France bans filming acts of violence except by "professional journalists"


Looking more and more like the Ministry of Public Information
Every once in a while, I get reminded what the real fight is about.

It's not the War on Terror. That is just the latest manifestation.

No, the real struggle goes back a couple of centuries. It is the conflict between collective freedom (what I call the French model) and individual freedom (which I call the American model).

It keeps coming up again and again. In fact, there is a PDF book on my computer that I need to finish reading so I can review it like I promised.

For all of our arguments over First Amendment rights in the United States, we still (mostly) let people speak for themselves.

Apparently that is no longer true in France.

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.

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 were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday in the night of March 3, 1991. The officers' acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (US$98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.

Senators and members of the National Assembly had asked the council to rule on the constitutionality of six articles of the Law relating to the prevention of delinquency. The articles dealt with information sharing by social workers, and reduced sentences for minors. The council recommended one minor change, to reconcile conflicting amendments voted in parliament.

The law, proposed by Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, is intended to clamp down on a wide range of public order offenses. During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of "happy slapping," in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker's friends.

We teeter on the edge, but we haven't fallen yet. In order to allow choice, we have to allow choices that we may oppose. The seed of destruction is embedded in the very freedom we cherish. And it can't be any other way.

I firmly believe that freedom means people making their own choices.

Hat tip Wren's Nest.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - March 7, 2007 at 01:32 PM  Tag


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