it concerns us all.

Such as the McCain Feingold Bill:

A prohibition on broadcast advertising by any union or incorporated entity (including non-profit membership organizations) or any organization using corporate or union money, when such ads refer to a candidate for federal election within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary or caucus. The law defines such ads as “electioneering communications.”

“Electioneering communications” sounds dangerous.

We were all so sure Bush was going to veto it and then that the Supreme Court would strike it down.

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