Censor Watch

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) has adopted new diversity rules for films qualifying for consideration for awards.

In order to compete for the awards, productions will, from 2019, have to demonstrate that they have made effort to boost diversity in two of the four following areas:

• On screen representation, themes and narratives
• Project leadership and creative practitioners
• Industry access and opportunities
• Opportunities for diversity in audience development

BAFTA added.

Under-represented groups in the film industry include people from minority ethnic backgrounds, disabled people, women and LGBT. It also includes people from lower socio-economic groups.

In certain categories productions based or set outside London can also count towards achieving the standards.

Film4 and BBC films have already agreed to adopt the standards.

Offsite Comment: The Sky is Falling

31st December 2016 See article from spiked-online.com by Christian Butler

A number of articles about BAFTA's new rules single out Skyfall, the 2012 James Bond film, as an example of a previous winner that wouldn't be nominated under the new guidelines.

Offsite Video Comment: Diversity: Do as we tell you - and be diverse

31st December 2016 See video from YouTube by the Britisher

The Britisher wonders whether the rules will restrict the BBC from producing programmes in settings where a diverse cast would be a distraction, think Jane Austen or King Arthu.r

Facebook has outlined its approach to 'fake news' in a blog post:

A few weeks ago we previewed some of the things we're working on to address the issue of fake news and hoaxes. We're committed to doing our part and today we'd like to share some updates we're testing and starting to roll out.

We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we're approaching this problem carefully. We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organizations.

The work falls into the following four areas. These are just some of the first steps we're taking to improve the experience for people on Facebook. We'll learn from these tests, and iterate and extend them over time.

We're testing several ways to make it easier to report a hoax if you see one on Facebook, which you can do by clicking the upper right hand corner of a post. We've relied heavily on our community for help on this issue, and this can help us detect more fake news.

We believe providing more context can help people decide for themselves what to trust and what to share. We've started a program to work with third-party fact checking organizations that are signatories of Poynter's International Fact Checking Code of Principles. We'll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed.

It will still be possible to share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share. Once a story is flagged, it can't be made into an ad and promoted, either.

We're always looking to improve News Feed by listening to what the community is telling us. We've found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way. We're going to test incorporating this signal into ranking, specifically for articles that are outliers, where people who read the article are significantly less likely to share it.

We've found that a lot of fake news is financially motivated. Spammers make money by masquerading as well-known news organizations, and posting hoaxes that get people to visit to their sites, which are often mostly ads. So we're doing several things to reduce the financial incentives. On the buying side we've eliminated the ability to spoof domains, which will reduce the prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications. On the publisher side, we are analyzing publisher sites to detect where policy enforcement actions might be necessary.

It's important to us that the stories you see on Facebook are authentic and meaningful. We're excited about this progress, but we know there's more to be done. We're going to keep working on this problem for as long as it takes to get it right.

Offsite Article: Fake news detection on the cheap

The Guardian investigates how Facebook's trumpeted 'fake news' detection relies on unpaid volunteers.

17th December 2016. See article from theguardian.com

Offsite Comment: Don't make Facebook the ministry of truth

The fake-news panic is a threat to internet freedom.

31st December 2016. See article from spiked-online.com by Naomi Firsht

El Inca is a 2016 Venezuela romance by Ignacio Castillo Cottin.
Starring Alexander Leterni, Scarlett Jaimes and Miguel Ferrari.

A tragic love story based in the life of the great Latin American boxer Edwin "El Inca" Valero. The only fight he lost, was the one against himself.

On an April morning in 2010, Venezuelan boxing legend Edwin El Inca Valero, an undefeated two-time world champion, murdered his wife. Two days later, he took his own life in his prison cell at 28 years of age.

Now, his violent and troubling story is making headlines again, in a politically charged scandal over a banned film about his life. The movie, El Inca, was a box office sensation when it premiered on Nov 25, rising to become the third-most lucrative film of the year in Venezuela in less than three weeks.

But its run came to an abrupt halt on Dec 13, when a judge ordered it removed from theaters and impounded all copies. The court case was brought by Valero's family, which accused director Ignacio Castillo Cottin of slander. But the director alleges politics had more to do with the ruling.

The film was banned by temporary injunction before the defamation trial even got under way. The judge then postponed the first hearing, scheduled for last Monday, because neither he nor the prosecution had seen the movie.

Connections of the film were not impressed that it was banned before the judge had even seen it.

A Virginia lawmaker is asking the state legislature to declare pornography a public health hazard 204 a move he hopes will pave the way for limits of some sort.

Delegate Robert G. Marshall has proposed a resolution claiming that pornography leads to many social problems and that the General Assembly, which convenes its annual session on Jan. 11, needs to do something about it. Just what lawmakers should do is unspecified.

The measure does not call for any sort of ban, only a broad recognition of the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of the Commonwealth and the nation.

The legislation frames pornography not just as a moral scourge that leads to infidelity, the hypersexualization of teenagers and deviant sexual arousal, but as a weapon against women. The measure blames pornography for low self-esteem and body image disorders and devotes a lot of attention to the objectification of women and girls.

The resolution piqued the interest of state Senator Barbara A. Favola, a women's rights campaigner. She said:

We will talk about it in the women's health caucus, I'm sure of that. He's right; pornography does have a negative impact on public health, and it does lead to lots of other issues. I'm going to look at it.

Russia has accused Charlie Hebdo of mocking the Black Sea plane crash after publishing inhuman cartoons about the disaster.

In one reference to the crash, the French magazine depicted a jet hurtling downwards along with words translated as: Bad news... Putin wasn't on board .

The magazine also published a cartoon showing a choir member from the ensemble making a wailing sound aaaaaa . One caption reads: The repertoire of the army choir is expanding. A third cartoon shows bodies sinking in the sea with the caption: The Red Army conquers a new public .

The Russian Defence Ministry's spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov complained:

It is degrading for any human being to even pay attention to such a poorly-created abomination. If such, dare I say, "artistry" is the real manifestation of "Western values", then those who hold and support them are doomed - at least to loneliness in the future.

National Archives show minister for justice Alan Dukes clashed with attorney general John Rodgers over access to the film censor's historical files.

In 1986 Kevin Rockett, then academic and chairman of the Irish Film Institute , wrote to attorney general John Rogers to say he had been refused access to the film censor's files, even for films of the 1920s, by then minister for justice Alan Dukes .

Rogers wrote to Dukes saying that he did not see the legal basis on which access to the files, especially for films made 30 years or more previously, could be resisted or refused.

A month later, Dukes responded that over the years, censors and ministers for justice had always considered themselves precluded , on the basis of breach of confidence, from disclosure of information on films.

Further letters ensued and eventually the files were opened following a long struggle. Rockett told The Irish Times that a fter a long and frustrating campaign he eventually convinced the Official Film Censor in 1998 to transfer the more than 100 volumes of film censorship material to the National Archives.

Rockett wrote Irish Film Censorship: A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography in 2004, with the help of those files.

Amazon has refused to hand over recordings from an Echo smart speaker to US police investigating a murder in Arkansas. Police issued a warrant to Amazon to turn over recordings and other information associated with the device.

Amazon twice declined to provide the police with the information they requested from the device, although it did provide account information and purchase history.

Although the Echo is known for having always-on microphones to enable its voice-controlled features, the vast majority of the recordings it makes are not saved for longer than the few seconds it takes to determine if a pre-set wake word (usually Alexa ) has been said. Only if that wake word has been heard does the device's full complement of microphones come on and begin transmitting audio to Amazon.

However the police pursuit of the data suggests there is more of interest up for grabs than Amazon is admitting.

Amazon's reluctance to part with user information fits a familiar pattern. Tech companies often see law enforcement requests for data as invasive and damaging to an industry. It is clearly an issue for sales of a home microphone system if it is easy for the authorities to grab recordings.

Other devices have also been good data sources for police investigations. Wristwatch-style Fitbit activity trackers have cropped up in a few cases eg for checking alibis against sleep patterns or activity.

A smart water meter has also been used in a murder case as evidence of a blood clean up operation,