What's Going On, France?

[Crazed Rabbit]

Apparently, there was a law passed against the filming of violence by anyone other than a journalist:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/apnews/st...464637,00.html

PARIS (AP) - A new law in France makes it a crime for anyone who is not a professional journalist to film real-world violence and distribute the images on the Internet.

Critics call it a clumsy effort by authorities to battle ``happy slapping,'' the youth fad of filming violent acts - which most often they have provoked - and spreading the images on the Web or between mobile phones.

The measure, tucked deep into a vast anti-crime law that took effect Wednesday, has alarmed media advocates who say it tramples on freedom of expression.

Ligue Odebi, an association that seeks to protect freedom of expression on the Internet, said the measure will also hinder citizens' abilities to expose police brutality.

``This makes France the Western country that most infringes on freedom of expression and information - particularly on the Internet,'' the group said in a statement on its Web site.

The measure has implications for online video sites like YouTube, or France's Dailymotion.com. Authorities could ask them to identify the sources of images made available through their sites.

The new provision targets ``happy slapping,'' a phenomenon that began in Britain and whose name belies the gravity of the attacks. Violators will be subject to up to five years in prison and nearly $100,000 in fines.

In France, ``happy slapping'' appears to be rare. Police have counted about 20 cases of filmed violence or sex attacks, but acknowledge there could be countless others.

Last year, a student used a cell phone camera to film an attack by a fellow student on a teacher at a high school in the town of Porcheville. In another incident, photos were taken of a young girl who was gang-raped in Nice and the images were circulated at her school.

Some believe that shows such as MTV's ``Jackass,'' in which the regulars perform stunts involving self-inflicted pain and humiliation, are the inspiration for the acts.

French authorities have been seeking new ways to combat youth violence after a wave of rioting, car burnings and violence mostly in poor neighborhoods on the fringes of Paris and other cities in 2005. French police first grew concerned with ``happy slapping'' when youths filmed during the rioting were seen using cell phones to record clashes between their friends and police.

Media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said it understood the government's need to crack down on ``happy slapping,'' but feared the law draws a ``dangerous'' distinction that would punish ``regular citizens'' for doing what journalists are allowed to do.

``The sections of this law supposedly dealing with 'happy slapping' in fact have a much broader scope,'' Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. ``Posting videos online showing violence against people could now be banned, even if it were the police carrying out the violence.''

Ligue Odebi noted that the approval of the law by France's Constitutional Council on Saturday fell on the 16th anniversary of the March 3, 1991, beating of motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video - a case that sparked a national outcry in the United States.

Talk about your bad timing, too. What the heck is this law supposed to accomplish?! I guess the ... whatever estate the press is gets to become more equal than others.

CR

[Husar]

I do have a guess what it could be useful for and that is getting kids arrested who film how their mates beat up another kid and then publish it.
I don't really know why a normal person would want to film violence anyway, except maybe if it helps in arresting an aggressor. Then again, why film the aggressor instead of helping the victim?

[English assassin]

i think we should encourage the filiming of happy slapping. It saves money and is less intrusive than CCTV. We have had quite a few cases in the UK where teenagers have filmed themselves committing crimes, posted the video on the internet, the police have seen the video, come round and arrested the kid who is then convicted on the basis of his own video evidence. Result!

As a friend of mine who is a criminal barrister once remarked sadly, you would not BELIEVE how stupid the average criminal is. its a shame we can't criminalise stupidity really.

[Fisherking]

i think we should encourage the filiming of happy slapping. It saves money and is less intrusive than CCTV. We have had quite a few cases in the UK where teenagers have filmed themselves committing crimes, posted the video on the internet, the police have seen the video, come round and arrested the kid who is then convicted on the basis of his own video evidence. Result!

As a friend of mine who is a criminal barrister once remarked sadly, you would not BELIEVE how stupid the average criminal is. its a shame we can't criminalise stupidity really.

But what would we do without any political leadership?


Sorry couldn't help my self

[Banquo's Ghost]

It's another example of headline-driven governments trying to control the uncontrollable and thus avoiding having to address the root causes. Sarkozy really has learned from Blair, hasn't he?

Macworld highlighted an irony - the law was approved on the 16th anniversary of the filming of the beating of Rodney King. A similar recording would now be illegal in France.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (US$98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.

Senators and members of the National Assembly had asked the council to rule on the constitutionality of six articles of the Law relating to the prevention of delinquency. The articles dealt with information sharing by social workers, and reduced sentences for minors. The council recommended one minor change, to reconcile conflicting amendments voted in parliament. The law, proposed by Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, is intended to clamp down on a wide range of public order offenses. During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of “happy slapping,” in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker’s friends.

The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

I agree with EA - let the eejits provide the evidence themselves.

[BDC]

So what happens when CCTV films violence? Is it illegal now too?

Dumb politicians. Seriously, seriously dumb. How do they manage to feed themselves?

[TB666]

Well these videos put alot more damage on the victim and if this law gives these people extra time behind bars then by all means do it.
But on the other hand these people are idiots that are actually filming their crimes and posting it for everyone to see.
This makes it alot easier for the police to catch them and what is best is that they have no chance of defending themselfs in court meaning they are screwed.
It's a tough balance tho, need to protect the victim but at the same time these people need to be punished.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Well these videos put alot more damage on the victim and if this law gives these people extra time behind bars then by all means do it.
But on the other hand these people are idiots that are actually filming their crimes and posting it for everyone to see.
This makes it alot easier for the police to catch them and what is best is that they have no chance of defending themselfs in court meaning they are screwed.
It's a tough balance tho, need to protect the victim but at the same time these people need to be punished.

I can see your point, but it appears that the filming of an incident carries a harsher punishment than the violence.

And do you think that the mindless violence will go away simply because the perpetrators can't video it? My memory is faulty these days, but I seem to recall mindless violence before the mobile phone. I read that there was some even before TV.

[TB666]

I can see your point, but it appears that the filming of an incident carries a harsher punishment than the violence.

Well I guess it depends on what you do with the film.
If you hand it over to the police then I'm pretty sure nothing will happen to the filmer.
However if you post it on the internet then yes you should get punished, maybe not as hard as the person doing the crime but the punishment shouldn't be far from it.

And do you think that the mindless violence will go away simply because the perpetrators can't video it? My memory is faulty these days, but I seem to recall mindless violence before the mobile phone. I read that there was some even before TV.

Well of course not. Mindless violence will always exist as well as idiots filming their crimes.
However with the new technology things change.
Now not only does the victim has to suffer from for example getting beaten up or gang-raped as in the article but they have to suffer even more because these idiots posted it on the internet so everyone can see your suffering.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I mislike any restriction of the freedom of speech that is not absolutely necessary to protect other individuals or the security of the polity as a whole. Please note that the latter is NOT compromised by the discomfiture of public officials.

Also, as EA suggests, the presence of such films may actually be leading to the arrest of a higher percentage of those perpetrating such crimes. Only if you believe that the opportunity to film such acts is encouraging substantially MORE of them to occur would any potential restriction begin to be justified.

[BDC]

I do suspect bullying occured before mobile phones had cameras in them. Just a hunch.

[ShadeHonestus]

/happyslap the French

[Husar]

i think we should encourage the filiming of happy slapping. It saves money and is less intrusive than CCTV. We have had quite a few cases in the UK where teenagers have filmed themselves committing crimes, posted the video on the internet, the police have seen the video, come round and arrested the kid who is then convicted on the basis of his own video evidence. Result!

As a friend of mine who is a criminal barrister once remarked sadly, you would not BELIEVE how stupid the average criminal is. its a shame we can't criminalise stupidity really.

Well, my idea was that the guy who filmed the happy slapping can now be put in jail as well and cannot excuse himself by saying "I didn't take part, i just filmed it...".
I mean happy slapping is illegal as well and they still do it so I guess they will also keep filming it despite the law, like you said, they are sometimes incredibly stupid.

[Adrian II]

Dumb politicians. Seriously, seriously dumb. How do they manage to feed themselves?

They feed on public hysteria, among other things. This law is not merely stupid, it is dangerous. According to Pascal Cohet of Odebi, the civil liberties group already mentioned, the law 'is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities which will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.' Sécurité, Égalité & Fraternité, quoi?

And I thought only the British were panicking to the point where they allow themselves to be nannied from dusk till dawn. Another bad day for civil liberties. I wonder when this stuff will start hitting Dutch fans. Shouldn't be long, we're not very original...

[Banquo's Ghost]

And I thought only the British were panicking to the point where they allow themselves to be nannied from dusk till dawn. Another bad day for civil liberties. I wonder when this stuff will start hitting Dutch fans. Shouldn't be long, we're not very original...

It may be worse than you think, Adrian. Apparently, while the UK and US are thought of as the wire-tap capitals of the world, going by actual intercepts per head of population, Italy is the surveillance king, closely followed by - the Netherlands.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Italy tops global wiretap league

State of the surveillance nation
By John Leyden

Britain may have more CCTV cameras per head than anywhere else in the world but when it comes to electronic surveillance the country is way behind Italy, the Netherlands and even Sweden.

Official figures have revealed UK law enforcement agencies and other government bodies made 439,000 requests to monitor telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006, leading to comments that Britain led the world in spying on its citizens.

A report (PDF) from the Interception of Communications Commissioner, the UK surveillance watchdog, reports that 4,000 "errors" were made over the report period. Most concerned less serious slip-ups involving requests to obtain lists of telephone calls and individual email addresses, but 67 involved errors that led to the direct interception of communications.

The UK figures might sound high but are dwarfed by interception statistics from other countries. According to figures from German scientific think-tank the Max Planck Society, Italy leads the world with 76 intercepts per 100,000 head of population, shortly ahead of the Netherlands (62), and with third-placed Sweden some way back (33). Germany comes in fourth with 23.5 intercepts per 100,000 head of population with England and Wales trailing on six intercepts per head of population.
Scott Coleman, director of marketing for lawful intercept at electronic surveillance firm SS8 Networks, said the Max Planck data reflected its own perception of the marketplace. "There's nothing weird or out of place. It supports our perception that Italy has more interception going on than any other country and reflects what we think is going on in the US and UK. We think the numbers are accurate," he told El Reg.

The Netherlands came up with a standard for IP interception and championed a framework for electronic surveillance when it held the EU presidency in 2004, so it can be seen as an evangelist for technology its ready to apply on its own populace. Corruption inquiries are perceived as the reason why Italy tops the global wiretap league.

Electronic surveillance levels in US are roughly on par with those of the UK. Based on a Department of Justice intercept report to Congress, 1.2m requests to tap telephones and email addresses were made in 2005, the last year for which figures are available. Most involved requests to obtain historic lists of telephone calls with only 48,000 requests looking for real-time call data and 2,600 involving the interception of communications.

These official figures exclude so-called warrantless wiretaps that were approved as part of the domestic arm of the Bush Adminsrations War on Terror and also exclude the work of the National Security Agency, the US's secret signals intelligence agency.
SS8 Networks makes middleware that helps service providers manage the collection of data from wiretaps across multiple voice and data connections. The firm's Xcipio products allow carriers to meet regulatory requirements for supporting law enforcement agencies.

Under the controversial Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act US broadband and VoIP providers face a 14 May compliance deadline for setting up systems that allow them to process wiretapping requests from law enforcement agencies. Despite this looming deadline, standards bodies are yet to come up with a finalised standard for how the technology ought to be applied, Coleman reports. "The legislation has led to some increase as a result of sales to broadband providers but the diversity of communication protocols across different network types is more important to our business," he added. ®

[drone]

It may be worse than you think, Adrian. Apparently, while the UK and US are thought of as the wire-tap capitals of the world, going by actual intercepts per head of population, Italy is the surveillance king, closely followed by - the Netherlands.

Nothing surprising there. They are just trying to clean up the match-fixing in Serie A.

[Adrian II]

Nothing surprising there. They are just trying to clean up the match-fixing in Serie A.

If only we had a soccer competition like that, many Dutchmen would take the extra surveillance for granted... Nothing to hide eh?

I can't find that Max Planck report anywhere. Electronic surveillance is a transnational issue, with countries tapping each other's citizens at the other country's request. All perfectly legal, but not very transparent. I also wonder what is special about Dutch IP detection. Does anyone? I'm willing to learn. I'm trying to find official Dutch sources on the number, percentage &cetera of legal wiretaps in The Neds. I'll bet there is more to those than meets the, um, ear as well.

Edit
Wait, the MoJ refuses to declare recent numbers (which is idiotic) but the last available figure (over 1999) was around 50 taps on every 100.000 citizens. These days 62 (as mentioned by MP) might well be acurate. MoJ explains the high number by the fact that Dutch Justice uses fewer alternative methods than most other coutnries (i.e. more invasive methods such as infiltration, wiring, house searches etcetera).

Second edit
Here it is. The report does not include any taps by intelligence and security services, only taps used in police investigations. Rather disappointing, as an index.

[KukriKhan]

... I also wonder what is special about Dutch IP detection. Does anyone?...

I don't have sources at hand ( I'll look), but I've learned by doing traceRoutes on IP addresses here that Holland is THE major intersection for 'net traffic eastward & south. Anecdotally, almost every non-US/-Aus traceRoute I did included several 'skips' through Netherlands servers/switches.

You guys apparently have so many cables, phone lines & satellite receiver/transmitters, it's a wonder you can hear at all, above the hum of electrons buzzing hither, thither and yon.

[lars573]

I'm starting to think that the Netherlands as a whole is dementionally transendental (like a giant TARDIS). And is actually the largest nation on earth.

[ShadeHonestus]

You guys apparently have so many cables, phone lines & satellite receiver/transmitters, it's a wonder you can hear at all, above the hum of electrons buzzing hither, thither and yon.

They evolved to hear over the hum of prostitutes...

[Adrian II]

I don't have sources at hand ( I'll look), but I've learned by doing traceRoutes on IP addresses here that Holland is THE major intersection for 'net traffic eastward & south.

I see. That makes us the hub for some interesting exchanges, doesn't it? I knew we were something special, as Fragony would say. Seriously, thanks for giving me a great angle for research and maybe an article.

They evolved to hear over the hum of prostitutes...

ROFLMAO!

[Louis VI the Fat]

Apparently, there was a law passed against the filming of violence by anyone other than a journalist:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/apnews/st...464637,00.html

PARIS (AP) - A new law in France makes it a crime for anyone who is not a professional journalist to film real-world violence and distribute the images on the Internet.

Critics call it a clumsy effort by authorities to battle ``happy slapping,'' the youth fad of filming violent acts - which most often they have provoked - and spreading the images on the Web or between mobile phones.

Sorry for the belated reply. Paris' way of combating both the law and happy-slapping itself:

Anti-slapping!

The aim of anti-slapping is, primarily, as its name suggests, to actively oppose happy slapping. In reply to video images depicting violent acts, we’ve produced and are broadcasting images showing gestures of respect and kindness towards others using the same protocols and technical means as the happy slappers do. These images are shown on the Internet site, on the blog and information is spread by word of mouth. Cellphones, TV , magazines and newspapers also aim at making us question filmed violence, those who indulge in it, those who watch it ,without forgetting those who are indignant and those who don’t accept it.

The anti-slappers’ challenge is to show their films as widely as possible until they reach the point whereby people who indulge in or watch happy slapping are sensitized, this particulary concerns adolescents who appear to be the most concerned by this phenomenon.

Link in English to more videos. My other link above is French, but far more interesting. If you scroll halfway down there, there are some better videos.