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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

The European Parliament yesterday passed the Audiovisual Directive, which aims to modernise and consolidate laws governing video content however it is transmitted.

The Audiovisual Media Services Without Frontiers Directive covers all media services and grants citizens certain rights to access extracts of important events for new purposes and better access for hearing or visually-impaired people. It aims to provide converged regulation for an increasingly converged media world.

Under the new laws, broadcasters will have to make clear when and where product placement is taking place.

EU member states now have 24 months to move the provisions into national law so they will apply by 2009. The law keeps the country of origin rule - that you must obey the laws of the country where the broadcaster is based not all the countries in which programmes are subsequently broadcast.

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said: With these modernised rules that improve legal certainty and reaffirm the country of establishment principle... There will be less regulation, better financing for content and greater visibility to cultural diversity and the protection of minors.

The French lobbying group, the Internet Rights Forum (Le Forum des droits sur l'internet) has issued guidelines for online game publishers and legislators.

Some of the recommendations, notably those relating to online advertising or protecting minors, could be applicable across Europe, said Forum spokesman Laurent Baup, while others specifically address French laws restricting hate speech or defining intellectual-property rights.

Among the group's wishes are the inclusion of an on-screen timer to make players more aware of how long they spend online, and changes to the content ratings publishers apply to online games.

Games that allow participants to chat using voice or instant text turns it into a public space where game publishers no longer control all that goes on, the Forum warned. Deciding whether the player or the publisher is responsible for the content of messages that turn out to be defamatory is a complex task. Publishers face another challenge: deciding whether such remarks make appropriate viewing for young players.

Game publishers already use the voluntary Pan European Game Info (PEGI) system to rate the suitability of offline game content for players of different ages. It rates games as suitable for those aged 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+ and 18+. PEGI's creator, the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, also operates a rating system for online games, PEGI Online. But confusingly, that system takes no account of content that users might introduce to a game, it merely serves as a warning to parents that a game includes online features, the Forum said.

The Internet Rights Forum wants the PEGI Online ratings system strengthened. The group proposes that no game allowing players to send text messages can be rated 3+ or 7+, and that such games can be rated 12+ only if messages are moderated by an adult before transmission.

The Forum also wants publishers to guarantee that age ratings will apply to in-game advertisements, and to put warnings on packaging if an online game contains ads.

Information about age ratings could also be made available electronically to parental control software on PCs, so that the software can restrict young players' access to inappropriate games.

The Forum wants to make older players more aware of the time they spend online, and called upon publishers to incorporate an on-screen stopwatch in their games, showing the duration of the current session.

The Internet Rights Forum plans to create a Web site for parents and teachers, explaining in simple terms for nonplayers what online games are about and what risks they pose. The site should launch early next year.

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.

Clemente Mastella said the final episode of Il Capo dei Capi (The Boss of All the Bosses) will not air this week. It will be suspended, he said: I do not believe that television, even a private network, should be allowed to sing the praises of the Godfather.

The series, broadcast on Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset network, has become essential viewing with an average of seven million viewers a week. It tells the life story of Salvatore “Toto” Riina, 67, who ran the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s.

Microsoft abruptly closed down four pro-anorexia websites in Spain after a complaint that they were endangering the lives of teenage girls.

The websites, which offer tips such as take up smoking and if your stomach rumbles, hit it, were accused of teaching teenagers how to starve themselves.

Internet companies usually wait for a court order before closing any sites that they host. But Microsoft acted swiftly after complaints from a Catalan watchdog that several blogs on its Live Spaces community glorified starvation as a lifestyle choice.

Jaime Esteban, an official from Microsoft's Spanish division, agreed that the blogs infringe all the rules on content created by users and visible on our sites. He thanked the internet watchdog, IQUA, for alerting it to the sites and invited it to get in contact if it found any other objectionable content.

The Catalan authorities have heaped praise on Microsoft's swift action. Santiago Ramentol, the president of IQUA, said that he was very satisfied with the decision of the company, given the lack of worldwide laws regulating the use (of the internet).

He said that other internet hosts they had approached in similar cases, such as Google or Hispavista, had demanded court judgments before acting.

An Italian sweet shop owner has been fined after making chocolate copies of a local porn star's proudest asset.

Bologna police told Teresa Conti to melt down the chocolate version of blue movie actor Rocco Siffredi's penis.

They said numerous passers by with children had complained of the confectionery organs on display in the window.

She was fined £150 for promoting indecency.

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".

Jaqueline Byrne, of Capel Street, Dublin, who is the owner of Shauna's adult store, has taken proceedings against the Official Censor and the Censorship of Films Appeals Board.

Ms Byrne is seeking a court order quashing the censor's refusal to grant her a certificate for a pornographic movie entitled Anabolic Initiations No 5.

She claims the Appeal Board's decision, which she was informed of in July 2006, amounted to unfair procedure and contrary to natural justice because it gave no reasons for its decision.

The defendants deny the claims. They claim that reasons for the refusal were given to the applicant.

Yesterday, Anthony Collins, for Ms Byrne, told the High Court that in April 2004 his client was informed by the Official Censor that her application to have the film certified was being refused. The censor said in his decision that the work was unfit for viewing because it contained material that was "obscene or indecent", that would "deprave or corrupt persons who might view it".

That decision was appealed. A report prepared by UK-based psychologist and academic Denis Howitt, who has written extensively on the effects of pornography, was submitted to the board.

Howitt said that the type of pornographic material depicted in Anabolic Initiations No 5 could be classified as erotic as opposed to pornography deemed to be either sexually violent or degrading and dehumanising.

However, on July 12, 2006, Ms Byrne was informed that the Appeal Board was upholding the Censor's earlier decision to prohibit the work.

Collins said that the board gave no reasons why certification was refused. He said that Ms Byrne was entitled to know why a certificate was not awarded.

The court also heard that the film was available from licensed operators in the United Kingdom.

The action continues.

Do you realise that if you get pregnant . . . It will be the closest thing to work I’ve done in my life?”

A court in Spain has convicted Manel Fontdevila, cartoons editor of the popular satirical weekly magazine El Jueves, and cartoonist "Guillermo" of "damaging the prestige of the crown".

Both men received a hefty 3,000-euro (£2,100) fine.

Their offence was to have published a cartoon last July making ribald fun of the heir to the Spanish throne, and of the government's scheme to encourage women to have more babies by giving mothers a special payment for each new birth.

Judge José María Vázquez Honrubia ruled that the two men vilified the Crown in the most gratuitous and unnecessary way. He said that they could serve 10 months house arrest if they refused to pay.

The public prosecutor, Miguel Angel Carballo, had demanded a fine of €6,000 each.

Torres and Fontdevila said the sentence was "unfair and subjective" and they planned to appeal.

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.

Fine Gael questioned whether the last-minute move to drop outspoken cancer specialist Professor John Crown from show is linked to a Cabinet decision this week on a large licence fee increase RTÉ is seeking.

Prof Crown, a respected consultant oncologist and vocal critic of the Government’s cancer strategy, was told the decision to drop him came from “higher-up” in RTÉ, and suggested political interference may have been the reason following the Portlaoise mis-diagnosis scandal.

Prof Crown said he found personalised comments made about him in the Dáil by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern “chilling” and feared a McCarthyite campaign was being conducted against him.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the matter was blatant censorship: It would appear to me that Prof Crown’s removal from the programme was due directly to a fear of what he might say. This is censorship and a denial of free speech. Prof Crown’s removal is especially sinister in the light of the menacing comments made by the Taoiseach.

Prof Crown said there was a telephone call between RTÉ and Health Minister Mary Harney’s office one hour before he was told he would not be appearing.

Let the finger-pointing begin…

Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the 18-year-old gunman who killed eight people and himself at Jokela High School in Tuusula, Finland, was apparently a fan of first-person shooters Counter-strike and Battlefield 2.

According to Battlefield 2 game stats available online, a Finnish BF2 player with the screen name NaturalSelector89 played his last match yesterday at 8:47 AM. That is, shortly before the shooting occurred. Auvinen, who posted a series of YouTube videos under the name Sturmgeist89, referred to himself in his YouTube profile as a “natural selector”.

Battlefield 2 is a popular, Teen-rated military shooter.

Auvinen’s YouTube videos, including one that apparently stated his intent to attack the school are receiving enormous media attention. His YouTube profile reads in part: …Don’t blame the movies I see, the music I hear, the games I play or the books I read. No, they had nothing to do with this. This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! No mercy for the scum of the earth!

Back in August TheFeed reported on the Piss-Screen urine stream-powered racing videogame.

Well, it took a few months, but Belgian police have cracked down on this Galileo of the gaming age, banning a version of the game entitled Place To Pee from the GamePower Expo in Gent, Belgium.

It seems the Flemish flatfoots consider the game, which allows players to control the direction of their on-screen cars by aiming their streams of liquid waste at a censor placed in a urinal, an “indecency offense.”