who know how to remain silent in the face of violence.
Posted on 03/06/2007 8:56:22 AM PST by Swordmaker
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.
France is lost.
Will the liberals on our Supreme Court start citing this French law???
Of course I would have a law making mandatory, that if the media plays such a tape, they should play the WHOLE tape, and not just cherry-pick the most inflammatory ones, as was the case with Rodney King.
> 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 Frogs hit a new high (low?) in cluelessness.
So if im french and see something and maybe video tape it or take pictures of it then I cannot tell you about it or post the pictures or video for you to look at because I might accidently tell you the actual facts as I know them about what happened.
That's just ducky.
Robespierre lives......
Tyranny has officially returned to France. I wonder how long it will be until the return of the Terror and Guillotine?
I don't know about you, but I enjoy watch a Renault being lit up by a jihadist every night.
McCain and other want to do the same things here.
And the Vichy as well.
Odd, how history tends to repeat itself..........
But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Ghost at I, v)
"If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. … The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny."
Robespierre, 1794
How many ways can this be really bad?
so much for
liberte!
is this correct, been too long . . .
liberte est mort
This is to prevent any images of rioting ROPers from being leaked.
It's bad for tourism, dontcha know.
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