| 29th December |
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EU TV parents survey reveals call for more censorship
Permalink
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From
Rapid TV News
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A European viewers’ survey from UPC has called upon broadcasters to curb
the amount of sex and violence on TV.
The survey was carried out for cable giant UPC. Parents not only want
to remain in the driving seat when it comes to what their children
watch, but they also call for more supervision from the local Media
Authority for example, on certain TV content, said the study.
Six thousand parents in thirteen countries were surveyed, and the study
included youngsters in age groups of under five, six to 12 and over 12
years old.
When it comes to monitoring the TV habits of their children, 57% of
the European parents want more supervision of the content of TV,
said the survey. Only 3% of surveyed parents wanted less supervision.
Of the parents who believe the supervision of content should be
intensified, 79% says this is because there is too much violence on TV
and 56% said there was too much sexual content on TV. Violent and sexual
content are also the main reasons for forbidding children to watch
certain programmes, which is done by two-third of the parents (67%) of
those surveyed. The 57% of parents that want more supervision of the
content can be found in particular in Austria, Switzerland, Germany,
Poland and Romania.
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| 21st December |
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Greek court dismisses obscenity charges over arty masturbation
Permalink
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From
Google News see
full article
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 A
Greek court acquitted the director of an art show on charges of
obscenity and an attack on national symbols, citing freedom of
expression.
A video showing a woman masturbating to the Greek national anthem by
Greek-American Eva Stefani was displayed at the Art Athina contemporary
art show in Athens last June.
After a visitor reported the video to police, Art Athina director
Michalis Argyros was arrested and charged.
He spent the night behind bars, provoking outcry from local artists, who
mobilised to defend him.
At the trial, the court ruled against the prosecutor, who had argued the
video made no sense and that Nudity is a work of art only in
Renaissance paintings.
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| 17th December |
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Worrying consequences of German teen protection laws
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From the
Times see
full article
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 Youthful
romance may never be the same again. German teenagers caught petting in
cinemas or posting suggestive pictures of themselves on the internet
could be prosecuted under strict new laws to be passed in the Bundestag.
Magazines for teenage girls, such as the widely read Bravo, will have to
think again before publishing photo-stories of scantily clad young
couples in passionate embrace, or risk landing their editors in jail for
ten years. Even writers and painters will have to be careful when
depicting under-age subjects in sexual situations. They too could be
sent to prison.
The legislation, which is aimed at stamping out child prostitution, has
drawn a storm of protest from legal experts, liberal politicians and
even sex therapists. The law was due to be introduced last week but the
Government withdrew it at the last minute because of the scale of the
opposition.
It represents a moral rollback to the puritanism and prudishness of
the 1950s, said Jerzy Montag, a Green Party MP who is trying to
rally opposition in parliament. The State is attempting to interfere
in the most intimate sphere.
The new law reduces the minimum age at which sexual offenders can be
prosecuted from 18 to 14, and raises the maximum age at which a victim
is entitled to legal protection from 16 to 18. The idea is to stop the
recruitment of minors as prostitutes by other minors — pimps in big
cities are often 17 or younger — but the initiative is a legal
minefield.
If a 15-year-old says to a 17-year-old, ‘I'll invite you to the
cinema providing we have a bit of heavy petting afterwards', then that
will now be a criminal offence, said Montag. Even if the
17-year-old says no, it will still be illegal. The mere attempt to
secure sexual favours in return for payment in kind is against the new
law.
The law will put parents and other adults — such as cinema managers and
teachers — in a difficult position. If they overhear a comment that
suggests that a teenager is putting pressure on another teenager, or
offering a reward, for sex then they have an obligation to call the
police. But the crucial evidence may hinge on the slightest of nuances.
If a youth says, ‘I'll pay for the cinema and then we'll snog',
that's still OK, Montag said. But if he says, ‘I'll pay for the
film and I want to snog in return', then he has broken this law.
Christine Lambrecht, a Social Democrat MP who helped to draw up the
changes, said that the real target was not fumbling teenagers on the
back seat of a cinema but people trying to recruit child prostitutes:
We're talking about a 15-year-old who says to a !7-year-old, ‘I'll buy
you a designer jacket if you sleep with me'. All too often that kind of
approach is the start of a recruitment process.
Two laws are involved. The first is Article 182 of the Criminal Code,
which is concerned with sexual abuse of minors and which can lead to
hefty fines or up to five years in jail. The second is Article 184b,
which covers the possession and distribution of child pornography. The
amendments to both laws significantly broaden the age range for minors
as victims and offenders. Possession of child pornography can lead to a
jail sentence of between three months and ten years.
Now a teenager who photographs a teenage couple embracing in a park will
be liable for prosecution if he or she distributes the pictures broadly
on the net. A teenage girl who photographs her classmate in a revealing
swimsuit and then sends it to her is still just within the law,
providing that both girls consent and the picture is only for personal
use. As soon as the picture is sent to another friend, the law has been
broken. Even the act of downloading the picture is illegal.
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| 14th December |
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No More Heroes not toned down, just not the strong US version
Permalink full story: No More Heroes...Europe gets censored version of computer game
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From GamesIndustry.biz see
full article
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 The
MD of Rising Star Games, Martin Defries, has responded to criticism
levelled at the company following the announcement that forthcoming
title No More Heroes would be toned down from the US edition.
Defries has told GamesIndustry.biz that those claims are wide of the
mark, because the European edition will be identical to the one just
released in Japan, localisation notwithstanding.
There are two versions of No More Heroes that are going to
be published in the West, he said.
Ours [Europe], which will be drawn down from our parent company,
Marvelous Interactive, which is directly from the Japanese iteration
of the game, and there will be a version in the US that is a full-on
gore, beheadings, dismemberment…and it seems some confusion has come
to the fore in the past few days as to which version Rising Star
Games will publish.
Why the decision [to add in additional gory detail to the US
release] has been made is a difficult one for me to comment on -
that's a Ubisoft decision for the North American market.
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| 13th December |
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PEGI games ratings issues annual report
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From GamesIndustry.biz see
full article
See also
PEGI Annual Report [pdf]
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 The
Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system has published its
latest annual report.
The chief purpose of the report is to show the PEGI system to be as
transparent as possible so as to have this self-regulation fully
appreciated by European policy makers and put to the best use by the
general public, whether this should be parents, teachers, academics, or
any other interested party, said Patrice Chazerand, secretary
general of ISFE.
A Nielsen survey showed that the number of consumers relying upon PEGI
icons across ten countries to identify appropriate products increased
from 72% in 2004 to 94% in 2007
At a recent meeting of the Viennese provincial government, the Viennese
Youth Protection Act was amended to make the PEGI age rating system
mandatory for videogames sold in that city in what is hoped to be a
first step towards a pan-Austrian agreement.
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| 11th December |
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Age verification law requires mass block on foreign sites
Permalink full story: Age Verification in Germany...Requiring age verification for adult websites
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From X
Biz see
full article
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 A
German adult website operator has filed in the district court in
Frankfurt to force the German ISP Arcor to block Google.de and
Google.com in order to prevent the display of adult images without age
verification, which is prohibited under German law.
The request was filed by Huch Medien GmbH, the company that owns and
operates AmateurStar.de.
In its filing, Huch Medien reportedly said it would not simply sit back
and watch as Google’s image search displayed pornographic images to
users of all ages, including “clearly prohibited animal pornography.”
Huch Medien Executive Director Tobias Huch said that he’s merely trying
to get the German legal system to clarify the scope of the liability
exemptions offered to ISPs under the German Telemedia Act.
Huch asserted that since Germany blocks sites like YouPorn.com — as the
court ordered Arcor to do in October — then the country theoretically
should block all websites that violate relevant German and/or European
Union law.
If Germany is going to maintain such a legal posture and engage in
blocking sites in widespread fashion, then we should not complain
when China blocks a large number of websites, Huch said.
According to German attorney Daniel Koetz the German law requiring age
verification applies to all websites that can be accessed from Germany.
Koetz told XBIZ that the Telemedia Act requires all sites bearing
content presumably harmful to minors such as pornography to have an
age-verification system. Such an age-verification system has to ‘secure
that minors cannot access the site. Koetz said that under the law,
German authorities and courts only deem an age-verification system to be
secure if the system forces end users to have personal contact with a
third party who verifies their age.
One of the problems with that system, Koetz said, is who wants to go
through all that hassle to enter a porn site, and who wants postal
clerks to know you’re a pervert watching porn?Koetz said that as a
result of the law, traffic to German porn sites is low because
everybody goes to other countries’ sites.
Those foreign sites, however, are subject to being blocked by German
ISPs by order of the courts, Koetz said — as Huch has requested that the
Frankfurt court to Arcor to do with Google.
Koetz said that Huch’s request was filed in order to demonstrate the
perversion of all this.
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| 10th December |
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Spanish state television to drop bull fighting
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From the
Independent see
full article
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 Bullfighting
in Spain has taken another step towards its demise after the state
broadcaster cut it from its advanced schedules.
RTVE, the state radio and television network, failed for the first
time yesterday to include la corrida in its budget for "obligatory
programming".
The schedule, which dictates what type of programmes RTVE must spend
its money on over the next nine years, will be debated in the
Spanish parliament next week.
There was conspicuously no mention of bullfighting – the first
programme that RTVE showed when it started in 1948.
Regional state broadcasters can show bullfighting and transmit
programmes from other channels – and private channels are still free
to show la corrida – but animal rights campaigners hailed the
development as the beginning of the end for this controversial
national pastime. It could see the steady demise of what has been a
traditional sight in Spain, as the family gathered around the
television at 5pm on a Sunday to thrill to the sight of a man in a
gold-sequined suit dispatching a blood-soaked 400kg bull.
Theo Oberhuber, a co-ordinator of Ecologists in Action, which has
been campaigning for a total ban, said: This is not a total
victory but it opens the door to the beginning of the end. We are
very pleased.
In August, RTVE dropped afternoon broadcasts of los toros after it
was judged too violent for an audience of children.
The popularity of bullfighting peaked in the early-1970s as
prosperity grew and attending los toros was seen as a sign of wealth
after years of hardship. Today some bullfighting promoters say only
tourists attend las corridas and in some parts of the Spain they are
facing financial ruin.
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| 10th December |
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Porn, seizures and flea markets in Finland
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From YLE News see
full article
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 Finnish
authorities have seized record amounts of illegal pornography this
year.
Pornography that depicts real violence, paedophilia, or bestiality
is illegal in Finland.
The Finnish Board of Film Classification and police teamed up to
conduct raids on sites suspected of selling illegal pornography.
Around 800 illegal movies were seized. In at least one case, a
Finnish pornography producer and distributor will be taken to court
for the aggravated assault allegedly portrayed in the movie.
Leena Karjalainen, an inspector with the Board of Film
Classification, is worried not only of the increasing brutality of
pornography, but that it is becoming more commonplace in flea
markets, for example, where children might be exposed to it.
At the beginning of next year we intend to hand out guidelines
for flea markets explaining what is legal, what isn't, and what
vendors should do. I am going to recommend that flea markets do not
sell pornography at all, says Karjalainen.
The Board will also start conducting spot tests this Christmas
season on shops that sell video games with a minimum age limit of
18. Young buyers will attempt to buy the games at various shops in
order to reveal vendors with lax supervision
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| 8th December |
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BBFC win next censorship round in bloodless coup
Permalink full story: No More Heroes...Europe gets censored version of computer game
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From the GayGamer.net see
full article
Available in US for release on 4th Feb 2008
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It
has been confirmed that the latest and greatest Wii game from Suda
51, No More Heroes, will not have blood in it in the European
version.
Rising Star Games, the European publisher of the title, was asked if
this was due to the response of the BBFC to Manhunt 2, the
company gave only this one word response, "Maybe."
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| 8th December |
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Parental concerns about computer games
Permalink
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Seems to be one of those nonsense surveys that have no clear purpose and
vague questions designed purely for release to the press.From the BBC see
full article
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More
than 75% of parents are concerned about the content of video games
played by their children, a survey found. [surely it is good to be
concerned! Doesn't necessarily imply everything is out of hand]
Almost half of the 4,000 parents surveyed across the UK, France,
Italy and Germany said that one hour of gaming each day should be
the limit.
Some 43% of the surveyed parents said they were not aware of ratings
systems for games to determine suitability.
The survey was carried on behalf of Microsoft.
The survey found that more than half of children played games on
consoles, 32% on PCs, 9% played games online and 4% played on a
mobile phone.
It also revealed that for the majority of children, playing games
was a solitary activity.
64% of children played games alone, less than 1 in 10 children play
video games with family members and 12% played with friends, the
survey found.
The online space is a growing sector of the games industry but the
survey found only 5% played mainly online.
Parents saw themselves as the key decision makers for which games
should be played by their children, rather than regulators or the
video games industry, according to the survey.
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| 6th December |
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Film advert banned over bin Laden joke
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From Contact Music
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 Provocative
radio ads for Uwe Boll's new horror film Postal have been banned
by stations in his native Germany - because he jokes profits from the
movie will help to fund Osama Bin Laden's terrorism plans.
Radio bosses are
afraid that listeners will take the satirical promotions in a literal
context. In one commercial an actor parodies Bin Laden and informs the
audience that 5% of the box-office receipts will be used to
support Al-Qaeda.
But angry Boll has lashed out at the radio executives,
alleging they think listeners are dumb. He rages, No German would be so
naive and stupid as to believe that Bin Laden is talking in German via a
German radio station. "This is a huge scandal and definitely the wrong
signal as this self-censorship only helps these religious fanatics gain
control. Tolerance as well as art, freedom of speech and freedom of
expression has always been one of the strong pillars of strong
democracies.
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The
European Parliament yesterday passed the Audiovisual Directive, which
aims to modernise and consolidate laws governing video content however
it is transmitted.
The
French lobbying group, the Internet Rights Forum (Le Forum des droits
sur l'internet) has issued guidelines for online game publishers and
legislators.
A
hit television series described as Italy’s answer to The Sopranos has
been ordered off the air by the country’s justice minister who claims it
glamorises the Mafia.
Microsoft
abruptly closed down four pro-anorexia websites in Spain after a
complaint that they were endangering the lives of teenage girls.
An
Italian sweet shop owner has been fined after making chocolate copies of
a local porn star's proudest asset.
The
owner of an adult shop in is seeking a court order to allow a
certificate for a pornographic movie described as "obscene" and
"indecent".
RTÉ
was embroiled in a storm over political censorship last night as
opposition leaders demanded to know if “sinister” pressure forced it to
axe a Government critic from The Late Late Show.
Back in August TheFeed reported on the Piss-Screen urine
stream-powered racing videogame.
Students
from a school in Sofia have accepted the offer of Rumen Petkov, minister
of inner affairs, to collaborate with the Ministry in locating and
removing sites with illegal and pornographic content from cyber space. 
Italian
bloggers may be required to register with a national database, unless an
ambiguously-worded new law is amended before it comes into force.
EU
considers a block on search terms like "terrorism"
Dutch
private member bill tabled to ban bestiality
YouTube
under fire for Nazi propaganda
Plan
to abolish Swedish film censorship falters
Don't
bother trying Google.de
French
classifiers look to classify film festival films
As
opposed to the hands-off monarchy of Spain
Germany
debates proof of age seal
Even
Netherlands is moving towards internet censorship
Flickr
Censrs German usrs 
Irish
Broadcasting
Complaints Commission not impressed by discussion of sex toys
Cursed,
hype or a snuff movie?
As
religion is often worthy of hatred
Dutch
MPs threaten night club party events
Softcore
banned from Italian free to air TV
Alarming
Polish moves to criminalise possession of all porn
Italian
cinemas pull out of showing assassination movie
Burning
of Anne Frank's Diary is ruled sedition in Germany
Pay
per view hardcore for Germany
Dolce
& Gabbana advert offends in Spain 
Hungary
step out of line on age restriction for porn
EC
wins Internet Villain of the Year award
French politically correct censorship
ie
Europe muscling into Internet TV
Germans consider devastating
change to porn law
German political party
expels porn actor
Spanish anorexia website under duress
