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UK-based non-profit organisation Index on Censorship will be launching a new research project later this month that will expose the extent to which individuals with wealth and influence use vexatious legal threats to shut down investigations into their practices.

Despite recent changes to UK law more needs to be done both in Britain and abroad to tackle spurious lawsuits, the organisation said.

Chief Executive Jodie Ginsberg said that UK law firms were among the most heavily involved in legal threats to journalists outside the UK. We are still seeing people and organisations with almost no UK links bringing expensive and spurious defamation cases, she said.

The organisation also mentioned murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia as an example of a journalist receiving such threats. Caruana Galizia had numerous lawsuits pending at the time of her murder, with some of the lawsuits brought by UK firms, they said.

Shortly before her death, Caruana Galizia had received letters from the London office of the firm Mishcon de Reya asking for some of her blog posts to be deleted. Caruana Galizias sons had accused Mishcon of seeking to cripple the journalist financially. According to British media reports, Mischon specialises in bringing defamation cases and had been hired to defend the reputation of a client doing business in Malta.

Such suits are a particular problem for independent media outlets and other small organisations. They are financially draining and can take years to process. Faced with the threat of a lengthy litigation battle and expensive legal fees, many who receive such threats are simply forced into silence, the organisation said.

News outlets find themselves receiving a letter threatening expensive proceedings unless online articles are rewritten or removed altogether, and demanding an agreement not to publish anything similar in the future. The letters often tell the recipient that they cannot even report the fact that they have received the letter, Ginsberg said.

The Shift has also been threatened with SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits twice one by a Russian banker and another by Henley & Partners, Maltas concessionaire for the cash for passports scheme. The same firm also targeted Daphne Caruana Galizia prior to her assassination. In both cases, The Shift did not back down.

Meanwhile, the Maltese government has refused to ban the use of SLAPP suits in Malta.

The research project aims to interview journalists and media organisations across Europe about the extent of these threats and a final report containing recommendations for action will then be drawn up later in the year.

Link:
Index on Censorship project to expose 'vexatious' legal threats on journalists - The Shift News

Irans hardline authorities on Wednesday prepared for another round of protests by shutting down mobile Internet access to overseas sites in several restive provinces, an Iranian news agency reported.

Relatives of people killed last month during unrest over gasoline price hikes have called for renewed protests and commemoration ceremonies for the dead on Thursday.

The semi-official news agency ILNA quoted a source at the Communications and Information Technology Ministry as saying the shutdown was ordered by security authorities and covered the Alborz, Kurdestan and Zanjan provinces in central and western Iran and Fars in the south.

According to this source, it is possible that more provinces will be affected by the shutdown of mobile international connectivity, ILNA said.

In November, Iran shut down the Internet for about a week to help stifle the fuel protests which turned political, sparking the bloodiest crackdown in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic.

The Internet censorship made it difficult for protesters to post videos on social media to generate support and also to obtain reliable reports on the extent of the unrest and government violence.

With Post wires

See the original post:
Iran censors internet on the eve of new protests - New York Post

This week, there was a whole bunch of hubbub over the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation airing an edit of the seminal 1992 holiday film Home Alone 2: Lost In New York in which Donald Trump's cameo was cut for time. Trump himself even claimed that this was somehow the nefarious doings of one Justin Trudeau as some kind of NATO-based revenge. On Thursday's edition of Fox and Friends, co-host Katie Pavlich claimed that this was obviously "censorship" and all the other co-hosts agreed that it was exemplary of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and that the scene was cut because Canada itself was terrified to show that before Donald Trump was the New Hitler, he was a beloved cultural figure.

And sure, that was a thing. For a while. Right up until he started hollering at Rosie O'Donnell, and accusing President Obama of faking his birthplace and generally turning himself into a national joke. Lots of people have been beloved cultural icons prior to everyone figuring out they are actually horrible.

Anyway, the big problem with this very prescient take is that this particular edit happened not this year, but in 2014, back when "President Donald Trump" was still a bad Simpson's joke. So unless these editors had psychic powers of some kind and just knew that Donald Trump was going to run for president two years later on a platform of pussy-grabbing and racism, it really was just a not-very-important-scene being cut for time to make room for commercials.

On Friday's edition of The Five, on which Pavlich also appeared, she actually shockingly enough acknowledged this and admitted that she was wrong about it being "censorship."

Via The Daily Beast (where you can also watch the clip):

"I have to issue a correction," the conservative Fox host stated. "Because apparently this edit happened in 2014.""I was saying it would have been censorship if they did it now," she added. "Because it would have been political. But it happened before he was president. So I apologize for that. However, it is still stupid."

And that is probably the best anyone is getting out of her. Why it's stupid, we don't know. Maybe she feels as though this was a very important plot point in Home Alone 2: Lost In New York? I wouldn't know! As much as I do love Tim Curry and Catherine O'Hara, I don't think I've actually seen that movie since I was a child.

Just to be clear though, there's a reason they are doing this and as absolutely stupid and petty as it sounds, it's actually quite smart. In a way. It makes these people identify even more fiercely with Trump, it makes them feel like they have to step up and defend him from the mean liberals who won't even let him have his Home Alone cameo, and that creates loyalty like you can't believe. Are Trump, his supporters, or Fox viewers in general actually being "censored?" Of course not. But "I've been censored" is a lot easier on the ego than "No one wants to hear my shit." So the more Trump and Fox play up the "censorship!" and "freeze peach" angles on things, the more validated their target audience feels. They know they've got a winner with this particular line of bullshit, and they're not wrong.

The way this particular incident ended was perfect. It wasn't that Trump was being "censored," it was that the movie was edited well before he was ever president, and instead of looking like victims, they all looked like fools. All they needed was enough rope.

[The Daily Beast]

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Read more from the original source:
Fox News Lady Sorry She Insisted That Home Alone 2 Edit Was A Candian Plot To 'Censor' Trump - Wonkette

Many investors recognize Tencent (OTC:TCEHY) as the largest video game publisher in the world; the owner of WeChat, China's top messaging app; and a market leader in the digital-payment, advertising, and media-streaming markets.

When reviewing Tencent's financials, they'll likely focus on its core growth engines -- its gaming, digital advertising, fintech, and cloud businesses. However, those headline numbers only give us a surface-level understanding of the 21-year-old company. Today, we'll examine nine lesser-known facts about the Chinese tech giant.

Image source: Getty Images.

WeChat isn't just a messaging app that serves 1.15 billion usersmonthly. It's an all-in-one "super app" that lets users pay bills, order food, book tickets, hail rides, and more.

However, any messages and images sent on WeChat areautomatically scanned for taboo topics by AI algorithms. Offending messages are deleted, often instantly, to prevent China's cyberspace regulators from cracking down on the platform. This isn't surprising, but it's a controversial tactic that often frustrates the app's foreign users.

Tencent's first product was a clone of the messaging app ICQ called OICQ (Open ICQ).ICQ's owner, AOL, threatened tosue Tencent over trademark violations, and OICQ was rebranded as QQ, which expanded into a broader messaging ecosystem. Roughly 731 million people still use QQ on a monthly basis.

Last year, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) honored 100 individuals fortheir contributions to the country. That list included Tencent CEO Pony Ma, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) CEO Robin Li, and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) founder Jack Ma. Jack Ma is notably a member of the CPC, but Pony Ma and Robin Li are not affiliated with any political parties.

Chinese regulators crack down on tech companies for myriad reasons, so companies often go to great lengths to stay in the government's good graces. Tencent even launched a game two years ago to coincide with President Xi's speech during the 19th Congress of the CPC. That game, Clapping Hands for Xi Jinping, played a short video of Xi's speech, and players tried to clapas many times as possible within 19 seconds.

However, that fawning gesture didn't prevent China's regulators from suspending all new gaming approvals for nine months the following year and crippling one of Tencent's core businesses.

Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu are clearly subservient to China's government, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Three years ago, the Wall Street Journal claimed that the Chinese government wanted to buy1% stakes in Tencent and other domestic tech giants, gainspecial "management shares," and claim seats on the companies' boards. It's unclear if those plans are still in motion, but they indicate that the Chinese government wants to tighten its grip on its top tech companies.

Image source: Getty Images.

Two years ago, China's Ministry of Science and Technology recruited the BAT triumvirate and iFlytek to lead the development of new AI technologies.

The Ministry assigned Baidu to self-driving cars, Alibaba to smart cities, iFlytek to voice technologies, and Tencent to computer vision applications in healthcare. This complements WeChat's integration into China's hospitals, many of which accept WeChat Pay payments, and the expansion of its cloud business into the healthcare sector.

Tencent is the second-largest cloud platform provider in China after Alibaba, but it still trails far behind market leaders like Amazon and Microsoft in overseas markets. But that could change soon.

Tencent already operates data centers in the U.S., Canada, Singapore, India, and Germany, and it believes that it canmore than quadruple its overseas cloud revenue this year. It faces an uphill battle, but it could be an appealing choice for overseas companies that want to tether themselves to Tencent's ecosystem of social, advertising, and gaming services in China.

Tencent has invested in a long list of companies overseas, including Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Tesla Motors, Snap, and nearly 50 unicorn start-ups. That massive investment portfolio now generates over a quarter of Tencent's profits -- and results in big gaps between its GAAP and non-GAAP earnings.

Lastly, Tencent's largest stakeholder is South African internet group Naspers (OTC:NPSNY), which invested $32 million in the company in 2001. It sold someofits shares since then, but it stillowns a 31% stake -- which is worth about $150 billion today. Pony Ma ranks second in ownership with a 9% stake.

Link:
AI Censors and 8 Other Things You Didn't Know About Tencent - Motley Fool

Dear 2020,

The Censorship Vs Creative freedom debate is possibly one of the longest running ones and it will not end any time. But I absolutely dont agree to the view that creative freedom should be absolute. Censorship is important because without that anyone will be putting out anything in the public domain under the garb of creative content. Without censorship, it will become a jungle raj, a free-for-all! In fact, I am already seeing something similar happening in the web series space. Things are increasingly taking a bizarre turn. There are web series that are misusing the lack of censorship and putting out random nudity, sex scenes, and extreme violence in the name of hard-hitting content. But often these are only used to grab eyeballs and serve no other purpose in the story. In fact, there is one such web series that I have sang the title song for, I had no idea that it will turn out to be a compilation of rural sex stories.

There are countries like Sweden that have no censorship. But our ground realities are very different from them. Censorship and its mandate should be based on the norms and values of the country and updated as the society progresses. Advocating the total abolishment of censorship is no less dangerous than the smothering censorship during Emergency period. The world does not work in extremes, there needs to be a middle path. The censor board needs to be formed with the right kind of people and should represent a cross section of the society.

Also, I dont think there is some serious attack on creative freedom in India today. A film like Udta Punjab (2016) was eventually passed with just one cut. This would be unthinkable 10 years back. I think we are far more liberal today. Also, there are ways to say the same thing in a different manner. Look at the cinema of Raj Kumar Hirani, apart from PK (2014), which got into trouble with the censor board for nudity, none of his five films got the snip and yet all were bold commentaries on the society. The problem is that today most people want to create controversial content just to get some easy publicity. Also, you dont need to be derogatory to prove a point. If you simply want to be blatant and offensive then you are on a very wrong track to begin with.

Having said that, political content can land you in some trouble but that is nothing new, it has been the same under every regime.

So, in 2020 I want artists to become more responsible and not use their creative freedom to peddle soft-porn, especially on the OTT platforms, and I also hope for a well-represented, accountable and standardised censor board.

(As told to Ananya Ghosh)

Naseeruddin Shahs open letter to 2020. Read here

Makarand Deshpandes open letter to 2020. Read here

Faezeh Jalalis poem for 2020. Read here

HT Brunch cover story: By the people, for the people, of the people Four thespians write down their wishlist for 2020. Read the entire article here

From HT Brunch, December 29, 2019

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Dear 2020: Piyush Mishras open letter to the coming year - Hindustan Times