Internet News

Netflix has said it may have to to pre-emptively remove movies and TV shows from its UK library to avoid breaching new internet censorship laws being introduced by the British government.

UK ministers are pushing for the internet censor, Ofcom, to be able to censor streaming services in a similar way to which it already does for traditional broadcasters.

The Media Bill states that major streamers must consider impartiality in the context of contemporary events, pointing specifically to current public policy and matters of political or industrial controversy.

In a submission to UK Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Netflix addressed the plans to introduce due impartiality rules, calling the draft legislation nebulous and potentially onerous for services to enforce. There were still a number of areas where it would welcome greater clarity.

Netflix said staying on the right side of the proposed rule would require it to keep its giant catalogue of content under continual review, ensuring that it is removing titles on a regular basis regardless of when a show or film premiered.

The range and variety of Netflix's content, generally considered a strength of our offering in terms of maximising choice for British viewers, could equally become a potential source of risk from a compliance perspective if it fell within Ofcom's remit, it said.

Without considerably greater clarity around the scope and application of these provisions, it would inevitably be easier to remove content pre-emptively from our UK catalogue than risk an onerous compliance burden and potential liability.

Pornhub is fight back against Utah's new law requiring visitors to porn websites to verify their age by dangerously identifying themselves before being able to watch adult content..

Pornhub began totally blocking Utah-based internet connections' from access to its content when the law took effect May 3. The site redirects visitors to a video message of adult film actress Cherie DeVille explaining that the company disabled access over concerns that the law is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact will put children, and your privacy, at risk.

The Free Speech Coalition, a group representing the adult entertainment industry, also sued to block the law's enforcement that same day, making a similar argument about the trade-off regarding safety, privacy, and adults' freedom to browse the web as they wish.

The group has also vowed to sue over unsafe age-verification measures set to take effect soon in other states.

Exasperated by slow legal progress in porn censorship, Emmanuel Macron's government has confirmed that it will attempt to bypass the courts to force the porn websites comply with a controversial, vaguely worded 2020 age verification law.

Macron's government is clearly frustrated with the legal challenge mounted by lawyers for Pornhub, Tukif, xHamster, XVideos and Xnxx. The lawyers presented requests to nullify the proceedings and order a stay of the proposed block. The tribunal then gave itself until July 7 to make a decision.

The French Minister Delegate for Digital Jean-Noël Barrot announced the government's intention to empower ARCOM to order, without needing to go through the courts, the blocking and delisting of adult sites that do not prevent minors from accessing their content.

Le Monde reports that the extra-judicial gambit will be part of a new bill intended to secure and regulate the digital space. Barrot intends to present the bill to the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, and expects it to be examined in the Senate over the summer and by the National Assembly by the start of the school year.

The bill will also empower government regulator ARCOM to stop the dissemination on the internet of media banned in the European Union.

Ireland is closer to being the latest country to pass authoritarian legislation on so-called hate speech.

The Lower House (Dáil Éireann) passed the Criminal Justice Bill 2022 titled the Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offenses.

The bill makes it a crime to incite violence or hatred against a person, condoning, denial or gross trivialization of genocide, and preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics. Protected characteristics include race, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and disability.

It adds that someone violates the law if they displays, publishes, distributes, disseminates, shows or plays the material, or makes the material available in any other way including the use of an information system like social media.

The bill has a controversial provision that makes it an offense to possess material that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or group. More concerning is that the burden of proof lies on the person accused (they have to prove that their intention was not to spread hate), rather than the age-old idea of the burden being on the prosecution to prove their case. The government's proposal is the opposite of this: guilty until proven innocent.

The bill is headed for the upper house (Seanad Éireann), which will be the seventh stage of 11 before it becomes law.

 

Update: Ireland's new thoughtcrime bill is shockingly draconian

2nd May 2023. See article from spiked-online.com by Fraser Myers

You could soon be sent to jail just for possessing offensive material.

A US federal appeals court has dismissed a law suit accusing Twitter of profiting from sex trafficking by not stopping a paying customer from post nude photos of two 13-year-old boys. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals relied on a 1996 federal law that shields tech platforms from liability for content posted by others, a law now under review in the Supreme Court.

The law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, was intended to promote online dialogue and self-regulation by platforms such as Twitter, Google and Facebook by immunizing them from suits over content from their customers, in contrast to publications like newspapers and magazines, which have no such immunity.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero previously ruled that Section 230 shielded Twitter from the families' claims of participating in child pornography and sex trafficking but allowed them to sue the company for allegedly profiting from the traffickers' illegal conduct. The appeals court, however, said such claims were also barred by a Ninth Circuit ruling last fall in a suit against the online network Reddit.

Members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's party have introduced a bill to criminalize the spread of information deemed false on the internet and through social media that violates Ukraine's national security.

Ostensibly, the bill is targeted at bot accounts coordinated by Russian special services who, as the authors of the bill claim, are conducting informational influence actions against the state interests of Ukraine. But in reality, the language of the bill is so encompassing that anyone could be arrested for posting information that the right-wing nationalist government in Kiev deems misinformation.

Under the proposed bill, lawmakers would have broad powers to arrest anyone who participates in the creation, acquisition, use or sale of accounts, including those containing knowingly false information, as well as the posting and distribution of inaccurate information.

Anyone who spreads so called misinformation with the intention to damage to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, national, state, economic or informational security of Ukraine, or to exert influence on decision-making or taking or not taking actions by state bodies or local self-government bodies, officials of these bodies, would likewise face arrest and imprisonment of 5 to 7 years and the confiscation of personal property.