World News

From AllAfrica

In an unprecedented move on Tuesday last week, members of Parliament passed a resolution banning pornography in public places. For a long time it has been quite evident that there was no political will to rid our society of pornography.

For those who are keen about social trends in Uganda, it is easy to notice that there is an increase in pornographic publications. There is also increased consumption of pornography through Internet cafes.

More movies that clearly portray perverted sexual practices are screened on our TV stations and are easily accessible at the video libraries. What is more disturbing is the casual attitude that our society has developed towards pornography.

During the debate in Parliament on Tuesday, the Red Pepper and Bukedde, known for publishing sexually explicit material, were labelled as the key suppliers of pornography. On almost all occasions where the public has raised an alarm about pornography proliferation, government has either shied away or given flimsy excuses about their failure to clamp down on this social evil.

Ms Miria Matembe, woman MP Mbarara District, is among the few political leaders who have taken a stand on the matter. During the Parliament debate last week, Matembe put it clearly when she said that there is a lack of political will to fight pornography.

Matembe said that when she was Ethics minister, she moved to close the Red Pepper, but government stopped her. She said that government had concerns about paying costs if they lost the case.

From the New Zealand Herald

A computer video game that encourages players to kill everyone in sight in ever more gruesome ways has been banned for distribution in New Zealand. Manhunt , a DVD-ROM console game produced in Playstation 2 format, is the first video game banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Chief censor Bill Hastings told NZPA today while computer games appeared to be getting more "edgy", Manhunt went further than any game previously referred to his office. It's a game where the only thing you do is kill everybody you see , he said. It gets worse. Not only do you have to kill everybody you see, you can choose to kill 'mild,' 'medium' or 'hot'. Hastings said "hot" kills were particularly gruesome. Weapons used ranged from shards of glass to garrotting wire, plastic bags and machetes.

The game was set in a weird city inhabited by criminals and psychotics. Through an earpiece, players were given instructions by a person making snuff films to kill everyone they saw. When you go for the 'hot' kill you actually see the snuff film... you see the person being killed in close-up. With the plastic bag, for example, you see the victim's mouth gasping for air inside the bag.

Hastings said the game was produced by Scottish company Rockstar Games, the same people who brought us Grand Theft Auto -- a video game sharply criticised by opponents of media violence. An updated version of that game -- Grand Theft Auto 3 -- is the subject of a US$246 million ($386.54 million) lawsuit in the United States by families of two people shot by teenagers allegedly inspired by the game.

Grand Theft Auto 3 is classified in New Zealand as R18, restricting its sale or hire to persons over 18. Unlike the Grand Theft Auto series, which Hastings conceded had an element of humour in its depiction of police chases, Manhunt has none of that whatsoever . In fact, you're rewarded for making the kills as gruesome as possible because that's the only way you can unlock the (game's) four bonus levels.

Manhunt had been banned from sale or hire in New Zealand for its likely effect on "players of any age," Mr Hastings said. In its 12-page decision, the classification office ruled that Manhunt depicted and dealt with matters of horror, cruelty, crime and violence in such a manner that its availability was likely to be injurious to the public good.

The only way you can accommodate the game's images is by an attitudinal shift, Hastings said. You have to at least acquiesce in these murders and possibly tolerate, or even move towards enjoying them, which is injurious to the public good.

From IOL

Hard-core pornography will take to the digital airwaves in Germany by the end of the year in a move keenly watched by the more than 20 networks which compete fiercely in Europe's toughest television market.

While full-frontal nudity is a staple of prime-time, and soft-porn sexual situations abound on late-night television in Germany, no broadcaster has ever dared to air sex.

But now, thanks to digital encryption devices, the authorities have given provisional approval to subscription pay TV to offer an adult "media service" on a pay-per-view basis to subscribers who provide proof of age in advance of keying in two series of personal identification numbers.

The emphasis is on the words "media service" since that is the legal loophole under which porn is making its debut in Germany. Technically speaking, this cannot be called a "channel" or "station" or "broadcasting company" - since pornography is clearly banned on any of those under German law.

But the law does not prohibit a "media service" from providing porn to its adult subscribers on condition that minors are barred from gaining access to it.

So Germany's Premiere World pay TV digital subscription platform will be offering a hard-porn "media service" to its viewers, supplied by a Swiss programming company called Erotic Media.

As with special sporting events, premium movies, live concerts and other pay-per-view services available on Premiere World, viewers will have to sign up in advance to see films on the new porn service.

Premiere World, with nearly three million subscribers Germany's largest and oldest subscription service, has good experience with Erotic Media, the company that will be supplying programming for the new service.

With Europe's largest erotica film archive, Erotic Media has television rights to more than 3 000 movies. Since 1991, Erotic Media and Germany's Beate Uhse sex boutique chain have operated a soft-core porn outlet on Premiere World.

I am sure that softcore is hardly appealing in a country where hardcore is so readily available.

From TELE-satellite

Following the lead of commercial television broadcaster SBS, competitor RTL 5 will also abandon its "erotica" programmes, signalling the end to the soft porn era on Dutch free-to-air TV.

Programme manager Jaap Hofman said RTL will finish its current series of Sex Court, Latin Lover and Van Lichte Zeden (Of Easy Morals), but will not purchase the rights to new sex material. He said the station still has enough erotica on the bottom shelf to continue broadcasting for a short while next year, but when the current supply has been used, its soft porn broadcasts will officially come to an end. The move represents an end to almost 20
years of soft porn on Dutch TV. Alternative broadcaster Veronica was also often associated with sex programmes, but fused operations earlier this year with SBS partly owned by newspaper De Telegraaf and promptly dumped its menu of soft porn.

From The FT

Anupam Kher has been appointed as India's new censor of films.

I have taken on this job at one of the most sensitive times in Indian cinema, says Kher, who is better known outside India as the father of the football-playing female teenager in the film Bend It Like Beckham.

Kher is set for a potentially eventful three years as chairman of the Central Board of Film Certification. He says he wants to rewrite India's 50-year-old cinema censorship law, which was inherited from the colonial administration and last revised in 1991. That was the year economic reforms triggered an assault on Indian sensibilities. Satellite television flooded homes with new-wave foreign programmes. Bollywood unveiled a lustier song and dance. Expatriate Indians made films for Indian audiences portraying a bold sexuality.

Despite this broad engagement, Kher, 48, was not the first choice for chief censor. The government had offered the job to an 80-year-old matinee idol. Actor Rahul Bose, says an assertive film censor is untested in India. India is a mature and excitable film-watching community. It's a diverse country that needs its films made responsibly, not least to guard against exploitation by politicians. Self-censorship is the answer but failing that the right censor is the next best thing.

Kher has already given an indication of his thinking. He has condemned "the vulgar music videos" shown on MTV, and has distanced himself from his predecessor's view that pornography should be permitted at public cinemas.

So whether intended or not, Kher is close to the cultural conservatism of the government that appointed him. It also suggests that he is keen to be heard beyond cinema, even though his job is technically confined to films. For example, television is unregulated and Kher may argue for its inclusion in a revision of the censorship laws. At present, self-censorship is the practice on private Indian broadcasters and Doordarshan, the influential state broadcaster and the taboos are clear. The shows that have kissing have not worked. This is a no-go area, says Ekta Kapoor, the head of Balaji Telefilms, which makes India's most popular family dramas.

Riskier film-making is one reason why Kher not only wants a revision of censorship rules but also stronger powers of enforcement. New powers would allow him to impose stiffer ratings, or even demand cuts, of foreign films. Big Hollywood films are now routinely shown in India within weeks of their overseas release.

From The Times

Hollywood blockbusters could be driven from Russian cinemas and replaced by home-made costume dramas in the latest attempt by resurgent nationalists to curb “undesirable” Western influences.

Under a bill to be put to the Duma, the lower house of parliament, next month, at least half of all films shown in cinemas would have to have a Russian director, producer, screenwriter and composer. Cinema owners who failed to comply would be fined.

Deputies behind the move said it was aimed at restricting films such as The Matrix and Kill Bill , Quentin Tarantino’s latest bloody action movie, which opened in Moscow last week.

American blockbusters are filled with cruelty, violence and sex , said Valery Galchenko, one of the bill’s authors. Our children have been bombarded with this sort of junk for more than 10 years now. It’s time to stop it. They are perverting our youth and crushing Russian-made films.

Another provision in the bill bars the showing of fictional programmes depicting a murder or even the planning of a serious crime on television before 10pm.

For critics, the bill has unfortunate echoes of Soviet times, when directors who failed to portray the system in a positive light were unable to get work past the censors.

The bill is pure populism, said Danil Dondurei, a film critic. The Russian film industry is booming — it doesn’t need state quotas. If anything, we need more foreign investment. American films are the market leader.”

From SFGate

Yahoo Inc, which removed adult products and banner ads from its U.S. Web portal in 2001 after protests by conservative groups, is back in the pornography business.

With the acquisition of Overture Services last month, Yahoo is now selling ads to a range of hard-core Web sites. Those ads appear on two search engines Yahoo acquired as part of the Overture deal -- AltaVista and AlltheWeb.com.

Yahoo's latest embrace of the adult industry has attracted little attention until now. The Sunnyvale company has kept the adult ads off its popular U.S. portal, which has a mainstream image.

Instead, the ads appear only on what are relatively small Web sites that few Internet users identify with Yahoo. The ads are also exported to Web sites outside the Yahoo family such as InfoSpace, which owns its own branded search engine, plus Dogpile and Metacrawler.

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to address questions about Yahoo's adult business directly. Nor would she say whether its expansion in that area represents a change in company policy.

In a statement, she said: Our intention is to ensure that consumer interests are best served and that consumers, advertisers and partners benefit from the highest quality online experience. We evaluate the external environment of our various businesses, as well as our practices, on an ongoing basis.

The adult ads appear as links on AltaVista and AlltheWeb after users enter search queries such as "porn" and "XXX." Yahoo banned most adult-related business on its U.S. portal in 2001 after protests by such nutters as the American Family Association. The issue came to a head after Yahoo created a special adult shopping category on its Web site.

Yahoo's response was to remove adult products from its shopping, auctions and classifieds sections. Executives also banned new contracts for adult banner ads. Around the same time, Yahoo took modest steps against pornography posted by users on its Yahoo Groups message boards.

The company made it more difficult to find adult-oriented groups, by deleting them from the Groups directory. However, it didn't eliminate the groups themselves or crack down on what was posted in them.

Yahoo has been more liberal overseas. Ads for adult Web sites continue to run on some of Yahoo's international portals, such as the one for Germany.

Yahoo isn't the only Internet company doing business with the adult industry. For example, Google features adult ads for certain searches while EBay has created an adult products category, accessible only after users enter their credit card information.

From AVN

Digital television receiver makers must make their products recognize a "broadcast flag" embedded in television programs to limit online piracy by July 1, 2005, the Federal Communications Commission ordered November 4.

That deadline is two years earlier than the 2007 goal Congress first mandated for all television broadcasts to switch to digital formats, according to the Associated Press. After that changeover, t hose without cable or satellite subscription would require digital tuners inside a television set or by a set-top box.

With music proliferating in cyberspace, film and television producers and distributors fretted that consumers might likewise put copies of programs and movies for free online downloading, cutting their ability to sell programming for television syndication overseas, the AP said. FCC chairman Michael Powell told the AP his commission took "an important step toward preserving the viability of free over-the-air television."

All five FCC commissioners backed the broadcast flag order, but the body's two Democrats – Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps – had a few objections. Copps told the AP the flag should stay on protecting content and not veer off into tracking Americans' television viewing habits.

Consumer groups said the broadcast flag isn't the right solution to stop illegal copying, the AP added, but National Association of Broadcasters president Edward O. Fritts told the AP that without the flag, high quality programming would disappear from free television.

From Wired

The Supreme Court recently agreed to revisit the question of how to protect children from online porn without resorting to unconstitutional censorship. This is the second time in as many years that the high court has reviewed an Internet pornography law passed by Congress in 1998 but never enforced.

The case asks whether, in the name of children, the law restricts too much material that adults have the right to see or buy. On a more practical level, the court will decide whether the government can require some form of adults-only screening system to ensure children cannot see material deemed harmful to them.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing booksellers, artists, explicit websites and others, challenged the Child Online Protection Act as an unconstitutional damper on free speech.

The Bush administration appealed to the high court, arguing that children are "unprotected from the harmful effects of the enormous amount of pornography on the World Wide Web."

The law, known by the acronym COPA, is a reasonable solution to the proliferation of online pornography, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the court. The law targets commercial pornographers, he said.

The ACLU replied that the law could make criminals of many people who use the Internet for legitimate, often health-related reasons. Those who operate websites about gynecology and safe sex could be covered, as could Mitch Tepper, who posts explicit how-to sexual advice for disabled people, the ACLU claimed.

Olson said the main target is commercial pornographers who use sexually explicit "teasers" to lure customers. The free teasers are available to nearly anyone surfing the Internet, children and adults alike. The pictures sometimes appear even when computer users are not seeking out pornography. The teasers typically lead potential customers to a site that may require payment and age verification.

COPA could mean six months in jail and $50,000 in fines for first-time violators and additional fines for repeat offenders. It is on hold pending court challenges. A federal appeals court has twice struck down the law, most recently and conclusively in March with a ruling that the law is riddled with problems that make it "constitutionally infirm." Previously, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the law unconstitutional on grounds that it allowed Internet content to be judged by "contemporary community standards."

The ACLU and other opponents of the law said that was a meaningless or risky standard to apply to the Internet, which is available equally to the most conservative town or household, as well as the most liberal. The notion of what is acceptable can shift, and would effectively give a heckler's veto to the most conservative dot on the U.S. map, the law's opponents argued.

From The Bookseller

The International Publishers Association has issued a strong protest against censorship of a Chinese language edition of Hillary Clinton's memoir Living History.

Chinese publisher Yilin Press is accused of removing passages from the book referring to Chinese government policy, human rights and the repression of the media. The changes were made without the authorisation of the author or Simon & Schuster, the book's US publisher. It was not clear whether the changes were made by the publisher or by the Chinese authorities.

In a letter to Yilin, the IPA said: We believe that this is a case of censorship that not only violates intellectual property rights, but also curtails Ms Clinton's right to free expression. It has called on the publisher to issue a revised edition containing the expurgated text.

The IPA has sought to protect books from censorship under a "Freedom to Publish" mission. The Chinese Publishers' Association's application to join the IPA could be affected by the latest controversy.

From The Guardian

A $246m (£145m) lawsuit has been filed against the designer, marketer and a retailer of the video game series Grand Theft Auto by the families of two people shot by teenagers allegedly inspired by the game.

The suit claims that Sony Computer Entertainment America, the designers Take 2 Interactive Software and Rockstar Games, and Wal-Mart, are liable for $46m in compensation and $200m in punitive damages.

Aaron Hamel was killed and Kimberly Bede was seriously wounded when their cars were shot at in June as they passed through the Great Smoky Mountains.

William Buckner, 16, and his stepbrother Joshua Buckner, 14, of Newport, were sentenced in August to an indefinite term in state custody after pleading guilty to reckless homicide, endangerment and assault.

The boys told investigators they got the rifles from a locked room in their home and decided to shoot randomly at tractor-trailer rigs, as in the video game Grand Theft Auto III .

The lawsuit alleges the retail giant sold the game to the Buckners about a year before the shootings.

On satellite the Norwegian subtitles were set up to blank out most of the screen. Turning the subtitles off would reveal the action. Hardly took any major hacking.

From Aftenposten

Cable-TV company UPC accuses Norwegian authorities of double standards after recent renewed state efforts to prevent uncensored cable broadcasts of pornographic films. UPC wonders why Canal Digital, which the state owns a chunk of, can broadcast porn film via satellite, newspaper

UPC has been ordered to make its censorship of pornographic films shown on its stations TV1000 and Canal Plus foolproof or drop them, and the Mass Media Authority has been given European clearance to enforce this directive.

But while Norway's MMA enforces the law prohibiting the depiction of sex organs in action, the state is at the same time selling porn on its own channels, Oeyvind Husby, director of strategy and communication, argues.

For years satellite subscribers have been able to remove Norway's strategically placed black bars which stations must place over the action spots in porn films by choosing Swedish or Danish subtitles. This causes the film to be sent from foreign signals, and circumvents both the censorship and Norwegian law.

The same possibility has only arisen in the past two years for cable-TV subscribers, with the introduction of digital TV. But cable-TV providers are subject to the restrictions imposed by Norwegian law.

Telenor is a primarily state-owned company and Canal Digital is completely owned by Telenor. Canal Digital's head office is in Norway - yet the company can freely show films from Canal Plus that the cable companies cannot, said Husby, who finds the situation an ethical quandary.

Nevertheless, UPC will be dropping its uncensored films, though they also plan to appeal the European decision supporting the MMA. Husby is unsure how much this will hurt business.

It is impossible to say. We have not done any studies to determine if our customers want pornography, or how important it is for them. For UPC it has been important to fight for the principle for equality under the law, Husby told the newspaper.

From Oneworld

A Princeton University student has published instructions for disabling the new anticopying measures being tested on CDs by BMG--and they're as simple as holding down a computer's Shift key.

In a paper published on his Web site this week, Princeton Ph.D. student John Halderman explained how he disabled a new kind of copy-protection technology, distributed as part of a new album by BMG soul artist Anthony Hamilton.

Under normal circumstances, the antipiracy software is automatically loaded onto a Windows machine whenever the Hamilton album is run in a computer's CD drive, making traditional copying or MP3 ripping impossible. However, simply holding down the Shift key prevents Windows' AutoRun feature from loading the copy-protection software, leaving the music free to copy, Halderman said.

The technique was confirmed by BMG and SunnComm Technologies, the small company that produces the anticopying technology. Both companies said they had known about it before releasing the CD, and that they still believed the protection would deter most average listeners' copying.

This is something we were aware of , BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown said. Copy management is intended as a speed bump, intended to thwart the casual listener from mass burning and uploading. We made a conscious decision to err on the side of playability and flexibility.

The ease with which Halderman and others have disabled BMG and SunnComm's latest copy-protection techniques illustrates the delicate balance that record labels and technology companies are trying to strike in protecting content without angering listeners.

SunnComm's technology is the most flexible version of CD copy-protection to hit the market yet. It includes "pre-ripped" versions of the songs on the CD itself, each of which can be transferred to a computer, burned to CD several times, or transferred to many kinds of portable devices. These differ from unrestricted MP3 files in that only limited copies can be made, and not every portable music device can play them.

The Anthony Hamilton CD is the first release in this new generation of copy-protected CDs that come preloaded with these "second session" tracks designed for use on a computer, a strategy also being pursued by SunnComm rival Macrovision. Record labels have pushed for these tracks, mostly provided in Microsoft's Windows Media format, to be included on copy-protected CDs in order to ameliorate consumers' concerns about not being able to use their music on computers.

SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the technology--which will be improved in future versions--should still be attractive to record companies. Though simple, the act of holding down the Shift key in order to enable copying does let computer users know they're doing something unauthorized, he said. That alone will dissuade many people from making copies, he added.

This is not an all-or-nothing thing, Jacobs said. People can break into your house, because there's lots of information out there on how to pick locks. But that knowledge doesn't mean you don't buy a lock.

In order to fully prevent the antipiracy software from loading, a listener has to hold the Shift key down for a long period of time, at exactly the right time, every time they listen to the CD on a computer. Moreover, anyone who doesn't load the software won't get access to the second session tracks, which on future CDs will increasingly include videos and other bonus material, record company insiders say.

For his part, Halderman says the workaround is so simple that it's hard to fix. Nor is he worried about falling afoul of laws that make it illegal to describe how to get around copy-protection measures.

I hardly think that telling people to push Shift constitutes trafficking in a (copy-protection technology) circumvention device, Halderman said. I'm not very worried.

From CJAD

Norway's national film board lifted a ban on hundreds of films deemed too sexually explicit or violent since 1913, including the 1994 Steven Seagal action movie On Deadly Ground and the 1990 gangster epic Miller's Crossing .

The decision came after several of the films, banned between 1913 and 1999, were deemed not so objectionable to the Nordic country of 4.5 million which has deep roots in Lutheran piety. M any of these films were banned in different times. Historically there was an emphasis on moral criteria in censorship. Today professional criteria have become more important for the classifiers, said Tom Loeland, director of the Norwegian Board of Film Classification.

The board reviewed nearly 14,000 films since 1955, and banned 300. Those films, including the French movie Lune Froide by Patrick Bouchitey which was banned in 1992 for depicting necrophilia, can be shown now.

The board will also release many of the films censored by its predecessor, the Government Film Control, from 1913 and 1995.

The board changed its policy after its 1999 decision to ban the Japanese movie In the Realm of the Senses by Nagisa Oshima was overturned by its complaints panel in 2001. The film was deemed off limits because of its intimate depiction of sexual acts and sadomasochism ending in murder.

Earlier this year, the film was shown on Norwegian TV, uncut and uncensored.

Loeland said the board today makes a clear distinction between obvious pornography on one hand, and film with sexual or erotic elements on the other. He said the law still forbids hardcore pornography in theatres, on TV or on videos or DVDs. It is also banned in print.

Other films that were previously banned include 1990's Robocop 2 for violence, Halloween 2 and Return of the Living  Dead , as well as the urban crime film New Jack City.