Petitions and Campaigns

It has just been announced that Human Centipede 2 has been banned outright by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) - who thirty years ago were called the more accurate-sounding British Board of Film Censorship. While it's true that fewer films are banned now than in the past, it's still too many that are cut or banned outright. The BBFC themselves claim that adults should be allowed to watch whatever they want unless it's dangerous or illegal - but they act as judge and jury in making those often subjective decisions.

The justification for banning Human Centipede 2 is that it MAY contravene the Obscene Publications Act. Yet the advice the BBFC receive about this law is suspect - until the end of the 1990s, they maintained a blanket ban on hardcore porn for the same reason and it took a court case to prove this to be a lie.

Their claims that Human Centipede dehumanises the victims and sympathises with the victimiser could also be said of a film like Salo, which is passed uncut.

And the BBFC's subjective viewpoint isn't just inconsistent, it's constantly changing. In 2002, the Board went to court to defend cuts made to Last House on the Left. In 2008, it was passed uncut. In 1999, A Cat in the Brain was banned outright, with the claim that the video was potentially harmful because of the influence it may have on the attitudes and behaviour of a significant proportion of its likely viewers, whatever classification it was given; in 2003, it was released uncut. Did society really change that much in those few years to make these previously dangerous films now safe?

The BBFC may seem irrelevant in the age of the bit torrent, but that's not true -- their restrictions still stifle innovation in UK cinema by making it hard for filmmakers to release edgy or confrontational films, and by charging excessive, mandatory fees that make it hard for small, non-commercial films to make any money.

We believe that adults should be allowed to watch any work of fiction that features consenting adults, and that bans should only be enforced for films that clearly break existing laws (ie child and animal abuse). There has never been any independent evidence to show that watching films has ever directly influenced anyone to commit violent or sexual crimes, let alone that they can corrupt a whole nation. It's time that Nanny cut the apron strings and the BBFC finally move to their stated position of classifying, not censoring, and also that films should be allowed to be released unrated -- with all the distribution restrictions that such a category would invariably bring. People should have a right to choose, not to be told that other people have made that choice for them.

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As reported in The Guardian's article Twitter joke trial: Paul Chambers loses appeal against conviction of November 11th 2010, Judge Jacqueline Davies stated that Paul Chambers tweet:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!

was menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear. Any ordinary person reading this would see it in that way and be alarmed.

We the undersigned, as ordinary people, do not see it in that way and are not alarmed. Because the Judge's statement is factually incorrect, we believe the conviction should be overturned.

Sign the petition

2708 signatures so far as of 13th November 2010

The government has announced that it will be spending up to £2 billion into new ways to snoop on email and web traffic.

This Kafka-esque Intercept Modernisation Plan, was stopped near the end of the last government, but was quietly revived in the 2010 Spending Review. While billions of pounds are being slashed from education, welfare and defence, the government plans to waste vast sums trying to snoop on our emails and Facebook communications.

We need to tell the government to stop this wasteful, intrusive plan for wholesale snooping on our daily lives.

Please sign our petition – and tell your friends:

Dear David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Theresa May,

I do not want the government to try to intercept every UK email, facebook account and online communication. It would be pointless – as it will be easy for criminals to encrypt and evade – and expensive, costing everyone £2 billion. It would also be illegal: mass surveillance would be a breach of our fundamental right to privacy. Please cancel the Intercept Modernisation Plan.

7284 people have signed so far

Freedom to criticise and question, in strong terms and without malice, is the cornerstone of argument and debate, whether in scholarly journals, on websites, in newspapers or elsewhere. Our current libel laws inhibit debate and stifle free expression. They discourage writers from tackling important subjects and thereby deny us the right to read about them.

The law is so biased towards claimants and so hostile to writers that London has become known as the libel capital of the world. The rich and powerful bring cases to London on the flimsiest grounds (libel tourism), because they know that 90% of cases are won by claimants. Libel laws intended to protect individual reputation are being exploited to suppress fair comment and criticism.

The cost of a libel trial is often in excess of £1 million and 140 times more expensive than libel cases in mainland Europe; publishers (and individual journalists, authors, academics, performers and blog-writers) cannot risk such extortionate costs, which means that they are forced to back down, withdraw and apologise for material they believe is true, fair and important to the public.

The English PEN/Index on Censorship report has shown that there is an urgent need to amend the law to provide a stronger, wider and more accessible public interest defence. Sense About Science has shown that the threat of libel action leads to self-censorship in scientific and medical writing.

We the undersigned, in England and beyond, urge politicians to support a bill for major reforms of the English libel laws now, in the interests of fairness, the public interest and free speech.

Sign petition at libelreform.org

It's time to name, shame and take a snapshot of the worst excesses of our Big Brother State:

We have thousands of stickers like the one on the right and we want to give them away so that you can name and shame the everyday invaders of your privacy.

Send us your name and address to info@bigbrotherwatch.org.uk together with the number of stickers you would like us to send and we will post them in an envelope to that address, completely free of charge.

Then email us your pictures and the best images will be hosted on the blog and our Facebook group page!

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to introduce a Voluntary 'Unrated 18' Certificate in the UK

In the USA, Norway and Germany? unrated films can be sold to 18+ adults. In Denmark? unrated films may be sold to people aged fifteen and over, whilst in Sweden the government is looking to introduce a similar measure.

In the UK, in order to sell a film to a member of the public it must first be submitted to the BBFC, who charge a fee, a fee which can run to thousands of pounds.

The North West New Wave, a blanket term which has recently been used by both filmmakers and local press to describe independent filmmakers in the Northwest of England, is campaigning for the introduction of a Voluntary Unrated 18 Certificate.

This would allow independent film makers, who often have little to no budget at all, but who today have the technological means to make films themselves, to voluntary offer their film into the public market under a blanket 18 certificate, regardless of content.

Such a relatively simple reform would be the largest and most significant step that could be taken in support of British film culture. The BBFC would still be able to do its job, and the UK would come in line with other countries which successfully value and use a Voluntary Unrated 18 Certificate.

Update: Result

The Petition closed with 275 signatures.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop criminalising live music with the Licensing Act, and to support amendments backed by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and the music industry, which would exempt most small-scale performances in schools, hospitals, restaurants and licensed premises.

Submitted by Phil Little of Live Music Forum.

Under the Licensing Act, a performance by one musician in a bar, restaurant, school or hospital not licensed for live music could lead to a criminal prosecution of those organising the event. Even a piano may count as a licensable entertainment facility. By contrast, amplified big screen broadcast entertainment is exempt.

The government says the Act is necessary to control noise nuisance, crime, disorder and public safety, even though other laws already deal with those risks. Musicians warned the Act would harm small events. About 50% of bars and 75% of restaurants have no live music permission. Obtaining permission for the mildest live music remains costly and time-consuming.

In May, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee recommended exemptions for venues up to 200 capacity and for unamplified performance by one or two musicians. The government said no. But those exemptions would restore some fairness in the regulation of live music and encourage grassroots venues.

Update: Government Response

27th October 2010. See article from hmg.gov.uk

The Petition closed with 16,949 signatures.

The Government responded:

Currently the Coalition Government is reviewing the situation concerning live music performance at smaller venues, and the Minister for Tourism and Heritage, John Penrose MP, is considering the result of the Consultation on Live Music which closed in March.   The Coalition is committed to cutting Red Tape, to encourage live music and is keen to find the best way forward.  A number of options are being considered and the Minister will make an announcement in due course.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Amend s63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act so as to explicitly target images of sexual abuse and to prevent the persecution of consenting adults, whether gay or straight, whose sex life involves consensual activity such as bondage, discipline, sadomasochism or role-playing.

Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 makes it a criminal offense to possess an 'extreme pornographic image'. This law is not evidence based and did not have proper parliamentary scrutiny.

As the new law stands, thousands of consenting adults who enjoy consensual, staged fantasy images of bondage and other kinks could have their lives, and that of their families, wrecked for looking at images of activities where no crime was committed.

We propose to amend this legislation so as to explicitly target people who collect images of real abuse. Similar amendments were introduced in the House of Lords but were rejected by the Government without good reason.

An amendment to provide a defense of reasonable belief of consent and absence of serious injury should be brought forward immediately.

...Sign the Petition

Result:

69 signatures

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death

Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain. He laid the foundations of computing, helped break the Nazi Enigma code and told us how to tell whether a machine could think.

He was also gay. He was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated as a 'cure', and took his own life, aged 41.

The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing for his treatment and recognize that his work created much of the world we live in and saved us from Nazi Germany. And an apology would recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man's life and career.

Result: PM Apologises aver treatment of Alan Turing

11th September 2009. 31,156 signatures to date.

The Prime Minister writes:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to withdraw the Government's support for the Communications Data Bill

The Communications Data Bill would give the Government the legal authority to collect a database of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public. Even though the Government insists that this bill would reduce terrorism (which it probably will not), this is an intolerable intrusion into the privacy of free citizens and a step towards a dystopian "Big Brother" state. The Bill must be quashed to protect civil liberties and halt the slippery slope towards an Orwellian 1984-type nightmare.

Result: Snooping On

Closed with 1210 signatures

Government Response:

The Government has not proposed to create a centralised database which would hold the content (what was said or written in a communication) of all phone calls and e-mails sent by the public.

In April 2009, the Government published a consultation paper “Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment” which considers how best to maintain the capability of public authorities to obtain access to communications data. The existing capability is declining in the face of rapid technological changes in the communications industry. The consultation document does, however, specifically rule out a central database holding all communications data.

Communications data is the “who, when, where and how” information from mobile phone calls, texts, e-mails and instant messages but is not the content. The use of communications data is an important capability that is used by the police and other agencies to protect the public and fight crime and terrorism.

The consultation outlines ways to collect and retain communications data and seeks views on how to strike the right balance between privacy and security. The system the consultation proposes is based on the current model where communications service providers collect and retain data and where there are strict and effective safeguards in place to ensure that relevant public authorities can only access the data on a case-by-case basis, when it is necessary and proportionate to do so.