France usually does lead the way, when it comes to burying one’s head in the sand.

#18

“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.

Last October two Frenchmen were prosecuted for criticizing a blatantly fraudulent TV segment produced by France 2 TV. The segment ostensibly showed a Palestinian boy being killed by Israeli gunfire – further analysis showed the video to be almost certainly staged.

http://www.dirckthenoorman.com/?p=182

This morning, the law discussed here has been published in our “Journal officiel”:
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.

[…] the French, it would appear, have effectively outlawed the act of bearing witness […]

@tato

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.”