Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Whatever. It's depressing. Even more depressing that a country as big and rich and 'free' as France can take such a huge step towards state control without anybody hearing about it. You will be all right in the US. Your current administration would have loved to pass a law like this if it could have, of course. But it can't without a massive debate about the first amendment. We're not lucky enough in the UK to have a written constitution, or anything concrete that protects freedom of speech or of the press. It's all about public approval and press power here. Using 'happy slapping' as justification like the French did, is a typically cynical and depressingly successful way to bring the public with you on bad law. Hopefully, the press here would fight something like this. But you never know. We've had some bad, bad laws passed here since 9/11 with barely a murmur from the press. Like it being a criminal offence to express any protest within 1 mile radius of the houses of parliament, effectively killing demonstrations and dissent in the center of London. Many people have been convicted, just for exercising their democratic right to free speech. So, you never know. Got to use our voices and the internet if it starts to happen here. Pity the French didn't do the same.
On 7 Mar 2007, at 02:43, bordercollieaustralianshepherd wrote: Trying to trick it by replying to my own post France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence I know this is across the pond. It still troubles me. http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/03/06/franceban/index.php "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".<snip> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
