Members of the European Parliament have approved extraordinary measures to censor speakers accused of hate speech.
MEPs granted the parliament's president authority to pull the plug on live broadcasts of parliamentary debate deemed to include
racist speech and to purge any such material from online records.
Inevitably the rules are vaguely worded and will be manipulated or used as a tool of censorship. Tom Weingaertner, president of the Brussels-based International Press Association
commented:
This undermines the reliability of the Parliament's archives at a moment where the suspicion of 'fake news' and manipulation threatens the credibility of the media and the politicians.
However the censorship has some British support. Richard Corbett, a Labour MEP who backed the rule said:
There have been a growing number of cases of politicians saying things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate,
What if this became not isolated incidents, but
specific, where people could say: 'Hey, this is a fantastic platform. It's broad, it's live-streamed. It can be recorded and repeated. Let's use it for something more vociferous, more spectacular
Rule 165 of the parliament's rules of
procedure allows the chair of debates to halt the live broadcast in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a member. The would also be a fine for transgressors of around 9,000 euros.
The new rule, which was not
made public by the assemble until it was reported by Spain's La Vanguardia newspaper, offending material could be deleted from the audiovisual record of proceedings, meaning citizens would never know it happened unless reporters were in the room.
Weingaertner said the IPA was never consulted on that.
mong other things, Amazon Prime provides a good many of their digital videos available to stream for free. Well, until now anyway. Many indie horror filmmakers are having their videos removed from the Prime service in an apparent new policy on the
part of Amazon.
Amazon says it is cracking down on extreme content and is sending out emails to film makers to explain the new censorship policy.
Here is an example email supplied by Scott Schirmer in regards to his film Harvest
Lake :
Hello,
Amazon Video Direct periodically revises our content policy in order to improve the Amazon Video customer experience. Effective March 1, 2017, Amazon Video Direct will no
longer allow titles containing persistent or graphic sexual or violent acts, gratuitous nudity and/or erotic themes ('adult content') to be offered as Included with Prime or Free with Pre-Roll Ad .
We have identified
the following titles within your catalog which contain adult content:
Harvest Lake
In alignment with our new policy, the Included with Prime and/or Free with Pre-Roll Ad offers will be removed
from these titles on March 1, 2017.
For any title to remain available to customers with an Included with Prime or Free with Pre-Roll Ad offer, its content including cover images, metadata, and/or video content must
be free of persistent or graphic sexual or violent acts, gratuitous nudity and/or erotic themes.
Heavy metal band Metallica's concerts in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai had certain songs removed from their setlists due to China's censorship policies, reported the South China Morning Post.
Metallica frontman James Hetfield told the newspaper:
Why shouldn't you respect their culture when you're there as a guest and you've been invited to play? We want to be respectful, and just because we do things differently, it doesn't mean it should be forced upon
[others]. But hopefully we'll keep coming back and they'll realise we're not a threat politically and we have no agenda except to cross boundaries with music and let people enjoy the songs. We're not trying to bring a secret message to anybody.
Police in the US believe an Amazon Echo overheard the murder of a man found dead in a hot tub. They want a copy of any audio recorded by the Echo personal assistant, conveniently stored in Amazon's cloud.
The cops think the Alexa-powered Echo,
which was found in the kitchen, may have recorded what went on that night, even though you supposedly need to say a wake up word to activate Alexa.
Presumably worried about sales, Amazon is refusing to hand over said recordings, and has gone to
court to fight their corner.
Amazon refused to fully comply with the search warrant, and has now filed a motion to the Circuit Court of Benton County, Arkansas, to quash the order. The tech giant says any conversation a customer has with their
Echo is covered by the First Amendment. Amazon argued:
Given the important First Amendment and privacy implications at stake, the warrant should be quashed unless the Court finds that the State has met its heightened
burden for compelled production of such materials.
Leaving aside the legal arguments, Amazon is keen to ensure that the police can't use its devices as perpetual bugs in the homes of their owners. If legal precedent is established for
that, sales will go off the side of a cliff.
