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Ankara reportedly tried to pressurise Berlin into censorsing a satirical clip aired by German broadcaster NDR earlier this month.

However, the show's producers decided to amplify the message and released English and Turkish subtitled versions of the video criticizing the Turkish President.

Following the broadcast of the satirical piece titled Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan on an NDR show titled Extra 3 on March 17, German Ambassador Martin Erdmann was summoned several days later to officially explain in length the reasons for the broadcaster's behavior. An anonymous Turkish diplomat told AFP:

We demanded that the programme be deleted.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Office in Berlin said that Erdmann has been called in once again. However, during the meeting the German ambassador made it clear to the Turkish side that Germany is home to freedom of speech which it will protect. Erdmann said:

The rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the protection of fundamental freedoms, including press freedom... need to be protected.

In the meantime, Extra 3 went out on a full-blown offensive against Erdogan's demand. The program's Facebook page shared an image of the request to stop showing the clip under the caption: Erdogan's idea of 'TV on demand' .

The satirical piece about The big boss from Bosporus, who is ripe for his great Ottoman Empire, starts off with criticizing Erdogan crackdown on freedom of speech. Erdogan is also criticized for the alleged shuffling of the electorate votes and cracking down on women.

The controversy inevitably added to the popularity of the video, with the English version of the video on YouTube receiving over 1.7 million views in less than 24 hours after the news first emerged of Ankara summoning the German Ambassador.

Update: Unappreciated censorship

31st March 2016. See  article from rt.com

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker has criticized Ankara's reaction to a satirical clip about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan broadcast on German TV. Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said:

The EU chief does not approve of [Ankara's] decision to summon Germany's envoy just over a satirical song. He believes this moves Turkey away from the EU rather than brings it closer to us.

She quoted the Commission chief as saying that Turkey's reaction:

Doesn't seem to be in line with upholding the freedom of the press and freedom of expression, which are values the EU cherishes a lot .

In light of numerous warning letters sent to national television stations, which it says have fallen on deaf ears, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) has requested that the House of Representatives amend the Broadcasting Law to give the body authority to censor TV programs.

KPI commissioner Amiruddin said the KPI wanted the authority to oversee the content of all television programs, including the power to censor content before it was aired. He added that the House of Representatives was enthusiastic about strengthening the KPI. He said:

With the authority to supervise the content of programs, KPI will be able to monitor programs before they are aired to prevent any inappropriate content.

Under the current Broadcasting Law, the KPI does not have the authority to monitor television programs before they are aired.

In December 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the Internet Economy Forum, where he suggested Russian federal security service and other state agencies should make information threats their top priority and seek out tools for monitoring such threats online.

Now, a new center for monitoring information attacks is set to be launched in Innopolis, a new Russian smart city. Natalia Kasperskaya, CEO of InfoWatch and co-founder of the antivirus giant Kaspersky Lab, is launching her project there.

Kasperskaya told Vedomosti news outlet that the center is part of the response to Putin's suggestion to boost information security. Russia already has agencies that work to oppose and respond to cyberattacks, she says, but insists that her organization will be the first of its kind, monitoring and preventing information attacks online.

Kasperskays says she's currently looking for investors for the project, but acknowledges that at the outset it will function mostly with grant money and government funding, and will serve state and public needs.

The new monitoring center is the joint brainchild of Kasperskaya and Igor Ashmanov, CEO of Ashmanov and partners, a big player in the Russian media and communications market. The partners envision that the center will monitor the web using technology developed by Kribrum--another joint project of Kasperskaya and Ashmanov. Kribrum's social media analytics and reputation management software can scrape online content and analyze it for sentiment and emotion. Ashmanov says its capabilities are sophisticated enough to be able to predict an information attack online as soon as it starts, as well as to spot its organizers. Most of the monitoring efforts will likely target the Russian social networks and blogosphere, where political debates and metaphorical "mud flinging" are the most active.

Russian human rights NGO Agora reports that although content filtering and blocking remain the main tools of Russian Internet policy, they are largely regarded as ineffective due to the sheer volume of individual acts of censorship. In an effort to more effectively suppress dissemination of information and free speech, the Russian authorities are attempting to increase the pressure on users--and this is where evidence from monitoring initiatives such as the one proposed by Kasperskaya and Ashmanov could be seen as useful, especially when charging Internet users with legal violations such as posting extremist materials. Agora notes that the increasingly real prison sentences handed down for liking and sharing information published on social media aim to intimidate users and deter them from discussing sensitive social and political issues online.

A new draft censorship law is being discussed in China. The measures outlined in the Internet Domain Name Management Rules (Chinese) have been released for public comment by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The proposals allow the authorities to censor any domain names not registered within China. Only domain names approved by authorities would be permitted, while other names registered outside of China would be blocked automatically.

The measures specifically detail that domain names must not jeopardize national security, leak state secrets, or subvert state power, undermining national unity.  The laws will most likely affect foreign tech firms, including U.S. giants Apple and Microsoft, which host services from Chinese servers.

Those in violation of the new regulations could be fined up to 30,000 yuan (approx. £3,000).

The draft is open for public discussion until 25 April.

The editor of a prominent Chinese newspaper has published a resignation letter denouncing the country's media censorship, the latest in a series of public outbursts criticising tightening media controls under President Xi Jinping.

Yu Shaolei, a culture editor at the Southern Metropolis Daily , posted a photo of his resignation form on his Weibo social media account. In seven large Chinese characters, the resigning journalist simply said he could no longer follow your surname in a box asking his reasons for leaving.

The phrase is a clear reference to Mr Xi's high-profile visit of the country's top-level state-run news outlets last month, where he sought to remind staff members that the country's media must be surnamed party and lived to serve the government. Yu said in a Weibo post accompanying the photo of his resignation form:

This spring, let's make a clean break, I'm getting old; after bowing for so long, I can't stand it anymore. I want to see if I can adopt a new posture.

The post was swiftly deleted by internet censors.

Yu's resignation is the latest in a series of public criticism of Mr Xi's tightening media controls, highlighting the central government's evolving challenges to keep public opinion online and on social media in check.

Advertising website Backpage.com, which includes small ads for sex workers, won an appeal on the 14 th of March, 2016. The ruling states that Backpage is not responsible for any trafficking that may happen because of the advertisements on their website.

Backpage provides free or cheap advertisements and has been used a lot by sex workers since the removal of Craigslist in 2010. Ads are moved to the front using Bitcoin transactions after credit card companies were pressured to stop working for the website. In recent years, the website has been subject to multiple lawsuits in different states. The website has also been subject to hearings in the United States Congress, as NSWP reported here .

Three young women who alleged they had been trafficked through ads on Backpage brought the civil case forward. They were all minors at the time the events occurred. As Mike Masnick reports at Techdirt , the case alleged that Backpage was responsible for this activity under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorisation Act (TVPRA) of 2008. The TVPRA states that, anyone who "knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged" in an act of sex trafficking.

However, Backpage argued that they were not responsible because they are protected through section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 states that websites are not responsible for the actions of their users.

The three women argued that Backpage was aware of and encouraged sex trafficking on their website. The court did not accept this assessment, upholding their protection under section 230.

A man has received a 4 month suspended prison sentence for dangerous bestiality images. He also was given a 20-day rehabilitation requirement

The offence came to light when his children, who had been visiting, went home and told their mum they had seen something.

Europe's right to be forgotten is a nasty and arbitrary censorship power used to hide internet content such as past criminal history. Many think it tramples on the public's right to know, as quite a few examples have born out.

It seems that France and the EU thinks that such content should be censored worldwide, and have fined Google 100,000 euro for allowing non EU internet viewers to see information censored in the EU.

Since EU laws don't apply elsewhere, Google at first just deleted right to be forgotten requested results from its French domain. However, France pointed out that it would be easy to find the info on a different site and ordered the company to scrub results everywhere. In an attempted compromise, Google started omitting results worldwide as long as it determined, by geolocation, that the search was conducted from within France.

But now EU internet censors have rejected that idea (as it would be easy to get around with a VPN) and fined Google effectively for allowing Americans to see content censored in the EU. Google commented:

We disagree with the [regulator's] assertion that it has the authority to control the content that people can access outside France.

In its ruling, France's CNIL censor says that geolocalizing search results does not give people effective, full protection of their right to be delisted ... accordingly, the CNIL restricted committee pronounced a 100,000 euro fine against Google.

Google plans to appeal the ruling.

Malaysia's deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zhaid Hamidi recently announced that he would use the government's next cabinet meeting to address online gambling.

Despite never introducing laws to govern online gambling, the Malaysian government considers the act to be illegal and intends to introduce legislation to clarify the situation. It appears that remote gambling operators might have to prepare for an exit from the Malaysian market after Zhaid said current laws had to be amended to include preventative and punitive penalties for online gamblers.

To limit online gambling, Zahid spoke of a need for action against internet cafes where players can go for access to the web. Thus far, many of the cafes have managed to avoid reprisals from the authorities by maintaining CCTV and having street informants who can deliver warnings before police arrive.

Zahid also explained that the government was training specialist policeman who would serve as anti-gambling experts tasked with bringing down online gambling in Malaysia.

The CEO of Craigslist-style classified ad website Backpage.com may be the first person in 20 years to be found in contempt of US Congress.

Carl Ferrer was subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee back in October to answer questions over allegations that his site was responsible for nearly three-quarters of all reported child sex trafficking ads. He refused to attend.

The subcommittee responded by formally approving a contempt motion that will be reviewed by the full Senate, likely this week. If approved, it will be the first time since 1995 that such a motion has been passed.

Update: In contempt

21st March 2016. See  article from movie-censorship.com

Led by Senators Rob Portman and Claire McCaskill, the Senate voted today to hold Backpage.com's CEO in contempt of Congress.

Tuesday saw the first debate of the Investigatory Powers Bill in the House of Commons.

The debate raised some useful arguments, but many speeches avoided the key point: that the Bill would bring in a huge, unparalleled extension of surveillance powers that had never been debated by MPs before.

The Open Rights Group, ORG, will be proposing amendments to change the Bill. It's unfit for purpose at the moment, permitting and extending mass surveillance. We're particularly concerned about the lack of discussion of the filter which turns retained data into a massive searchable police database of your location, phone and Internet data. We've delved into the significant new powers for the police below.

The debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill has focused a lot on the new extension to police powers, and the collection of Internet Connection Records to keep a log of everyone's web browsing. Critics like myself worry about the ability this creates to see into everyone's most intimate thoughts and feelings; while proponents are prone to say that the police will never have time to look at irrelevant material about innocent people.

However, the really novel and threatening part of this proposal isn't being given anywhere near the level of attention needed.

The truly groundbreaking proposal is the filter , which could be seen as a government Google search to trawl your call records, Internet and location data. The filter is clearly named so that it sounds helpful, perhaps boring or else maybe something that filters down information so that it is privacy friendly. It is anything but. It is so intrusive and worrying, I would rather you think of the Filter as the PHILTRE: the Police Held Internet Lets Them Read Everything.

Remember when these proposals started, back in the late 2000s, under the last Labour government? Maybe not, but that's how long Home Office officials have been trying to make this happen. Their original plan was to build a single database that would store everything they could find about who you email, message and what you read?, and where you are, as logged by your mobile phone. Place all that information in a single searchable database and the dangers become obvious. So obvious that the Conservative opposition was up in arms.

How on earth would you stop abuse, if all this information was placed into a single database? Surely, it would lead to fishing trips, or police searches to find lists of all the environmental protesters, trades unionists or libertarians, and to identify who it is that seem to be their leaders? How would you stop the police from producing pre-arrest lists of miscreants before demonstrations, or from deciding to infiltrate certain public meetings? Indeed, who would be able to resist using the database from working out who was at the location of relatively petty offenses, perhaps of littering or vandalism, or calculating who had been speeding by examining everyone's mobile phone location data.

So the current government does not want try to hoard everyone's data into a single database. Instead, they've come up with the PHILTRE, which can query lots of smaller, separate databases held by each private company. As this PHILTRE can be applied to separate data stores, all at once, we are in effect back with a proposal for a single government database and all the same problems -- but in a way that government can claim that it is not a single government database .

But as long as the data can be queried and sorted in parallel, it becomes immensely powerful and just as intrusive. For instance, for a journalist to protect against revealing a whistleblower, they would need to avoid not just phoning them, but meeting them while both were carrying their mobiles and creating matching location logs. All of the profiling and fishing expeditions are just as easily achievable.

Most worrying is the authorisation process. Police, agencies and tax authorities will continue to authorise their own access of our personal data, just as they do today with phone call records -- there's not a judge anywhere near the day to day use of this search facility.

The Home Office is selling this Google-style search through the population's mind as a privacy enhancement. Only the relevant search results will be returned. Masses of irrelevant information about other people will not have to be given to officers. They give the example of mobile phone mast data -- where the filter could cut the required information down to just that about the person you need to know about.

This might sometimes be true. But two things make me suspect this is a highly partial story. For one thing, the search engine can tell you about the kinds of things it thinks it might tell you -- perhaps social graphs, location histories, dodgy website visits, organisations supported -- before you ask it. This is to educate and help police get the right information. It is also an invitation to make increasing use of the tool. If it is limited in its purpose, this seems an unnecessary step.

Secondly, there are no limits to what results the search engine might be asked to produce. Nothing for instance, says that only a single person or place can be searched against, so that only one person's contacts might be returned, or just the people at a single crime scene. Thus the prospect of fishing trips is given no legislative limit. The only serious limit is that this information might be kept for no longer than 12 months.

For years privacy campaigners have been trying to explain how your web history and location data can be dangerous tools for personal and whole population surveillance. Now it seems the UK government wants to engage in a whole population experiment to show us what it really means. Parliament, the courts, but most of all, you, can help stop them.

Geert Wilders, the far-right politician who was acquitted five years ago of making anti-Islam remarks, goes on trial again on Friday for allegedly inciting hatred against the Dutch Moroccan minority.

State prosecutors say Wilders asked a crowd of supporters in March 2014 whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, triggering the chant Fewer! Fewer! Fewer! , to which a smiling Wilders responded: We'll take care of that.

It seems a bit of weak case, with for example, many in Germany calling for fewer Syrians without this suggesting anything threatening or hateful to Syrians. But of course there is probably more to the case than the headlines report.

Criminal cases of publishing extreme porn and other supposedly obscene materials nearly trebled in West Yorkshire last year.

Figures from the Home Office have revealed the number of recorded crimes of obscene publication in the year up to and including September 2015. Obscene materials were found to have been published on 673 occasions in West Yorkshire during this period, an increase of nearly treble compared to the 228 such crimes in the previous 12-month period.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service examples of materials that are considered obscene include bestiality, extreme sadomasochism, realistic portrayals of rape and bondage.

Across the whole of England and Wales there were 10,644 cases of obscene publication in the 12 months up to and including September 2015. This is the equivalent of 1.9 cases for every 10,000 people. This is an increase of 98% compared to 5,376 such crimes in the 12 months to September 2014.

Update: Extreme pornography persecutions double in Greater Manchester

18th March 2016. See  article from rochdaleonline.co.uk

The number of prosecutions related to obscene pornography has doubled in Greater Manchester. New statistics from the Home Office show that hundreds of investigations have taken place into internet users' downloads of dangerous pictures.

Figures show that there were 575 prosecutions for people viewing extreme pornography in Greater Manchester last year. These figures do not include cases related to child sexual abuse, as they are recorded independently.

Saturday was World Day Against Cyber Censorship and in a unique partnership Amnesty International and AdBlock combined to deliver 156,789,119 impressions of messages by prominent privacy and free speech advocates Edward Snowden, Ai Wei Wei, and Pussy Riot in a campaign conceptualized and brokered by advertising agency ColensoBBDO.

Amnesty International experienced their highest ever daily web traffic.

For 24 hours AdBlock served banners with messages from these three influential individuals where they would normally remove banners altogether. During this period it's estimated that over 50 million internet users were reached with these thought provoking messages speaking out against the dangers of cyber censorship.

At the heart of ad block usage is the users desire to tailor their online experience, but for many people around the world, their online experiences are tailored by what their governments are willing to let them see. This made this channel the perfect way to share quotes and information from Snowden, Ai Wei Wei, and Pussy Riot, who are heavily censored themselves, to be broadcast across the internet whilst creatively bypassing a number of current censorship restrictions.

Gabriel Cubbage, CEO of AdBlock, explained why Adblock got behind this campaign.

People use Adblock for a number of reasons but ultimately no one except you has the right to control what shows up on your screen, or who has access to the contents of your hard drive. Not the websites, not the advertisers, not the ad blockers. And not your government, either.

This is a view, which is shared by Salil Shetty, International Secretary General at Amnesty International:

Some states are engaged in Orwellian levels of surveillance, particularly targeting the lives and work of the people who defend our human rights -- lawyers, journalists and peaceful activists. This continuing development of new methods of repression in reaction to increased connectivity is a major threat to our freedom of expression,.

Tor. VPNs. Website mirroring. The mere mention of these and other online tools for circumventing censorship could soon become propaganda under proposed amendments to Russian law.

Russian state media regulator Roscomnadzor plans to introduce fines for propaganda of online circumvention tools that allow users to access blocked webpages. The changes also equate mirror versions of blocked websites with their originals.

According to news outlet RBC, which claims to possess a copy of the draft document, Roscomnadzor would punish propaganda of circumvention tools online with fines of 3,000-5,000 rubles (USD $43-73) for individuals or officials, and fines of 50,000-100,000 rubles (USD $730-1460) for corporate entities. While the proposed fines may not be exorbitant, they set a dangerous precedent for the future.

Beyond restricting tips on accessing blocked websites, the bill also defines mirror websites and allows copyright holders to ask the court to block both the original website containing pirated content and all of its mirrors-- derivative websites that have similar names and content, including those translated into other languages.

In February 2016, Russian copyright holders suggested a similar draft bill mandating a fine of 50,000 rubles (USD $730) for ISPs that published information about circumvention. At the time, the bill's creators claimed Roscomnadzor supported the bill, but the state regulator denied it. Circumvention crackdown is bad for free speech

On the surface, Roscomnadzor's new bill seems to be aimed at protecting copyright holders and limiting access to pirated content online. But the implications of banning circumvention tools would be far greater. Russian officials have debated restrictions on VPNs and anonymizers for quite a while, but have so far stopped shy of branding the tools--or information about them--as illegal.

As with other Internet-related legislation in Russia, experts see the new amendments as deliberately overreaching and broad, making them ripe for abuse and further restrictions on free speech. If the legislative changes were applied literally, many innocuous pages with mere mentions of circumvention technology could be branded as propaganda.

Irina Levova, director for strategic projects at the Institute of Internet Research, told RBC that if the legislative changes were applied literally, many innocuous pages with mere mentions of circumvention technology could be branded as propaganda.

Levova believes Roscomnadzor and Russian copyright holders are deliberately pressuring ISPs in order to excessively regulate access to information online. According to her, Internet providers in Russia are technically capable of blocking up to 85% of websites on the RuNet, and any additional restrictive capability would involve mass IP-address blocking, which means even more law-abiding websites could suffer. Kremlin's creeping war on anonymity

To date, the biggest row around circumvention tools on the RuNet erupted after the website of RosKomSvoboda , a Russian Internet freedom and human rights organization, was blocked.

In February 2016, the RosKomSvoboda website was added to the RuNet blacklist registry because of a page on the site that educates users on how to circumvent online censorship and access blocked materials. RosKomSvoboda said the blocking and the court ruling were absurd, since neither information about anonymizing tools, nor the services themselves, were forbidden by Russian law.

Vadim Ampelonsky, Roskomnadzor's spokesman, stressed that the ruling against RosKomSvoboda created a precedent, since the prosecutor in the case who was in charge of enforcing anti-extremist legislation was able to prove that this information creates conditions for users to access extremist materials. Ampelonsky said the ruling could inform the future work of prosecutors and courts, when it comes to policing information that helps Russians circumvent censorship.

It is worth nothing that just a month earlier, in January 2016, Ampelonsky told the news agency RBC TV that circumventing online censorship does not violate the law.

RosKovSvoboda's website was eventually unblocked after they changed the contents of their page with circumvention instructions. It now contains their report on the court battle and an official Ministry of Communications letter, which provides explanations for some of the circumvention tools that the page previously linked to and explained. The activists also moved information and links to some other anonymizing and encryption tools to a separate page for their Open RuNet campaign.

For now, Roscomnadzor's spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky has confirmed to RBC news that the regulator worked with a group of copyright owners in Russia to draft the amendments to Russia's law On information, information technologies and protection of information and the Administrative violations code. On March 17 the draft was discussed with Internet industry representatives at a Roscomnadzor roundtable on regulating the RuNet, with companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yandex and MailRu in attendance. The bill will now go to the Communications Ministry on March 21 before it moves to the Russian Duma for voting.

Saudi Arabia's Communications and Information Technology Commission has blocked 600,000 websites over 2 years that contained pornographic and other prohibited materials.

Those who have published and promoted pornographic content will face extreme punishments of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of 3 million Saudi riyals (about $800,000).

Hundreds of people have called on Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire to lift its ban on the comedian Roy Chubby Brown appearing at one of its venues.

The council cancelled the show claiming that the comedian's material was not appropriate . It said in a statement it did not feel the booking was:

Appropriate for a council venue and not one that it wished to be associated with.

Ricky-Lee Cooke, who started a petition to overturn the decision, said people had the right to make their own choice. Roy Chubby Brown was due to appear at Festival Hall, in Kirkby, in October. Cooke, whose petition has 465 signatures, said:

I'm a big believer in freedom of speech... I do believe it's censorship. It's for the people to decide, no one is forcing [them] to go. They know what the show is like.

I do think [the material] is appropriate and I don't think the council should be making decisions like this.

Steven Lloyd, the comedian's manager, said:

We do shows for the fans, not for the council. This is purely a vendetta against Roy as they have not banned other comics from the venue.

They booked the show last November and it took them [until] now to cancel it because they didn't want 'his type'.

Update: Censored in Egremont, Cumbria

17th March 2016. See  article from newsandstar.co.uk

Comedian Roy Chubby Brown has been banned from bringing his show to Egremont in Cumbria by censors from the local council. Egremont Town Council decided the comic's October gig was somehow too inappropriate for the Market Hall.

Angry members of the public are already signing an online petition . Over 250 tickets had already been sold for the event - which was for over-18s only - leading Chubby's agent Steven Lloyd to vow never to bring an act to the town. He said:

I'm annoyed. We could have organised other shows for that night. I'll make sure we never play Egremont again. It was 3/4 sold out, we've sold over 250 tickets. I'll be trying to overturn it.

Concerns were raised by the easily offended councillor Sam Pollen. He spouted:

There is an act coming in October and people have asked me if it is appropriate in a family centre... It is adult humour, and it is offensive to many adults too.

The decision to ban Chubby's gig went to a vote. With councillors split 4-4, chairman Michael McVeigh got the final say.

A new report on identity and immigration has found that nearly half of England's population support legal limits on free speech when religion is concerned, and that support for freedom of expression has fallen significantly since 2011.

A poll of 4,015 people conducted by Populus for the Fear and HOPE 2016 report found that only 54% agreed people should be allowed to say what they believe about religion. 46% said there some things that you should not be able to say about religion .

In 2011 just 40% agreed that some statements about religion were off-limits, compared with 60% who agreed that people should be allowed to say what they believe about religion .

The report, on English attitudes towards identity, multiculturalism, religion and immigration was written by Professor Robert Ford of Manchester University and Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate. The report notes that support for limiting free speech to respect multicultural sensitivities had grown over the past five years . Limiting free speech is most popular among the young and among those most confident with multiculturalism. 58% of under 25s back similar limits on religion as exist for policing racial hate.

Stephen Evans, National Secular Society campaigns manager, said the report made for grim reading :

This report demonstrates how the concept of offense, and the violence that sometimes accompanies it, has created a chilling effect on freedom of expression in the UK. Whilst bigotry of all kinds should be robustly challenged, now is not the time to start sacrificing fundamental freedoms in order to protect 'religious sentiments'. Restricting free speech will do nothing to improve social cohesion -- and one satisfied demand to 'respect' religion will only lead to yet further demands.

Stringent penalties are in place for religiously-aggravated crimes but the law is not there to prevent us from feeling offended. Free speech is the cornerstone of democratic life any new legal restrictions would be counterproductive, only serving to stifle debate and erode hard-won civil liberties.

A book has been banned in Ireland on the grounds of obscenity for the first time in 18 years because of the nature of its content.

The Censorship of Publications Board banned all editions of The Raped Little Runaway , written by Jean Martin.

The book was brought to the attention of the board who banned it because it contains numerous explicit descriptions of the rape of a child.

Board chairman Shane McCarthy said the decision was unanimous among the five board members. He said:

It was the only resort. We either ban it or allow it. It isn't like a film where you can put in an age restriction. It is black or white.

Offsite Comment: The tyranny of censorship: Ireland's war on evil books

16th March 2016. See  article from spiked-online.com by Brendan O'Neill

The Irish state has just banned an obscene novel. That is outrageous. As if it isn't bad enough that Ireland still has a Censorship of Publications Board, at the weekend we discovered that this archaic outfit is still active.

The Kenyan Film Classification Board ( KFCB ) has ordered Google to pull down a video that the agency considers as promoting gay relationships.

KFCB Chief Executive, Ezekiel Mutua wrote to Google Kenya and other state agencies asking them to take action against creators and distributors of the music video titled Same Love by Art Attack whose lyrics, he said, advocate gay rights in Kenya. He spewed:

Kenya must not allow its people to become the Sodom and Gomorrah of the current age through psychological drive from such content. We have written to Google to remove the video from their platforms. We expect they will do it within one week from now to avoid further violation of the law.

He reiterated that Article 45 of the Kenyan Constitution defines marriage as a union between persons of the opposite sex and the Penal Code Section 162 to 165 criminalises homosexual behaviour.

Update: Hit video

13th March 2016. See  article from freethinker.co.uk

Banned gay music video becomes a hit Last month Kenyan censors banned the country's first gay-themed music video -- and the Streisand Effect immediately kicked in. The video, Same Love has so far attracted over 135,000 views.

The song is a remix by Kenyan rapper Art Attack  The artist said of the video:

We expected that this will create controversy. We expected that a lot of people will talk about it but we didn't expect the amount of publicity it has received. The erotic scenes were meant to show that these people also fall in love.

In a news conference, Ezekiel Mutua from Kenya's film classification board said:

The video currently circulating on YouTube consists of lyrics that strongly advocate for gay rights in Kenya, complete with graphic sexual scenes between people of the same gender, as well as depiction of nudity and pornography.

Last year, Kenya's ungodly deputy president has said there is no room for homosexuality in Kenya's godly society.

Update: Google refuse to censor

16th March 2016. See article from metro.co.uk

The Kenya Films Classification Board has failed in its attempt to get a gay music video removed from Google.

President of the KFCB, Ezekiel Mutua, has said he'll take the matter to court.

Google Kenya are apparently being a bit coy about refusing the censor board's request, saying it merely doesn't regulate the YouTube content. The video is still very much live on YouTube.