'Attempt to ban porn' discovered in EU report
MEPs concerned that paper on gender equality is a first step towards censorship
Eagle-eyed campaigners for freedom of speech
claim to have spotted an attempt to slip a call for
a Europe-wide ban on pornography into an
otherwise-innocuous piece of EU paperwork.
On Tuesday, members of the European
Parliament will vote on the worthy yet
mundane-sounding Report on Eliminating
Gender Stereotypes in the EU. But bloggers this
week pounced on an article in the report that
calls for “a ban on all forms of pornography in
the media”, and urged their supporters to
bombard all 754 MEPs with emails condemning
the “unacceptable political invasion of people’s
bedrooms”.
While Tuesday’s vote in Strasbourg is merely an
expression of support and would not be legally
binding, critics worry that it could be the first step
towards draconian policing of the internet in
Europe. It comes after Iceland began drafting l
egislation to ban all online pornography,
prompting cries of censorship.
Rickard Falkvinge, a founder of the libertarian
Swedish Pirate Party, said the text coming before
the European Parliament was a “horrendous attack
on our fundamental freedoms of speech and expression”
while a Pirate Party MEP, Christian Engstrom, warned that
“the devil is in the detail” – in particular a call in the report
for “a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere”.
“This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the
internet service providers to start policing what citizens
do on the internet, not by legislation, but by ‘self-regulation’,”
he wrote on his blog. “This is something we have seen
before in a number of different proposals, and which is
one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.”
It seems their rallying cry for Europe’s inalienable right to
look at porn struck a chord. Mr Engstrom said that by midday
on Thursday he had received 350 emails urging MEPs to
vote against the resolution – when they mysteriously
stopped appearing in his inbox, prompting accusations
that the European Parliament was blocking the emails.
Pouncing on the unfortunate timing of the controversy,
Mr Engstrom wrote: “It appears that today, on International
Women’s Day, the European Parliament is silently blocking all
or most emails that contain the word ‘gender’.”
Parliamentary officials in Brussels, however, said an automatic
spam filter was activated as soon as emails exceeded a certain
level, to protect the institution from cyber attacks.
They insisted that emails related to the gender report had
not been singled out for quarantine.
The report was drafted by Kartika Tamara Liotard, a Dutch MEP,
and aims to improve awareness of gender equality in the European
Union – goals which Mr Engstrom conceded were “laudable”.
The report makes no distinction between different forms of
“pornography in the media”, nor does it specify what media
it is referring to. It is believed that at the vote on Tuesday
MEPs are likely to amend the text to clarify that it is aimed
at the use of pornography in advertising.
The report is not a piece of legislation, but such votes are
often seen as testing grounds for ideas and proposals which
could in future be put forward as European law.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...t-8527202.html



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