[IMC-Video] Fwd: France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

[a. mark liiv]

>France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence
>
>By 
><http://www.macworld.com/info/contact/form.php?e=Editors&t=e>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.
>
>