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AAP had said that if an advertisement appears to be communal or obscene, then the government needs to take action against the person as per the law in existence.

In a democracy there cannot be pre-censorship, the Delhi High Court told the AAP government regarding its policy on display of advertisements on auto rickshaws on Thursday.

In a democracy it (pre-censorship) should not be done. What is the need for pre-censorship or prohibition of any political advertisement? How can you do it? A citizen can be political, a justices S Ravindra Bhat and Pratibha M Singh said.

AAPhad said that if an advertisement appears to be communal or obscene, then the government needs to take action against the person as per the law in existence.

The Delhi government, meanwhile, told the court that it is coming out with a new policy regarding display of advertisement on public service vehicles (PSVs) including auto rickshaws in which the prohibition against political ads would be removed. However, they also said that pre-censorship was required to which the court did not agree.

The bench listed the matter for hearing on August 9 giving time to the government to place its policy before the court.

It was hearing a PIL by filed by some auto unions against the then Delhi governments August 2014 policy on display of advertisements on PSVs, particularly the bar on political ads and the provision allowing pre-censorship.

The high court had in 2015 reserved its verdict in the matter, but had taken it up again last year as it wanted to know whether the government on its own would address the issues raised by the petitioners. However, since July 2016, the Delhi government had been seeking more time on each date for placing its revised advertisement policy before the court.

Earlier in September 2014, the high court in an order had raised three questions - whether political advertisements should be allowed on PSVs, the need for pre-censorship, and whether ads ought to be allowed only for vehicles having GPS and GPRS systems.

In June 2013, the then Delhi government had banned advertisements on PSVs after auto rickshaws started sporting AAP posters in the run-up to Delhi assembly elections. Thereafter, the high court had stayed the ban.

In May 2014, the city government had informed the court that it was in the process of finalising the general guidelines for allowing advertisements on PSVs and was awaiting approval of the Lt Governor.

On August 1, 2014, the government had placed before the court its latest guidelines for display of advertisements on PSVs, as per which ads containing political, ethnic, religious or sectarian text would not be permitted.

The policy also stated that advertisements cannot be displayed without prior approval of municipal bodies and would be allowed only for vehicles which have installed GPS/GPRS systems and was challenged in the PIL.

Continue reading here:
There cannot be pre-censorship in a democracy: Delhi HC - Hindustan Times

Hassan Rouhani does the rounds at the Tehran book fair.

Human rights watchdogs repeatedly shame Iran as one of the worlds worst offenders against freedom of expression, a harsh censor with little compunction about cracking down on critics with direct methods such as prior restraint and violent means of repression. But Iran, like other states around the world, is increasingly using other, more unorthodox ways of controlling speech what might be called indirect censorship.

Instead of the classic methods of removing content wholesale or blocking access to it, indirect censorship methods make producing or accessing undesirable ideas and information costly, technically difficult or legally risky. They often do so via unrelated laws, or by bypassing weak or nonexistent protective regulations. Deployed by both governments and private actors, these methods often dont fall under conventional definitions of censorship, and are therefore often not condemned as such.

The Iranian government is using indirect censorship partly out of geopolitical necessity. Tehran clearly wants to improve relations with the West, but the countrys domestic human rights situation is a major obstacle and its attitudes to freedom of speech are a particular sticking point. Since the government is hardly inclined to fundamentally change its ways, it has come up with a typically neoliberal solution: to transfer responsibility for enforcing censorship to the private sector.

In a speech at Tehrans 2016 International Book Fair, president Hassan Rouhani proposed that the ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance hand its job of censoring books and cultural products to an association of writers and publishers. His government promoted this idea as an initiative to relax book censorship, and it was broadly accepted as such by the Western media. But because there are few clear regulations regarding censorship and a huge range of sensitive subjects, it would more likely have the opposite effect.

The plan is currently in its pilot stage, and if it becomes operational, the government will free itself from direct responsibility for book censorship. It would be left to publishers and writers themselves to enforce vague red lines, including upon themselves, lest they fall foul of a judiciary capable of seizing books after publication and inflicting paralysing financial damage.

This would inculcate a conservative culture of self-censorship, with writers and publishers desperate to avoid unbearable financial or legal consequences taking an even more cautious and strict approach than the government itself.

Using unrelated laws to put pressure on media and to silence the dissidents is a typical method of indirect censorship. In Iran, defamation and insult lawsuits are an effective instrument with which to punish critics, and have a powerful and chilling effect on the media. And the way defamation laws are currently interpreted by the court means they can easily be used to restrict freedom of expression.

The Iranian legal system hosts two major approaches to dealing with defamation cases. The first, dominant until the Islamic Penal Code was introduced in 1983, considers that when someone attributes a specific crime to someone else, the accusations must be adjudicated by a court, and that if the accused is acquitted and considers themselves defamed, they may take their defamer to court in turn.

The other approach, which began to take hold in 1983, also allows someone claiming defamation to take their alleged defamer to court, but puts the burden of proof on the accuser. This violates the principle of presumption of innocence, and it puts particular pressure on investigative journalists who rely on anonymous or secret sources.

Worse still, according to an additional clause in the Islamic Penal Codes article 697, allegedly defamatory statements can be punishable even when they are proven justified and true. This provision makes a useful pretext to crack down on any whistleblower or investigative journalist who reveals defensible evidence of the governments corruption to the public.

A notorious case of this sort kicked off recently when the Iranian website Memari News published a set of official reports by the General Inspection Office that indicated that the Tehran Municipality had illegally transferred properties to a number of its high-ranking officers. Memaris editor-in-chief, Yashar Soltani, was soon arrested and charged with defamation and gathering classified information with the intent to harm national security.

Even though the General Inspection Office confirmed the credibility of the documents and that the municipality was involved in the illegal transfer of public properties, Soltani remains on bail with his case open, and still stands accused of harbouring a hidden political agenda.

For now, the Iranian government is still using the same harsh methods of direct censorship for which it has long been known blocking critical websites, for instance, or arresting government critics. But as it increasingly turns to more indirect methods, it is doing a better job of evading the scrutiny of the human rights watchdogs whove justifiably criticised it for so long.

Read the original here:
Iran is using indirect censorship methods to avoid international criticism - The Conversation UK

On Thursday, the NBA will reveal its all-NBA first, second and third teams for the 2016-17 campaign, and with the unveiling, the futures of both the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers franchises hang in the balance, and to me, the overarching media control over professional athletes contract salaries and franchise roster flexibilities is absolutely baffling in the modern NBA.

Essentially, the whole issue stems from the newly negotiated NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that details a new class of player contracts dubbed the Designated Veteran Players. The qualifications for this new category of players center around two main subjects; first, the upcoming player must either be entering their eighth or ninth NBA season (or just completed his ninth in the case of free agents) with the team that drafted said player or acquired said player in a trade within his first four years of NBA experience.

Secondly and more contentiously, the player must either have completed one of the following performance qualifications:

1) Made one of the three all-NBA teams in either the previous season or the prior two.

2) Won Defensive Player of the Year in either the previous season or the prior two.

3) Won MVP in one of the previous three seasons.

Outside the theoretical and regarding the real-world implications, this new category establishes another tier of max contract for the top NBA players up for contract renegotiations, increasing these players potential salaries up to 35 percent of the salary cap from the prior tier two player salary cap of 30 percent.

Ultimately, this means that in this upcoming free agency, Jazz forward Gordon Hayward and Pacers icon Paul George are waiting to see whether the two will make substantially more money. ESPN senior writer Brian Windhorst wrote earlier this season, If a player is voted to the all-NBA team and has eight or nine years of experience, then he qualifies for a special exception to sign a massive contract with his team for about $75 million more than any other team can pay him.

Beyond the players financial future, the special contract intricacies affect the franchises who now are at the mercy of these qualifications and ultimately shackling the teams front office who face a choice between a rock and a hard place when considering the impact of resigning these specially designated players.

For instance, Utah failed to renegotiate a long-term extension for their biggest offseason pickup last season, guard George Hill, due in large part to concerns about the teams roster future if the organization decides to lock down over $80 million in cap space for the upcoming season. With Hill being offered max contracts from teams with cap room to burn (i.e. the Brooklyn Nets and the 76ers), the Jazz now are locked in a conundrum created from the very rule aimed at helping small market teams retain superstars.

And if the player, such as Gordon Hayward this offseason, fails to make the All-NBA team, then any team with the capability around the league can match Utahs max offer sheet at 30 percent the cap space. Essentially, if Hayward doesnt earn this relatively innocuous award, the superstar youngster will surely opt out and test waters in unrestricted free agency, where an exit for nothing in return would surely cripple the Jazzs future situation.

Whats baffling to me then is, with all the money and organizational future at stake, why the NBA both league offices and players union allows these monumental league decisions to be decided by a panel of sportswriters. Who in a right and sane mind would allot so much control to the media?

Honestly, any other resolution than the external media outlets controlling these arbitrary-turned-critical end of season awards that essentially decide large-scale changes in the future. From making the all-NBA awards computer automated and entirely statistically based to an unbiased committee impervious to connections with teams, literally anything seems better than resting this power amongst a group of media affiliates.

I immediately am remembered of a story from the former TrueHoop podcast in which NBA analytical writer Tom Haberstroh recounted a story of a player literally asking him for recommendations on his game after the ESPN sportswriter kept the player off his article featuring an early midseason ballot for the awards.

Let me repeat that: A professional basketball player, one of the best in the NBA (the highest echelon of basketball competition in the world), asked Haberstroh for tips on his game in order to make sure that Haberstroh voted for him for all-NBA at the end of the season. I guess $75 million in potential contract value would make me do the same.

Ultimately, this story shows just how ridiculous this process has become. While Im definitely in the analytical camp of basketball fans and would enjoy a purely statistical representation of the all-NBA teams, any change in this rule honestly seems less ludicrous than whats in place now. But until then, Thursdays selection will see some organizations exalting with joy while others miss out on a chance at a superstar.

Contact Lorenzo Rosas to congratulate him on the Lakers drafting Lonzo Ball on June 22 at enzor9 at stanford.edu.

Read more from the original source:
Rosas: Let's move past the media control in Designated Player ... - The Stanford Daily

Time-after-time, the NewYork Times and other publications have repeated the same false claim that concealed handgun permit holders are dangerous.

This claim will continue to be made as debate heats up over reciprocity, which would allow concealed handgun permits to be used across states like drivers licenses.

With 192 co-sponsors lined up for the reciprocity bill in the House and 36 in the Senate, Democrats are already threatening a filibuster.

Of these deaths, 314 were suicides and 17 were the result of accidental shootings. In all, 324 permit holders purportedly killed people.

Looking at the VPC numbers for 2016, they claim that 26 permit holders supposedly committed 29 homicides. With over 15 million permit holders nationwide last year, those deaths amount to 0.2 homicides per 100,000 permit holders.

However, there is an arrest and investigation virtually anytime a permit holder uses a handgun in a public place. Almost all of the 2016 cases are listed as pending, and most of the defendants will be acquitted on account of self-defense.

The tally of 969 deaths is the result of triple and even quadruple counting. Michigan by far the worst state according to VPC numbers supposedly suffered 78 homicides and 390 suicides. Supposedly, Michigan was the site of over 40 percent of all deaths attributed to permit holders.

The main problem is that pending cases are counted in the same way as convictions. The Michigan State Police report the number of pending cases and convictions each year.

But since most cases never result in a conviction and many cases can be listed as pending for two or three calendar years, this results in massive over counting.

An additional 30 cases are added in, as a result of news stories. Apparently, no effort was made to check if these cases were already accounted for in the state police reports.

A case that ends in acquittal will, therefore, be counted four times if it is covered in a news story and is pending for three years. Over the past 10 years, 17 Michigan permit holders were convicted of homicide, not 78.

That comes to 1.7 cases per year, out of 560,000 permit holders in June 2016.

Michigan doesnt collect information on how or where suicides took place, just that permit holders committed suicide. The Violence Policy Center just assumes that all of these suicides were committed with guns, and specifically with their own permitted concealed handguns outside their homes.

In any case, permit holders committed suicide at just 38 percent of the rate of the adult Michigan population as a whole.

Concealed handgun permit holders are also much more law-abiding than the rest of the population.

In fact, they are convicted at an even lower rate than police officers. According to a study in Police Quarterly, police committed an average of 703 crimes (113 firearms violations) annually from 2005-2007.

This is likely to be an underestimate since some news reports may have been missed and not all police crimes receive media coverage.

With 683,396full-time law enforcement employees nationwide in 2006, there were about 102 crimes by police per hundred thousand officers.

Among the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher 3,813 crimes per hundred thousand people.

Now let's look at permit holders.

Between January 1, 2015, and April 30, 2017, Florida revoked 958 concealed handgun permits for misdemeanors or felonies. This is an annual rate of 23.4 crimes per 100,000 permit holders less than a fourth of the crime rate among officers.

In Texas, 108 permit holderswere convicted of misdemeanors or felonies in 2015 the last year for which data is available.

This is a rate of 10.2 per 100,000, scarcely more than a tenth of the rate for police.

Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 6.9 per 100,000 officers. For Florida permit holders, the rate is only 0.31 per 100,000. Most of these violations were trivial offenses, such as forgetting ones permit.

The data are similar in other states.

The media is doing an injustice by inaccurately reporting about an issue with such immediate relevance to public safety.

Counting legitimate cases of self-defense as tragedies sometimes three or four times is clearly not legitimate.

If gun control advocates arguments were on solid ground, they wouldn't need to make up numbers.

John R. Lott, Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of The War on Guns.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

See the article here:
How gun control advocates play the mainstream media for suckers - The Hill (blog)

Fairfax Media appears extremely close to being declared 'on the market'as a new bidder,Hellman & Friedman, entered the auction room on Wednesday night with an indicative offer thattrumped the TPG offer already on the table.

This could easily mark the start of a bidding war between two US private equity groups, likely to move the 176-year-old media group into foreign hands.

In a strange historic twist,Hellman&Friedman -which lobbed a prospective price of between $1.225 and $1.25 a share - is no ordinary bidder: It was part of Tourang - a consortium of investors including Canadian media baron Conrad Black andthe late Kerry Packer, whichbought Fairfax out of receivership in 1992.

Hellman's current Emeritus chairman, Brian Powers, was once thechairman of Fairfax and later became Kerry Packer's right-hand man.

The private equity firm's emergence this week is no accident.

Since the board became aware of TPG's interest in Fairfax, it hadbeen actively canvassing other potential bidders - among them Hellman & Friedman. TPG, which is currently offering $1.20 per share for Fairfax, and Hellman & Friedman have now both been given the green light to undertake a close look at Fairfax's books.

Both Fairfax chairman, Nick Falloon and its chief executive Greg Hywood are considered close to Powers.

During Powers' chairmanship of Fairfax, Hywood was editor in chief of the Sydney Morning Herald.Falloon was the head of Kerry Packer's television group then called PBL, while Powers was head of the Packer's Consolidated Press.

Back in 2010, Falloon also (but unsuccessfully) approached Hellman & Friedman as a potential buyer for Canwest's stake in Ten Network.

The Fairfax board had been aware for a while that Hellman & Friedman had been sniffing around, but did not know of its intention to bid until it received notification on Wednesday evening.

While Powers will be taking an active interest in the current bid for Fairfax, the executive running the process for Hellman & Friedman is itsdeputy chief executive, Patrick Healy.

The private equity firm has plenty of experience in the digital classified property arena as part owners ofGermane-commerce group Scout24, which is led by Greg Ellis - who himself was instrumental in setting up and running REA Group, the arch competitor to Fairfax's property website Domain.

TPG, on the other hand, has Domain boss Antony Catalano in its corner. He appears to have tied his fortunes to TPG, having already been nominated to run Fairfax under TPG's ownership.

If TPG issuccessful, it plans to keep the major newspaper titlesalong with Domain and sell off the remaining assets, including radio, Fairfax's New Zealand newspapers and its 50 per cent stake in video streaming business Stan.

Despite Hellman & Friedman's connections with Fairfax, the board will need to decide whether either offer will be enough to satisfy its major shareholders, who at this stage have mixed opinionsabout the price.

For some shareholders, a price of $1.25 a sharewould be enough to garner support, while others would prefer more and would rather take their chances with Fairfax's own proposal to spin off 30 per cent of Domain into a separately listed company.

But the Domain spin-off is increasingly looking like a fall-back position. If Falloon can extract a fair offer price, the Foreign Investment Review Board would be the only thing standing in private equity's way.

With the Fairfax share price punching above $1.23 on Thursday morning, the punters are calling it 'game on'.

Read more here:
It's 'game on' in the battle for control of Fairfax - The Sydney Morning Herald