Section 14

Stuff reported this morning that a signing ceremony at Parliament was postponed last night because Chinese vice-premier Zeng Peiyan objected to one of the journalists present.

Despite being an accredited press gallery journalist, Nick Wang was escorted to the Speaker’s office by a police officer while the signing ceremony took place.

Prime Minister Helen Clark claims that Wang and his cameraman were excluded not because of pressure from China but because of “a misunderstanding”. She doesn’t say what sort of a misunderstanding it was - perhaps Wang understood that we have freedom of the press in New Zealand - but goes on to say that she is “not entirely certain of the circumstances”, a neat trick whereby she can never be wrong.

Apart from his distaste for free trade, Greens co-leader Russel Norman gets it right:

It is simply wrong for the Labour Government to direct police to remove a press gallery accredited journalist from a media event inside our own government building because the Deputy Premier of China doesn’t like the journalist.

By excluding Nick Wang, a press gallery accredited journalist from the Capital Chinese News newspaper, the Government is sacrificing free speech in a sad and desperate attempt to win favour with the Chinese so that they will sign a trade deal with New Zealand.

The Government must tell the Chinese Government that when they come to New Zealand they will be exposed to dissenting views because we value freedom of speech, trade deal or no trade deal.

I’m all for a free trade agreement with China but along with the clothing and electronics we must not import their political repression.

Hat tip: Kiwiblog.

Technology continues to knock traditional ways of doing things out of the park. CricInfo 3D provides animations of cricket matches to viewers across the world. CricInfo sends out a tiny file to each of its viewers describing where the ball was bowled, what shot was played, where the ball ended up, and the like. The client software then visually renders the shot.

Sky Television, which has exclusive broadcast rights for the Cricket World Cup, claims that CricInfo is breaching their copyright.

Wisden, owner of CricInfo, rubbishes the claims saying that its data files are based on public domain information gathered by its staff.

It’s hard to see how Sky’s claim stacks up. While it has a legitimate interest in protecting its intellectual property, it’s outrageous to claim that it should be illegal to report - in your own words, or the technological equivalent - the results of a sports game.

Sky’s interest should be limited to the materials it has created, the broadcast video and commentary. The purpose of copyright is protect the value that the author has created in his own property, not to prevent others from creating other valuable products, and CricInfo should be applauded for their ingenuity.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

America’s Child Online Protection Act was struck down as unconstitutional by Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. yesterday.

The law put the onus on web site operators rather than parents to keep minors from viewing “harmful” material.
What’s really noteworthy is this part of Judge Reed’s summation:

Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection.

Absolutely right. Too many people are willing to throw away free speech to chase some less important, but seemingly more pressing, short-term goal.

If those who would discard free speech to pursue some triviality don’t realise the harm they’re causing then they’re not fit to hold power. If they do realise the harm they’re doing, they’re doubly unfit to hold power and should be disposed of double-quick.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

The Consumers’ Institute has decided to celebrate World Consumer Rights Day by calling for consumers’ rights to be curtailed, specifically the right to be informed about pharmaceuticals via television advertising.

Consumers International, the organisation behind the campaign internationally, has a page dedicated to explaining why direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising is unethical. That page has a single heading: “Fuelled by profit”. Shocking stuff.

In the culmination of several seconds of research, Consumer research writer Belinda Allan determines, “DTCA’s primary objective, no matter what gloss is placed on the information, is to sell more product.” Another shocking revelation.

The comment above about calling for consumers’ rights to be curtailed is tongue in cheek - there is no such right. You can’t force a TV station show you these advertisements. There is a genuine right that is being curtailed here though and that is the right of drug manufacturers to speak about their products.

These products have been approved by MedSafe and are governed by the Medicines Act, advertising claims are governed by the Fair Trading Act, these drugs are legal to buy (on prescription), it’s legal to ask your doctor for them, it’s legal for your doctor to tell you about them. It is preposterous to say that it should be illegal for the manufacturer to tell people they exist and what they’re used for.

Setting aside the outrageous attempt to gag pharamceuticals companies, what is the practical benefit of a ban? The only thing these advertisements can do is encourage people to ask their doctor for a particular drug, a perfectly legal activity. And if the doctor doesn’t think that a drug is suitable for any given patient that’s the end of it - no prescription, no sale.

Perhaps these “consumers’ rights” groups should take off their anti-corporate blinkers for a moment, stop trying to squash people’s right to express themselves, and spend more time worrying about what consumers actually want. A recent report on the topic from the Foundation for Advertising Research concludes:

From a consumer viewpoint DTCA has many advantages and few disadvantages. Consumers do not share the concerns expressed by critics of DTCA of consumer safety, increased costs, patient-doctor relationships and medicalisation. Instead they believe DTCA enables them to obtain useful information, a sense of empowerment, a prompt to obtain medical advice and a basis for meaningful and more informed discussions with their doctor about their healthcare.

Many British football clubs have their origins in communities that were for years divided by religion. In Glasgow, Celtic is the Catholic team and Rangers is the protestant team. In London, Tottenham Hotspur has traditional links to the Jewish community and for decades the fans have referred to themselves as the “Yid Army”.

Last week, eight schoolboys were arrested and questioned for ten hours by Hertfordshire police after singing a football chant at a Jewish teacher’s leaving do. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is already in consultation with an array of busybodies over concerns that fans might be being racist towards themselves.

Fans and club historians point out that the use of the words “Yiddo” and “Yid Army” by the fans to refer to themselves has developed over decades and stopped some of the real racial abuse that used to occur at football matches.

Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill has coined the phrase “mate speech” to describe this new assault on free speech.

if recent cases in Britain are anything to go by, the language police are turning their attentions to what we might call ‘Mate Speech’. They’re cracking down on banter between buddies, throwaway chants at football matches, and words uttered in informal, behind-the-scenes settings, on the basis that someone somewhere, if they ever caught drift of these words, might possibly be offended by them.

Welcome to the humourless society, where no off-the-cuff remark, gag or utterance is beyond the sanction of the sanctimonious word-watchers.

UPDATE: More from Spiked on the ‘Yid Army’, including this sporting-rivalry gem:

Chants at sports stadiums should not be interpreted literally. An obvious case in point are the basketball games between Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, where a common chant from the Jerusalem supporters is ‘Ya Saddam ya habib udrub udrub Tel Aviv’. Hapoel fans adopted it after news programmes showed Palestinians chanting it on rooftops during the Gulf War. It means ‘Saddam, darling, bomb Tel Aviv’ in Arabic.

Martin Durkin, director of The Great Global Warming Swindle (video, 211 MB), is interviewed at Spiked and talks about the intolerance of environmentalists for any dissent and their attempts to attack the messenger and force this and similar programmes off the air.

On Wednesday, before the film even aired, a left-leaning website provided readers with a link to Ofcom’s website and the instruction: ‘Please do complain [about The Great Global Warming Swindle], and please do publicise this link and ask others to complain.’ It gave a link to the Channel 4 complaints website, too, saying that if Channel 4 ‘get a number of complaints then they will find it harder to commission future programmes from Durkin’. This represents a new low in the discussion of environmentalism. Instead of having an upfront, open debate about the science, and the social and political courses of action that might be required to alleviate pollution while still meeting people’s needs and desires, some try to have a film written off by the suited and booted powers-that-be at Ofcom and a director excommunicated from the world of TV.

‘It is soft censorship’, Durkin insists. ‘If there is a huge response to a programme, then the ITC and now Ofcom feel the need to do something. So they end up censuring seriously controversial work. I mean, Channel 4 shows a lot of rubbish, like “wank week”. But because hardly anyone complains about that, Ofcom doesn’t say anything. And then people complain about my work, which is serious, and these bodies take action. It might not be formal censorship, but it is a kind of invisible censorship. The end result is phoney controversialism on TV but not much real controversialism. Ofcom is supposed to uphold standards but it does the opposite.’

He believes that such official chastisement – which was widely celebrated by some greens in relation to Against Nature and which is being demanded again for The Great Global Warming Swindle – has a ‘chilling effect’ on TV output. The big broadcasters, desperate to avoid being ticked off by Ofcom, will avoid showing anything liable to invite large numbers of complaints. So they stick with the wankers of ‘wank week’ instead. A far safer bet.

Following Turkey’s lead, Thailand blocked access to YouTube over the weekend although it’s not clear why. It’s also not clear that the authorities knew what they were doing - access to “www.youtube.com” was blocked but just typing the address “youtube.com”, without the “www” part, got you through fine.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

No Right Turn has the story of Ahmet Turk, co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party, who has been sent to prison for six months for referring to Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Öcalan as Mr Öcalan. Apparently “Mr” imples respect and hence Turk was found guilty of “supporting a criminal”.

But don’t think that you can stay out of jail just by disrespecting people out of habit. Oh no. Failing to respect the right people can get you into trouble as well.

Business Week reported yesterday that a Turkish court has ordered YouTube banned after a Greek YouTuber posted a video describing Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish people as homosexuals. Turk Telecom implemented the ban immediately. Boing Boing reports that somehow the ban only affected Internet Explorer users, Firefox could see the site without difficulty.

Boing Boing suggests that Tourism Turkey change their slogan. Perhaps, “Turkey welcomes you - as long as you keep your mouth shut.” They also provide a handy guide to getting round web censorship.

No Right Turn also reminds us that Turkey’s free speech record isn’t that hot in other areas either; for example, it’s illegal to mention the Armenian Genocide. If Turkey ever joins the EU they could have a tricky time working out which holocausts you must deny and which you must never.

UPDATE 10/03/07: The YouTube ban has been lifted.

Hat tips: No Right Turn and Boing Boing.

Late last week the Otago Daily Times reported that euthanasia campaigner Lesley Martin has been barred from holding a public meeting at the University of Otago.

University vice-chancellor Prof. David Skegg said, “The University of Otago encourages academic debate on ethical matters such as euthanasia, but it is not obliged to provide a base for advocacy groups wishing to promote behaviour that is illegal in this country.”

He didn’t mention how you’re supposed to have the debate to legalise something if one side of the argument is banned for promoting something illegal.

Ms Martin said, “To have a knock-back from an academic body, to us, flies in the face of what the university is all about.”

The meeting will now be held at Cargill’s Hotel tomorrow (March 8th).

Metiria Turei has made her opinion clear in a FrogBlog article (”Fashion laws to combat violence“) on Chester Borrows proposed gang patch ban.

Borrows said that a ban on patches and insignia will mean that people walking the street won’t be scared. But looking scary is entirely subjective and shouldn’t be a crime.

The proposed ban will simply turn our cops into real Fashion Police, but wont stop the majority of ‘gang’ violence that happens in our towns.

ScoopIt is Scoop’s new social news bookmarking site. If you use WordPress with the Sociable social bookmarking plugin (they’re the little icons across the bottom of each story, for those of you not keeping up) you might like to add ScoopIt to your Sociable set-up. Warning: Geekiness follows.

(For those not using Sociable, the instructions are on ScoopIt’s blog.)

Save the icon on the left and upload it to your blog’s wp-content/plugins/sociable/images folder with the filename ’scoopit.png’.

Open your wp-content/plugins/sociable/sociable.php file and add the following code in the $sociable_known_sites array:

Add the following code to the $sociable_files array in the same file:

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In your blog’s admin area, add the ScoopIt icon to your active list.