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"We the organizers of Ayam Beirut Al Cinema'iya refuse to accept the censorship of creative art in all its forms and invite you to join us in protest."

With these words, the organizers of Beirut Cinema Days invite everyone to join them in speaking up against censorship in Lebanon. They are calling for a protest and discussion panel at 8 p.m. on Friday, in Metropolis Cinema, Achrafieh.

In a statement posted on their Facebook page, the organizers of the festival explain that the move comes in response to the censorship board enforcing strict regulations on most films that were part of this year's edition.

"During the 9th edition of Ayam Beirut Al Cinema'iya the censor was stricter than in any previous year and did not grant screening permissions for two films Beit El Baher (The Beach House) and Mawlana (The Preacher)."

In the statement the organizers also note that the censor asked many other filmmakers participating in the festival to edit out parts of their films.

"They were not granted screening permissions until the last minute when he decided to grant a one-time cultural screening permit."

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A film festival in Beirut is protesting censorship in Lebanon - StepFeed

If you didnt know by now, I go to McMaster University. Recently, they had a guest speaker, Jordan B. Peterson, come to McMaster.

As I reported earlier this week, that event got shut down because protesters played loud music, yelled, and apparently acted a little violent, too McMaster is currently investigating a reported assault.

But the interesting part of this story is how the Dean of the McMaster University, Patrick Dean, responded after the events fallout.

According to the CBC, Patrick Dean said that what occurred was "extremely regrettable and didnt meet the standards of open debate."

That sounds great and all, but when you look at the wider picture, you begin to realize that Patrick Dean might be saying this because the Peterson event got so much media attention.

It wouldnt be surprising, considering that the McMaster administration never stands up to the student union when they censor those who have controversial opinions. I've seen this first hand.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms documents cases of universities censoring free speech and expression on campus, and give them letter grades each year.

In 2014 and 2015, McMaster got a B letter grade in policy, but a C in practice, and a D in student union practice."

In other words, McMasters official policy on freedom of speech and expression gets a passing grade but too often, in reality, they allow their student union to run roughshod over other peoples rights.

Its true that other universities have worse scores, but Im focusing on McMaster right now because Im a student there.

Theres a simple way forward, McMaster:

Why dont you follow your own official policy instead of letting leftists ruin the university for the rest of us?

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McMaster U. dean calls censorship of Prof. Jordan Peterson ... - The Rebel

IMBD homepage on March 22, 2017.

You would think the First Amendment is a bulletproof defense against censorship of the Internet. But then you are not reckoning with the awesome political power of the Screen Actors Guild.

The union representing Hollywood stars and role players somehow persuaded California lawmakers to enact a law that would bar the popular IMDb website from revealing the ages of actors. Its a law that sounds crazy even by California standards, yet Governor Jerry Brown signed it last fall.

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Youve probably heard of the entertainment-focused IMDb. Owned by Amazon.com, it was founded by a British computer programmer and movie buff in 1990, when the Internet was in diapers. Today, its among the worlds most popular websites, with over 250 million visitors every month.

The basic IMDb service is free. Its content, like that of Wikipedia, is crowdsourced. Members love to post information about their favorite movies, directors, stars, and this is the important fact the actors ages.

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Many stars arent happy about that. Its not just vanity, they say; Hollywood is rife with ageism, and older actors dont want directors to think theyve passed their sell-by dates.

IMDb has a paid version of its service called IMDbPro that has become the Hollywood equivalent of LinkedIn, the social network for business. Actors and others pay about $150 a year to see and be seen by the industry elite, and to hunt for jobs. And a role might be harder to come by if its known that a certain actor is on the far side of 50.

But you cant ban the whole Internet from publishing someones age. Or can you? California legislators figured out a way around that by framing their law as a defense against age discrimination. They wrote a publishing restriction that applies only to a commercial online entertainment employment service provider, allowing paying members to demand that his or her age be deleted from that site.

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You wont be surprised to learn that IMDb and IMDbPro are virtually the only sites on earth that fit the criteria described in the law. Sure enough, as of Jan. 1, IMDb had received more than 2,300 takedown requests, including 10 from people whove won Oscars and another 71 whove been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes.

IMDb hasnt honored a single one of these requests, insisting the law is flagrantly unconstitutional. Besides, it wont work. The same information is usually available elsewhere online, for the price of a quick Google search. And so IMDb argues the law harms its business by driving its users to other sites, without achieving its purpose.

IMDb filed suit against the law in federal court, and in February, US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria issued an injunction against it until the case can be heard.

There is an exceedingly strong likelihood that IMDb will prevail, the judge predicted. Thats putting it mildly.

The IMDb law is merely the nuttiest recent effort by governments here and abroad to censor unwelcome Internet content. Other examples are less ridiculous but equally pernicious.

Google, for instance, is headed to court in France, hoping to fend off a ruinous global expansion of the right to be forgotten. A 2014 ruling of the European Court of Justice held that citizens of the European Union can demand the deletion of embarrassing search results that are no longer relevant to a persons life. For instance, if a Frenchman went bankrupt 10 years ago, he could ask Google not to display this fact when someone ran a search of his name.

Google has complied with over a quarter-million such requests, but only in Europe. The Frenchmans bankruptcy would still come up if someone ran his name through Google in the United States. But in 2015, a French court ruled that Google must wipe embarrassing search results worldwide. Its a radical attempt to force the entire world to play by Europes censorious rules.

Some American lawmakers would be happy to comply. Last month, a couple of New York state legislators filed a bill that would require Internet search services to remove, on request, listings that hurt a persons reputation, and which are no longer material to current public debate or discourse.

Im sympathetic; weve all done things wed like the world to forget. But its no different from trying to block the publication of Brad Pitts age. Thats not the governments job.

Other ongoing disputes over online expression are more complex. Even now, European companies are pulling ads from Facebook and YouTube because users of those services sometimes post racist and anti-Semitic messages that are illegal overseas but protected here.

You cant blame advertisers for fleeing such stuff, even where its legal to publish it. And Internet companies arent bound by the First Amendment. They have every right to bar materials that dont meet their ethical standards, or those of their customers. Websites are also entitled to use their own judgment in flagging stories that might be considered fake news; I might disagree with their decisions, but I dont see it as censorship.

But governments cant ban the online publication of truth, at least not on this side of the Atlantic. Somebody tell the Screen Actors Guild.

Excerpt from:
Internet censorship, Hollywood style - The Boston Globe

In what French film industry group lARP sees as a potential sign of whats to come should Frances far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen advance in Mays local elections, a feature seen as critiquing her National Front (FN) party has been pulled from a municipal cinema in the south.

Chez Nous (This Is Our Land), by actor/director Lucas Belvaux, is the story of a young woman recruited by a fictional populist party, and the ascension of the party in the north of France. Pascal Verrelle, a member of the FN and the mayor of Luc-en-Provence, a small commune in the Var region, recently decided to cancel its screenings there saying, Im not going to give (the filmmakers) the stick to beat me with. This week, lARP cried foul, condemning the anti-democratic decision as an act of censorship.

Prior to the films release last month, it had already raised the ire of the real-life FN. One party Vice President considered it anti-National Front propaganda, scandalous and unacceptable. He had only seen the trailer at the time.

Fast-forward, and employees at the municipal cinema in Luc-en-Provence inadvertently programmed it for three days this month. When Verrelle found out, he said, I had it pulled. Im not going to give (the filmmakers) the stick to beat me with. He added that the film had already caused a polemic, certain FN municipalities demonstrated against it. I wasnt going to put myself out of the game.

Could this be an indication of the future of France on a Le Pen ticket that has gained momentum? (Le Pen, incidentally, was the first international politician to congratulate then-President-elect Donald Trump on his November 9 victory in the U.S. elections.)

A spokesperson for lARP, tells me of Verrelles move to kibosh the film, The FN continues to trample anything that is not in line with its politics or which represents the smallest form of opposition It illustrates what would happen at the national level if the FN passes This is a political act: pulling a film because it bothers an elected official.

ARP, whose president is Claude Lelouch, said in a statement that it condemns with the utmost firmness the deprogramming of the film. This anti-democratic decision is an act of censorship. Through it, the National Front reiterates once again its selective and oriented vision of culture The filmmakers of ARP would like to recall how much freedom of creation and freedom of expression remain fundamental values to be defended at all costs.

French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay also weighed in this week, reportedly saying the decision to pull the film shows the real face of the National Front, one of censorship, the negation of freedom of creation, of attack on freedom of expression and the refusal of democratic debate.

Verrelle responded on his Facebook page that the films sole purpose is to harm Marine Le Pen. The films release schedule is not innocent, since it comes within two months of the first round of the presidential election As Mayor of Luc-en-Provence, I refuse that taxpayers pay for the rental and the screening of a propaganda film at the municipal cinema (which is) exclusively financed by the municipality.

Chez Nous stars Emilie Dequenne, Andr Dussollier and Guillaume Gouix. It includes a blonde supporting character who is the head of its fictional far right party which is associated with anti-immigrant sentiment. Its distributed by Jean Labadies Le Pacte and has received solid reviews, selling about 260K tickets in France.

Belvaux earlier this year told BFMTV the movie is not a militant film: it is a committed film, and a civic-minded film. It was made to provoke discussion, not to provoke the FN or fear of the FN.

The French presidential election will be decided in May, just before the Cannes Film Festival kicks off.

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French Biz Decries Censorship As Far Right Mayor Pulls Pic On Populism's Rise - Deadline

THE DAILY PIC (#1757Whitney Biennial edition): I guess my all-around favorite objects in this years Biennial were a suite of huge paintings by Frances Stark that simply reproduce whole pages from a book called Censorship Now!! by the cranky, radicalbut not dismissableIan Svenonius. His text, so painstakingly reproduced via Starks brushstrokes, argues for the censorship of many of the nastier bits of mainstream and establishment culture, in just the way that parts of the establishment have wanted to censor parts of the counterculture that it disapproves of.

The enlargement that Stark does is of course the direct opposite of censorship, and could be generalized as a defense of free speech in all cases. Theres clearly some kind of celebration of Svenonius in Starks paintings. But in their sheer, unavoidable legibility, they might also stand as a counterweight to Svenoniuss call for silencing voices he doesnt like.

One other thing I like about these pictures. The vast majority of contemporary paintings are hobbled by the weight of authority their ancient medium carries. (Worse, they dont even notice that they are.) Stark is using just that weight to make us consider the words of a radical anti-authoritywho seems to have an authoritarian streak. (Photo by Lucy Hogg)

For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

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At the Whitney, Frances Stark's Giant Paintings Argue Against the Censorship They Promote - artnet News