France Bans Citizen Journalists From Recording Violence: Because If It's Not Recorded We Can Pretend It Never Happened
from the cause-and-effect dept
Yikes. We thought it was pretty bad when some schools thought the way to stop bullying was to ban YouTube or ban cameraphones on the belief that without a record, perhaps the bullying wouldn't happen (but more likely because without a record, school administrators could pretend it didn't happen). However, the French Constitutional Council has taken this concept to an entirely new level, approving a law that says that only professional journalists can film or broadcast acts of violence. If you happen to be walking along the street and see a violent act and film it with your cameraphone, you may face time in jail. The article notes the sad irony that this decision came out on the anniversary of the Rodney King incident. Under this law, if Rodney King had been attacked today, the guy filming the video would now be facing jail time. It's as if they believe that by banning the recording of these incidents then the incidents themselves go away. It's head-in-the-sand governing, and it seems ridiculous that anyone would think this is a good idea. Update: A French journalist stopped by in the comments to suggest that the Infoworld article we linked to got the story wrong. The law is focused on stopping the filming and broadcast of such content for the purpose of "fun" and includes an exemption for filming it for proof that something is happening or in the course of trying to inform. Thus, it's not nearly as bad. However, it still seems silly to prevent such things, when all they really do is help identify those who are acting violently, making it easier for authorities to track them down.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Lost evidence
So that also means that if I record some of my friends beating up a guy and posting it on YouTube I can get in trouble for recording as well as the actual beating? I assume the cops would just say, "If he is dumb enough to record it and make our work easier then let him."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Lost evidence
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Prof Journalist?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Great Thinking
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Suppression of Media
We are just as bad with our media, one only has to flip through the 20 or so modern news channels to quickly discover everyone is mysteriously on the same page. It is not an accident! Independent impartial news doesn't exist in the US and I am sure you could argue that it never did to begin with.
Our country was founded on propaganda therefore you cannot go around pointing your finger at other countries when we are the ones who perfected it.
BTW The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a great documentary and I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't understand where Chavez is coming from.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
great!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This will not stop people from staging violent acts and recording them...They need to focus on the real causes of these issues.
As has been pointed out by others, anyone with a video camera can help solve crimes by catching things on video and this should be recognized and rewarded, not punished.
Cases of staged violent acts are horrible and those should be stopped, but a general sweeping law is not the answer.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Great Thinking
[ link to this | view in thread ]
winning a war?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Actually that depends on your definition of plenty
I'm not saying they have not won any wars, but your statement has me a bit confused..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rodney King?
Reginald Denny would be a better example...an innocent trucker pulled from his rig during those riots and savagely beaten...
Too bad the National Guard supposedly had no ammunition...martial law would have made good tv...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Great Thinking
[ link to this | view in thread ]
France bans eye-witness material...
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/219601
[ link to this | view in thread ]
France bans eye-witness material...
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/219601
[ link to this | view in thread ]
sounds familiar
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hype
Perhaps Techdirt doesn't check anything anymore, or perhaps it's just that Americans will believe anything !
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Valeur de deux cents
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Believable...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
First the World Cup..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
From the article
"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 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..."
So perhaps its you who should read the article. From what I read there it says the law passed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Viva la France
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Doesn't this make security cameras illegal?
All of a sudden I see the usefulness of surveillance cameras for anything other than theft prevention going right out the window.... at least for the French. Hope ya'll enjoy being mugged in your parking garages!
love and peace
-cheez
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: sounds familiar
[ link to this | view in thread ]
French Military Victories
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rodney King
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: French Military Victories
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Viva la France
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Naieve is french in more ways than one. :)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
let's see
I can still read.. and yes that goes for french too.
First of all.. it's not a new law.. it's an amended one.
Second.. it's filming and publishing while being an accomplice. (not sure how this applies to Rodney's home movie..)
basically.. it means that if you do film something bad.. go see the the media and sell them the movie.
oh yeah.. and it's fouteur de trouble .. and as pointers.. on-line translators suck.. don't use them
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: sounds familiar
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rodney King???
What was Rodney doing in France anyway?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Lost evidence
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: staged violent acts
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Hype
[ link to this | view in thread ]
HA HA HA
I guess when I record an act of violence I will release it via an internet cafe to youtube then drop an annoymous call to the press.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
If I sell the video am I now considered a professi
[ link to this | view in thread ]
American law first
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Doesn't this make security cameras illegal?
I think you have this all wrong... How do you consider a security camera a journalist? A passerby is also not a journalist, so that mugging on tape is admissible evidence and not illegal. All the government is trying to do is alow for easier cover ups of ... well crap in the country.
Lets take a riot of example... If a journalist (professional) wants to publish the tape it may be subject to censor via the government. Where as a journalist (non-profesional) can post it to Youtube and all hell would break lose..
Keep it Juicy!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Maybe not a bad idea
Other than that, is a completely stupid law.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Put 'em all in jail...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Great Thinking
[ link to this | view in thread ]
founded on propaganda . . .??
Oh really? Like what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wait a minute!
Here is the agenda of our Conseil constitutionnel (aka Supreme Court):
http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/divers/actu.htm
I find nothing related to this topic. Looks like they didn't examine this law yet.
To my knowledge, the law in question is an attempt to stop an ugly phenomenon: "happy slapping":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping
Not a good idea?
But of course, they had to differenciate the filming of a violent act "for the fun" and "in order to get a proof". Not easy…
So they included a sentence saying this law will not apply…
« lorsque l’enregistrement ou la diffusion résulte de l’exercice normal d’une profession ayant pour objet d’informer le public ou est réalisé afin de servir de preuve en justice »
that is: "when the recording or the diffusion results from the normal exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public or is carried out in order to be used as proof in justice"
Sounds bad? This is all I know for now.
Disclosure: I am not at all a partisan of this government.
BTW1: No problem with violence in USA? How lucky!
BTW2: These famous "riots" in France only existed in the US media. We use a different word, since there not a single casualty.
BTW3: We, too, have bad politicians. And some bad laws. But not yet a Patriot Act.
BTW4: I love your country (I lived in SF a couple of years) and your people. How do you explain so much hate against France? After all, we gave you Miss Liberty. And we were right about Irak ;-)
BTW5: Didn't know armpit shaving was a universal sign or proof of democracy. Is this in your constitution?
BTW6: Most women shave their armpits, in France. But we have no law about it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Al Durah
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Wait a minute!
The US media has a simple agenda:
[1] Bush/Conservatism/Capitalism/Entrepreneurism is bad so provide evidence.
[2] Liberalism/Socialism/Environmentalism/protected-group-ism etc is good so provide evidence
[3] Evidence contrary to [1] and [2] is either ignored or misreported
[4] Randomly report some non-US event either accurately or inaccurately depending upon some unknown algorithm to provide balance.
[5] Never admit that journalists are experts in nothing and pretend they are knowledgeable in all things upon which they report.
BTW Segolene Royal is hot and Hillary Clinton is definitely not.
But, I'd rather have an ugly socialist scank as leader than a hot one as I can hate a scank easier than I can hate a hottie.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Faking the fake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_al-Durrah
This has been a pur french-US story. Nobody in Israel never claimed that the TV segment could be faked. You know, there is a war in this country, and sometimes bullets kill people. Most of the time, Palestinians. The french TV never said that the kid had been killed "on purpose".
From Wikipedia:
On October 19, 2006, a court in Paris ruled that Philippe Karsenty, who runs the Media-Ratings Agency, was guilty of libeling France 2 and Charles Enderlin after alleging that they had faked their report. [28] [29] The public prosecutor had recommended that the court rule in Karsenty's favor, but the judges argued that Karsenty's allegations could not be regarded as credible because "no Israeli authority ... have ever accorded the slightest credit" to them. [30] According to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli officials have explained their silence by saying it was a "losing proposition" to reopen the al-Durrah case, because they would be "accused of blaming the victim." [30] Karsenty was fined €1,000; €3,000 in legal fees; and a symbolic €1 in damages to both Enderlin and France 2. [31]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The law is published
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJorf?numjo=INTX0600091L
In fact it's a big package, in which you find a little thing modifying an existing law about different kinds of violence (including rape, torture…). Here it is:
« Art. 222-33-3. - Est constitutif d'un acte de complicité des atteintes volontaires à l'intégrité de la personne prévues par les articles 222-1 à 222-14-1 et 222-23 à 222-31 et est puni des peines prévues par ces articles le fait d'enregistrer sciemment, par quelque moyen que ce soit, sur tout support que ce soit, des images relatives à la commission de ces infractions.
« Le fait de diffuser l'enregistrement de telles images est puni de cinq ans d'emprisonnement et de 75 000 EUR d'amende.
« Le présent article n'est pas applicable lorsque l'enregistrement ou la diffusion résulte de l'exercice normal d'une profession ayant pour objet d'informer le public ou est réalisé afin de servir de preuve en justice. »
It says:
1/ that whoever knowingly records images of a violence is an accomplice and will be punished as such.
2/ that whoever broadcast this record will be punished (5 years, 75,000 €)
3/ as I said earlier, this law does not apply when the recording or the diffusion results from the normal exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public or is carried out in order to be used as proof in justice.
So, may be this law could have been better conceived. It is evident hat the basic aidea is to tell the bad guys: "if you are going to rape a poor girl in order to take picturees or a video and show them to other bad guys, the rapists and their accomplices, INCLUDING the photographer could go to jail. He will say: "I didn't touch her" and the judge will anwer: "but you took pictures".
Whoever, passing by, takes pictures "in order to be used as proof in justice" will be considered as a responsible citizen.
Whoever, passing by, takes pictures in "the normal exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public", will be considered as a journalist.
Oh, and what about the netizen who takes pictures of a rape and put them on YouTube? I don't see that there is a "right" to broadcast that kind of humiliating images of people.
Oh, and what about Rodney King? I thought, BTW, that this happened in LA. And alerting the public about violence perpetrated by cops is definitely another story. And our law says exactly that recording and publishing is OK when it is "in order to be used as proof in justice". Which is what happened in this case. AND: how could George Holliday, who filmed the scene, be considered an "acomplice" of the perpetrators of the violence?
About the "Conseil constitutionnel": what I understand now is that our "supreme court" in fact examined the whole package on March 3, but whas never asked to look at this particular part of it. And this juridiction is not supposed to decide by iitself to examine every bit of the law.
One last word: we have a lot of political parties and organisations of all sizes. I didn't heard a word about this law from any of them. The exception is Odebi, a small group defending "Internet et Libertés / Presse Libre d’Origine Non Kontrolée" ("Free press from uncontroled origin"), which answered a couple of US journalists. In my opinion, they fooled these journalists by not telling them about the other provision of the law about filming "in order to be used as proof in justice" and abusively using the exemple of Rodney King. To my knowledge, George Holliday was not an amateur journalist who filmes the scene to make a good post on his blog or upload it to YouTube. He was acting as a full fledged citizen who is in position to record a proof of a crime and does it. They don't say what other idea they have to curb the "happy slapping" epidemy.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Just ignore the problem and hope it will go away.
Gee, I wonder who's causing all the issues over there...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: founded on propaganda . . .??
Oh really? Like what
Well for one we could examine the Sons of Liberty a propaganda organization founded by the rich affluent property owners of the time in the colony.
They spun stories like the Boston massacre to enrage and incite otherwise perfectly happy English citizens. Taxation without representation was also a bunch of bull crap as the taxes that were actually payed were inconsequential.
Yes our Revolution was sponsored by Rich land owners who wanted to increase their power and influence. One of the major points of this was that land ownership decreased while the gap between the poor and rich increased dramatically after the revolution.
Did you ever wonder why they removed "in pursuit of property?" Well the land owners of America didn't want to share!
Our country lives and breathes propaganda. One only has to look at examples like 9/11 to see there is no critical discourse in the media or government. The Pancake theory is pretty hard to believe especially when you consider a third building collapsed (WT7) the same way when it was only struck by a little debris. Its kinda like flipping a quarter a million times and getting heads everytime, sure it could happen, but highly unlikely.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
One big bad idea - and several little good ones.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Back to the Rodney King example, though, so let's presume that it is the French police that commit the crime. Don't you think that the French govt. will have a vested interest in determining that such footage is NOT evidence of a crime, and will thus now have a legal remedy to lock up the trouble making good samaritan that filmed the misdeeds of French officials?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
First, read the word of the law, then interpret
The text of the law says:
"…does not apply when the recording or the diffusion results from the normal exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public or is carried out IN ORDER TO BE USED AS PROOF IN JUSTICE."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Wait a minute!
This whole debate is completely saturated with false ideas about France and French law.
This law only targets 'filming for morally bad reasons', ie. Happy Slapping, which has been spreading in schools. My son is 8, I know that he's going to face that kind of behavior sooner or later...
Seems a good law from my perspective, and I'm happy to live in a free and responsible country !
Reading other comments, I tend to think that the vision of France from outside (especially from the US) is biased by caricatural comments and ideas conveyed by mass-media... Why is that ???
[ link to this | view in thread ]
French journalists don't see the big picture
In the United States, someone videotaping an assault like that would be considered a conspirator and an accomplice, and would face the same penalty as the people actually attacking the victim. So there is no need to go after the cameraman with a separate law. The mere fact that they intended to shoot it becomes an aggravating factor for sentencing.
Now, let's look at the climate behind this poorly-drafted law.
France is one of many nations lobbying to take over ICANN. Using a reasonable-sounding argument of international egalitarianism, France wants to pull control over internet domain name registration and arbitration away from the United States. (note: ICANN is NOT an arm of the U.S. government, and remains an independent body.)
Now - once ICANN is shuffled off to international waters, it is suddenly more prone to strong-arming from various governments with more restrictive freedoms regarding speech and expression. That would be crappy for everyone... particularly here in the United States, where there IS no certification for "Authorized Media Provider." Once you let the government define who can bring you the news, you let them silence the voices of dissent.
If you are indeed a journalist, start asking some better questions. Don't take the word of a government official who tells you how the law will be interpreted. That's a smokescreen. Demand that your "Happy Slapping" law gets spelled out TO THE LETTER. Don't get suckered into giving up your liberty.
[ link to this | view in thread ]