Pakistani School Drops Lennon's 'Imagine' From Concert Amid Protest By Vocal Minority

from the outlawing-imagination dept

For those of us that advocate principles of free speech, the most hallowed battleground for that fight must necessarily be in schools. If these ideals are to win the day on the longer timeline, it will be because subsequent generations take up the banner of free speech and conversation in more numbers than do their opponents. In the West, these fights amount to issues that are indeed important, but pale in comparison to what occurs elsewhere in the world. To that end, it's as important to see how far we've come as it is to understand how far we have to go.

Take Pakistan, for instance. Most of us will know that Pakistan has not taken the same trajectory in terms of speech compared to America. Differences of this sort are to be expected, but they can reveal themselves in stark ways. For instance, a local school in Pakistan with a tradition of singing John Lennon's famous song Imagine has this year decided to remove the song from the annual concert for reasons that you've likely already guessed.

Pupils at the Karachi Grammar School (KGS), a liberally-inclined private institution with 2,400 places, were on Friday night due to sing the anthem at an in-house concert, upholding a tradition that stretches back decades.

But administrators decided it would no longer be safe after a popular conservative journalist highlighted ‘controversial lyrics’ in the song, hinting that they might fall foul of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws.

What happened here is actually pretty simple. Ansar Abbasi, the conservative journalist mentioned above, picked up this story as if it were new and scandalous and blasted out a call to his Twitter followers to demand Lennon's iconic song be banned from the concert. Because the song rather famously, or infamously depending on your perspective, asks listeners to imagine a world without religions over which to fight, Abbasi suggested that the song was pimping Atheism. To be clear, the song doesn't actually do that, and Lennon himself said the whole point was to imagine all the fighting that could be avoided if religions didn't compete with one another. Distinctions like that, however, aren't fertile ground for outrage-trolling.

When other conservative media outlets in Pakistan picked up the story and decided to call out the school and its administrators by name, the school was essentially left with no choice but to bow to the mobbish minority for security concerns.

The school, which is heavily-guarded, subsequently dropped the song from its concert.

Former student Daanika Kamal told the Telegraph that Mr Abbasi was ignoring the message of ‘Imagine’, which invites listeners to picture a “brotherhood of man”, and “inciting hate”.

“We were introduced to [‘Imagine’] by the school” she said, “it was always a song of peace, that’s why it resonated with us. When you live in a country like Pakistan and are constantly hearing about attacks it is really soothing to hear a song that unites us.”

It should be obvious how silly and damaging this sort of thing is. When a country's speech laws are so backwards so as to allow mainstream journalists to call for government intervention to keep school-aged children from singing one of the most benign songs in musical history, it should be clear that something has gone awry. When those same calls can get school administrators to bend the knee to the vocal minority even before the government gets involved, the problem is even worse.

I could spend calories and time trying to figure out exactly what people like Abbasi think school children should be learning in the classroom under the premise that Imagine is a danger, but fortunately he has made his views on that public so I don't have to.

Mr Abbasi yesterday tweeted that “we need to teach the Quran to check both forms of extremism - religious or liberal”.

It shouldn't take much mental effort to see just how bad a plan for curriculum that obviously is.

Filed Under: free speech, imagine, john lennon, pakistan

Camming Group Leader Sentenced To 5 Years; Barred From Owning 'Any Device' That Can Infringe Copyrights After Release

from the how's-that-going-to-work dept

The DOJ triumphantly announced the five year sentence handed down to Jeremiah Perkins, who was named as the "leader" of IMAGiNE, a group that coordinated the recording of movies in theaters for upload to the internet. The DOJ and ICE arrested many of those involved in the group last year, and was able to convince them to do plea deals over "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement." It's a bit of a stretch to claim their actions met the requirements of "criminal" copyright infringement, but they did get some money for their actions, and that tripped the wire. I don't have an issue with them getting in trouble for their actions, which were pretty blatant infringement, though I'll say that the punishment of five years in jail seems ridiculously excessive when this one group's actual impact on movie piracy was non-notable. So many leaks are internal leaks, rather than cams -- and even if they take down this one group, it's not like it stopped any movies from showing up online quickly. And, of course, none of this does anything to make people buy. So I fail to see the value in spending taxpayer money going after these people, and then paying for their prison sentence at a time when our prisons are overcrowded.

But the issue that gets me about this is this bit, highlighted by TorrentFreak:

After his imprisonment ends Perkins will be subjected to a further three years of supervised release and will be banned from possessing “any electronic device with the capability or reproducing and distributing copies of copyrighted materials.”

That's basically pretty much any electronic device these days. Computer, phone, camera, tablet. Anything that can record audio or video or take a picture has that capability. Five years from now, it's likely to include many more commonly used devices as well. That seems ridiculously excessive. Especially given that devices that can infringe on copyrights also do a ton of legitimate and important things, to say that he can't possess any such device seems ridiculously limiting. The MPAA, who pushed this prosecution (which, again, was led by Neil MacBride -- the former industry anti-piracy enforcer -- who now does the same job for the government and rarely misses an opportunity to support his former colleagues), don't see any problem with completely taking away all devices that can infringe on copyright from someone, but that's because they still don't realize how central to culture and society such devices have become these days.

Filed Under: copyright, criminal copyright, doj, ice, imagine, jeremiah perkins, restrictions, sentencing

EMI Loses Lawsuit To Prevent John Lennon's Imagine From Appearing In Expelled

from the good-decision dept

Larry Lessig points us to news of another good court decision, tossing out EMI's attempt to stop Ben Stein's movie Expelled from using John Lennon's song Imagine. If this sounds somewhat familiar, it's because Yoko Ono had filed a similar lawsuit -- which she lost. In both cases, the courts have recognized that Stein's use of the song is pretty clearly fair use. As the link above points out, this is important for a variety of reasons -- including a terrible ruling a few years back that said effectively that there was no fair use for music samples. It's good to see courts recognizing that fair use applies to music as well as other types of content.

Filed Under: ben stein, expelled, fair use, imagine, john lennon, music
Companies: emi

Judge Sides With Ben Stein Over Yoko Ono In Fair Use Dispute

from the imagine-copyright-made-sense dept

Back in April, we covered the dispute between Yoko Ono and the controversial Ben Stein movie Expelled. Ono was upset that the movie used a snippet of John Lennon's Imagine for criticism purposes. While the movie has many problems, and given the controversial nature of the subject matter, one can understand why Ono doesn't want the song used in the movie -- that doesn't mean she had a legal leg to stand on. As we noted, it seemed pretty clear that the movie makers were very much on the right side of the law, and now a judge has agreed. In turning down Ono's request for an injunction against the movie, the judge noted that the defendants were likely to prevail using a "fair use" defense.

Filed Under: ben stein, copyright, fair use, imagine, john lennon, movies, yoko ono

Yoko Ono vs. Ben Stein: Imagine There's No Expelled...

from the who-do-you-side-with? dept

Talk about a legal argument I'd want no part of: Yoko Ono is suing the makers of the anti-evolution documentary Expelled. The movie has received a ton of bad press, and there have been widespread dissections with the many problems in the movie which seems to have difficulty understanding what the scientific method is actually about. Apparently, in one part of the movie, the famous John Lennon song "Imagine" is used, and some of the people complaining about the movie got angry at Ono, thinking she had licensed the song to be in such a controversial movie. The clip was not licensed -- but the filmmakers claim that it's protected fair use, saying that they're using a short clip of the song for commentary purposes. I haven't seen the film, nor can I find that particular clip online, but, as awful as Expelled sounds, I have a hard time siding with Yoko Ono on this. Media companies have, for too long, been overly aggressive in claiming that any use of music in a movie must be licensed. That seems to go against the concept of fair use entirely, and it would be good to change that. I just wish it wasn't with a movie such as this one.

Filed Under: ben stein, copyright, expelled, fair use, imagine, yoko ono