Recording or broadcasting this incident would be illegal 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 on 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.
The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet.
Heck, even recording or broadcasting the UCLA taser incident would have been a felony!
It seems easy to get out of if a large press organization just granted membership to anyone interested. Then they would be professional journalists.
Égalité, fraternité, stupidité. Mon dieu!
Wow… I wonder what the reasoning is behind that law?
And you ppl thought that American Conservatives were rats.
3. “Wow… I wonder what the reasoning is behind that law?”
My guess, and this is pure speculation, is that this is due to the Islamic riots that are occurring in France. Basically, the government of France does not want their crackdown on Muslims to be reported by anyone other than the established media, so information about it can be controlled.
5,
Excellent analysis.
Er, well, um… “…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.”
Or something to that effet général…
8,
I believe that is an American cultural issue.
I thought it was already illegal in the US to film Police doing anything at all.
#9 – Smartalix
“I believe that is an American cultural issue.”
That’s as may be – I don’t watch TV nor have I witnessed the phenom – but the French are the ones sufficiently outraged by it to do something about it.
#10 – Blues
“I thought it was already illegal in the US to film Police doing anything at all.”
Brother, where do you get such an idea?? The US may be headed toward becoming a police state, but we ain’t there yet. With a few very narrow exceptions, nowhere in America can you be prevented from videoing police activity in public, or most anything else, for that matter.
Despite the best efforts of the Republican Party (and, to be fair, a few PC totalitarians as well), as Dr. Nick Riviera puts it so cogently, “It’s a free country.”
Oops – another mismatched tag, dammit; corrected version follows:
#9 – Smartalix
“I believe that is an American cultural issue.”
That’s as may be – I don’t watch TV nor have I witnessed the phenom – but the French are the ones sufficiently outraged by it to do something about it.
#10 – Blues
“I thought it was already illegal in the US to film Police doing anything at all.”
Brother, where do you get such an idea?? The US may be headed toward becoming a police state, but we ain’t there yet. With a few very narrow exceptions, nowhere in America can you be prevented from videoing police activity in public, or most anything else, for that matter.
Despite the best efforts of the Republican Party (and, to be fair, a few PC totalitarians as well), as Dr. Nick Riviera puts it so cogently, “It’s a free country.”
BTW, did I mention how I despise WordPress??
8, 11 or 12 (take your pic)…
Happy slapping is a British thing. They have a thug culture over there. But, I think that it’s more focus on the COMMERCIAL aspect of filming violence. It seems that in the UK there are incidents of happy slapping being sold on DVD in the schools it happens in. I haven’t read the law (and my French is so terrible it might not help) so I can’t comment directly.
Anyhoo, in the GTA we had an incident of two kids (16 yr olds) filming cops having a beer party behind a factory during the late night. Yeah, you read that correctly. Well, the cops being the rod of the law, chased and beat the poor kids for filming them. Lawsuit pending. Some cops just act like they’re back in high-school throwing kids in the lockers…
13, yes, many times. What tool did you design that you like better?
and Freedom-Fries conservatives’ collective heads explode
What about surveillance cameras and web cams? Does it mean I can go to jail because my web cam records a violent incident out my window? This is ludicrous.
french people are a disgrace to the human race
The term “happy slapping” is British, not American. There’s enough to diss the USA about already without this knee-jerk assumption.
If the French people don’t set “the authorities” straight on this one, it will be a tragedy…
It was the journalists that messed up the Rodney King situation, selectively showing parts of the tape to rile up the public against the cops.
In America, instead of changing people’s hearts ban the guns. In England where guns are banned: instead of changing hearts, round the points on knives. In France, instead of changing the people’s hearts, ban the cameras. Is there something wrong with this picture?
When IPv6 comes in the governments will be much more capable of suppressing politically incorrect expression.
#19 – Mike N
“It was the journalists that messed up the Rodney King situation, selectively showing parts of the tape to rile up the public against the cops.”
Damn straight. That is a fine example of video abuse that has caused real social damage – unlike the subject of this idiotic law, which is an annoying but ultimately harmless fad that will be gone without a trace in short order – but the fucked-up law will stay on the books. ‘The song has ended / But the malady lingers on…’, with all due apologies to Mr. Berlin.
Leave it to the French to overreact to a transitory annoyance by enacting a Draconian deprivation of fundamental freedom to address a trivial affront to their overblown, pompous sense of ‘dignity’. Makes me ashamed of the bit of French blood I have…
I mean, crikey®.
this law is like trying to preventing drunk driving by banning the car.
Happy slapping is a British phenom…..if it’s also going on in France, I can’t find any of my friends who spend a lot of time in France that has heard of it.
But BBC said yesterday that, that is the reason behind the law.
Go figure.
Please stop all that paranoïa !! Has anybody read the law ?
You can film violence (even from police of course) if you really want to denounce it, but you can’t use it for your amusement. The real purpose of this law is to prevent happy slapping by allowing to pursue the filmer. So if you are witness of violence you can film it to help to denounce the culprits.
Extract from the law :
” Is considered an accomplice act to voluntary assault of a person’s integrity as specified in articles 222-1 to 222-14-1 and 222-23 to 222-31, and is punished with the sentences specified in these articles, the act of knowingly recording, using any means, under any format, images relating to comitting these offenses.
The act of publishing recordings of such images is punished by five years imprisonment and a 75,000 fine.
The present article does not apply when the recording or publishing is a result of the normal activity of a profession which invovles informing the public or is done to serve as proof in court.” (emphazis is mine).
disclaimer : I’m French and no I’m not a disgrace to the human race, believe me 🙂
#24,
“The present article does not apply when the recording or publishing is a result of the normal activity of a profession which invovles informing the public or is done to serve as proof in court.””
Say I record an act of police brutality as a private citizen (not a member of the press) and then turn the footage over to the news media who in turn shows (publishes) it on TV. Under this new law, did I commit a crime?
#24 – Patrick
If the law in fact is as sufficiently narrow as it appears to be – i.e., it applies only to documenting av act of happy-slapping, as a de facto participant – then I’m sure it would pass most peoples’ muster.
However, there’s still that other issue – the penalty. American law incorporates a principle specified in the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution and brought down from Magna Carta, to wit: “A free man shall not be [fined] for a small offense unless according to the measure of the offense, and for a great offense he shall be [fined] according to the greatness of the offense”
We regard it as unacceptable that trivial offenses be punishable by severe penalties. And 5 years in prison for simply taking a photo of someone else’s actions is more than severe, it is downright Draconian.
No, 10 days, maybe as much as 30, in jail, say, would be a reasonable punishment and sufficient deterrent for taking part in a silly yet far from injurious prank. 5 years is a significant portion of a person’s life, and it is outrageous.
As I see it, such inhumane excesses on the part of the State have a great deal to do with creating the bitter hatred and resentment that characterize the super-violent and utterly remorseless criminal type that the French (and Corsicans, and to a lesser extent, Italians) have long been known for…
But in truth, it’s a centuries-old French tradition, and unlikely to change. It’s a matter of cultural relativism, and each culture determining their own balance between order and freedom. The history of tyranny through the ages has demonstrated that the French value maintaining social order more than respecting individual freedom. I’ll stick with Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, thanks anyway… 🙂
#25 – Steve S
“Say I record an act of police brutality as a private citizen (not a member of the press) and then turn the footage over to the news media who in turn shows (publishes) it on TV. Under this new law, did I commit a crime?”
Apparently, yes.
#25 – Steve S
“Say I record an act of police brutality as a private citizen (not a member of the press) and then turn the footage over to the news media who in turn shows (publishes) it on TV. Under this new law, did I commit a crime?”
Apparently, no. Only a ‘happy-slapping’ event triggers the law, allegedly.
“Say I record an act of police brutality as a private citizen (not a member of the press) and then turn the footage over to the news media who in turn shows (publishes) it on TV. Under this new law, did I commit a crime?”
A last time : no, no and no ! (and 5 years is a maximum penalty not the minimum one).
If it was case, there would be hundred of thousands people in the streets. You know, French people loves freedom like American people.
Don’t you know that the first human right bill was written during the French Revolution ?
I’m a bit surprised to see this topic all over the Internet with all kind of these stupid (or dishonnest) assertions. I really wonder why. Really strange…