Censor Watch

Match of the Day
BBC One, 31st August 2013

A complainant contacted BBC Audience Services on 2 September 2013 to complain about a comment made by Gary Lineker on Match of the Day on 31 August 2013.

Gary said:

The two signings that Ian Holloway talked about are ... have confirmed Jimmy Kebe the winger from Reading and also from Huddersfield the right back Jack Hunt - have to be very careful with that one. Next, Manchester City versus Hull City...

Gary stressed the letter H on the word Hunt, apparently in order to avoid the possibility of a mis-interpretation of the word Hunt , which, following the word Jack , might have either been heard by some viewers as a verbal use of the word 'cunt'.

The complainant felt that for Gary to say he had to be very careful with that one was a crude and inappropriate comment about Jack Hunt's name on a family show .

Audience Services responded on 12 September 2013 saying that it was most definitely not the case that Gary Lineker had made an offensive comment . They noted that no laughter had accompanied the comment be careful with that one , and that nothing had followed which could be interpreted as crude or inappropriate . Audience Services apologised if the complainant had found the comment unacceptable, but said there was certainly no intention to cause offence .

The complainant was not satisfied with the response and made a follow-up complaint on 8 October 2013 and then escalated his complaint to the Trust. He said that it was indisputable that Gary Lineker was: making a reference to the worst word in the English language. He said that the sentence had no purpose other than to emphasise the potential c word trip-up .

The BBC Editorial Complaints Committee Decision

The Committee considered the response of Audience Services in relation to Match of the Day and noted that Audience Services had apologised for any offence that had been caused, but had assured the complainant there had been no intention to cause offence and Gary Lineker had not used offensive language. Trustees noted that the complainant had watched with his teenage son and regretted any embarrassment he may have felt. However Trustees considered that the comment made by the presenter was elliptical and would be within the expectations of the audience of the very well established programme.

The Committee therefore decided that this appeal did not qualify to proceed for consideration.

There is an exhibition at St Marylebone Church of the work of 20 artists' representations of the Stations of the Cross. Throughout Lent, some of these have been approved by TfL to appear on the London Underground.

But not Antony Micallef's Kill Your Idol , a representation of the first station, where Jesus is condemned to death, this time by an X-Factor style panel of judges.

A spokesperson for TfL said the poster was rejected because it did not comply with the firm's advertising policy. She pointed to a clause that concerns causing widespread or serious offence to members of the public and another referring to advertisements that do not comply with the law or incite someone to break the law.

It is the view of St Marylebone's Rector, the Reverend Canon Stephen Evans, that this work raises:

Important contemporary questions about the fickleness and shallowness of fame and celebrity, success and failure. About who has the power to say just who is going to be a 'hit' and who a 'miss'.

It is not an image that could cause offence, it's not obscene; it is just a very, very strange decision.

But of course the decision is nothing to do with nuances of offence. It's just that everybody knows that religion and satire simply do not mix, and anything coming anywhere close is simply best avoided for fear of either violence or else a station load of moaning minnies. It seems that religion these days is not really very welcome in the normal world, it causes far too much trouble in the world.

Harry Novak (January 12, 1928 -- March 26, 2014), the sexploitation king, produced and distributed a prolific number of exploitation films from the early 60s to the mid-70s, including William Rotsler's cult classics The Agony of Love and Mantis in Lace and the influential monster nudie Kiss Me Quick ! among many others.

His mondo documentary film Mondo Mod is considered a seminal surfer cult movie, offering early glimpses of southern California's surfing and biker subcultures, and was a film that proved successful enough that it was eventually distributed widely to North American drive-ins by exploitation powerhouse Box Office International Pictures

But really, Wiki's selected filmography best describes his enormous contribution to the exploitation genre:

• Kiss Me Quick! (1964)
• Mantis in Lace (1968)
• The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet (1969)
• The Notorious Cleopatra (1970)
• Wilbur and the Baby Factory (1970)
• The Toy Box (1971)
• Sweet Georgia (1972)
• The Pigkeeper's Daughter (1972)
• The Sinful Dwarf (1973)
• A Scream in the Streets (1973)
• Please Don't Eat My Mother (1974)
• Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975)
• Rattlers (1975)
• Tanya (1976)
• Sultan of Sexploitation, King of Camp (1999) (as himself)
• SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies (2001) (as himself)

Chinese authorities have prosecuted an Internet policeman who took payments from companies in return for censoring unfavorable remarks about them on social media.

He's accused of censoring more than 2,500 posts in return for over $300K in payments. He also collaborated with another official to censor critical remarks about government officials.

It seems unlikely that Gu, the Internet policeman who was arrested, and Liu, his collaborator, were the only two censors-for-hire in the Chinese system.

A U.S. judge has ruled that the Chinese search engine Baidu has the right to block pro-democracy works from its query results, dismissing a lawsuit that sought to punish the company for Internet censorship.

The lawsuit against Baidu, originally filed in 2011 by eight activists in New York, claimed that the Chinese search engine had violated U.S. laws on free speech. This was because Baidu had been censoring pro-democracy works on its search engine for not only its users in China, but also for those accessing the site from New York.

But U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled against the activists, and said requiring Baidu to include pro-democracy works in its search results would run afoul of the U.S.'s free speech laws. In his ruling, Furman compared Baidu's blocking of pro-democracy works to a newspaper's right to exercise editorial control to publish what it wants. In Baidu's case, the company has created a search engine that favors certain political speech.

Update: Appeal

31st March 2013. See article from pcworld.com

A group of activists are hoping to appeal a U.S. judge's ruling that treated the censorship on Chinese search engine Baidu as free speech.

In making the ruling, District Judge Jesse Furman equated the censorship to a newspaper exercising its editorial right to publish what it wants. But Stephen Preziosi, lawyer for the eight pro-democracy activists, said in an email Saturday that the comparison was wrong, and that the court had a fundamental misunderstanding of how search engines work.

The appeal is planned to be filed later this week, Preziosi wrote.

UK Video on Demand censor ATVOD has called for the law to be changed to require pornography sites to carry out age checks before granting access.

It said credit and debit card operators would be forbidden from processing payments from British customers to sites that did not comply. It claimed that the matter was so urgent that it was critical the legislation is enacted during this Parliament .

To back up its demand, the body commissioned market research firm Nielsen Netview to install equipment that monitored the online habits of 45,000 desktop PC and laptop users over the course of a month. The survey indicated that over the period:

• 6% of children aged 15 years or younger had accessed an adult website
• 5% of visitors to such sites had been under-18
• One website alone - Pornhub - had been visited by 112,000 boys in the UK aged between 12 and 17-years-old Of the wider population,
• 23% of those who had used the net over the month had visited an adult site Visitors to adult sites spent an average of 15 minutes looking at them during each visit and typically clocked up two-and-a-half hours of time in total over the month

Atvod added that the survey probably underestimated the scale of the issue since smartphone and tablet use was not included in the figures.

The regulator already forces UK-based sites to carry out onerous and impractical age verification checks before explicit photographs and videos can be viewed. This can be done by requiring valid credit card details (sorry debit card holders, these simply wont do) or other personal information that can be cross-referenced with the electoral roll or another ID database. (or used for phishing or identity theft)

Sex and Censorship, a free speech campaign group, - said the move would prove ineffective.

It won't make any difference to the sites that give all their videos away for free and sell advertising because they don't need credit card processing, said Jerry Barnett.

And some sites are already accepting bitcoin and other anonymous online payment systems. A clampdown on card payments would just accelerate this trend.

Even if implemented, this measure would have no effect on the range of content available to British consumers.

It seems strange that ATVOD aren't considering the far more practical solution of a central verification authority that is a bit more trustworthy (but not much with NSA and GCHQ snoopers) than a foreign porn site. Then for adult websites to enforce this external age verification without being able to monitor people's personal details.

Perhaps ATVOD are happier to see websites suffocated by their impractical and dangerous rules than be allowed to thrive under a more efficient age verification scheme.

In the ATVOD press release ATVOD chair and censorship advocate Ruth Evans claimed:

We do not advocate censorship.There is nothing in the ATVOD Rules which interferes with the right to provide sexually explicit material to an adult online.

[ ...UNLESS... of course that person doesn't hold a credit car. ..OR doesn't want to provide credit card details for a quick look round. ..OR... Doesn't want to risk ID theft or phishing by typing in dangerous ID details...]

Offsite Article: Empire Building

31st March 2013. See article from wired.co.uk

ATVOD censoring porn to keep itself in a job, says campaigner

... Read the full article

Update: As if this measure would really prevent young men from gaining access to porn

31st March 2013. Thanks to Alan

Where does ATVOD recruit idiots to work for it?

This idiocy about protecting children really pisses me off. When I was a hormonal post-pubertal lad, more than half a century ago, I had no problem finding back-street newsagents with no qualms about selling me a mucky magazine. Are today's media-savvy young men and women going to be prevented from gaining access to porn, whatever ATVOD or control-freak parents say?

In any case, how would ATVOD ban payments? I've never yet encountered a porn site which asks you to pay directly to Filthy Films Inc. Payments are through processors like CC Bill, which guarantee discretion, so that if your vanilla other half happens upon your Barclaycard bill he/she doesn't know that you're subscribing to Burning Bums Spanking. If they do somehow ban CC Bill, Verotel, etc. it will just be a gift to pirates with no interest in prohibiting access by young people.

A radio ad, for Microsoft Outlook, began with a character who stated, Ymay ivatepray e-mailway isway onway ofway eirthay usinessbay. The voice-over then stated Pig Latin may be hard to understand, but you probably need it if you use Gmail, because Gmail scans every word of your e-mails to sell ads. But Outlook.com doesn't. And you can choose to opt out of personalised ads. To stop Gmail from using your e-mails, use Outlook.com. Learn more at KeepYourEmailPrivate.com and keep your e-mails ivatepray .

Two complainants challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that Outlook offered greater privacy than Gmail, because they understood that Outlook also scanned the contents of all e-mails, for purposes other than targeting ads.

Microsoft Corporation stated their belief that Outlook.com offered greater privacy than Gmail because the latter scanned e-mails for the purpose of targeting ads, whereas Outlook.com only undertook protective scanning for viruses and spam. They considered that the scanning of e-mails for ad targeting in the Gmail system was a significant privacy issue, particularly as users could not opt-out, and referred to news articles which they believed reflected concerns of both consumers and regulators.

Microsoft stated that the ad focused on the scanning of e-mails for ad targeting, as this was a key distinguishing feature between Outlook.com and Gmail of which consumers might not be aware. They referred to a survey conducted on their behalf by a third party that stated that 64% of consumers are unaware that some e-mail providers scan e-mail content in order to target ads, and that 83% considered it an invasion of privacy.

Microsoft said that to not undertake protective scanning of e-mails would be irresponsible. They believed that it was expected, accepted and encouraged by both consumers and government regulators, and that it was an issue of great importance within the industry. They explained that this protective scanning was not mentioned in the ad because, unlike scanning to target advertising, scanning for viruses and spam was standard practice of which consumers were likely to be aware. Therefore, they considered that omission of this practice in the ad did not render it misleading. They also highlighted that protective scanning did not involve the collection and retention of consumer data, unlike scanning to target ads. They said that the superiority claim in the ad was limited to scanning for ad targeting, and that the ad made no claims (whether explicit or implied) that Outlook.com did not use any other form of e-mail scanning.

ASA Assessment: Complaints not upheld

We acknowledged that Outlook.com scanned e-mails for viruses and spam messages, and that this was not referred to in the ad. However, we understood that this was standard practice for e-mail providers and considered that listeners were likely to expect this type of scanning to be carried out as a matter of course. We noted that the ad referred explicitly to Gmail scanning e-mail content for the purposes of targeting ads, and that this reference was immediately followed by the statement Outlook.com doesn't . We considered that listeners were likely to appreciate that this statement was only in relation to scanning for ad targeting, rather than protective scanning, and that the ad did not state or imply that no other forms of scanning were utilised. We noted Microsoft's belief that the two types of scanning were different, as targeting required the collation and retention of data whereas protective scanning did not, and considered that the use of personal data was likely to be a privacy concern for some consumers. Because the ad made clear that the privacy claims were in relation to ad targeting, which Outlook.com does not carry out, we therefore concluded that the ad was not misleading.

Offsite Article: Microsoft: Let's be clear, WE won't read your email -- but the cops will

30th March 2013. See article from theregister.co.uk

Redmond rewrites T&Cs AGAIN -- and taps up privacy warriors for help

...Read the full article