Open Media is at it again. This Vancouver-based self-described advocate of Internet freedom, an organization that claims to believe in “participatory democracy” and “freedom of expression,” has been busy manipulating public opinion and trying to influence lawmakers in various countries, including Canada, with spurious astroturfing campaigns against copyright protection. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: September 2018 (Page 1 of 3)
The first German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, said there were two sights the public should not see: the making of laws and the making of sausages. To this list of enduringly nauseating spectacles we should add one more: the political machinations of media moguls. Continue reading
In his new book, Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy Siva Vaidhyanathan lays out why Facebook may be good for some people, but not good for democracy as a whole.
The book is divided into sections delineating the ways in which we can look at Facebook: as a pleasure machine, a surveillance machine, an attention machine, a benevolence machine, a protest machine, a politics machine or a disinformation machine. Continue reading
The Cairncross review was set up by the government in March 2018 to investigate “how to sustain the production and distribution of high-quality journalism in a changing market”. Continue reading
If you’re having trouble keeping up with British political controversies and only vaguely familiar with the story of “Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s antisemitism crisis”, you’d be forgiven for thinking from occasionally glimpsed headlines and social media posts that the current leader of the UK opposition party was a “racist and antisemite”, that he had “waged war on the Jews” and that he “posed an existential threat to Jewish life”. Continue reading
Prior to the start of the Michaelmas legal term on 1 October 2018 we have collated some of the most significant developments over the previous two months. “Law and Media Round Ups” will commence as normal from next week. Continue reading
This is the final part on a series looking at the evidence submitted for the House of Lords Communications Inquiry “The Internet: to regulate or not to regulate?” (Part 1 and Part 2 were published in July and August). Part 3 considers the responses to questions 7 to 9 of the Call for Evidence. Continue reading
It is happening. Amid rising concern about the overwhelming size, power and ethics all of online intermediaries, governments and regulators are debating a comprehensive new regulatory framework for the Internet. A UK government paper on the proposed Digital Charter is expected in the coming weeks, parliamentary committees will report and the LSE T3 Commission will table proposals in November. Continue reading
The Cairncross Review Call for Evidence [pdf] states that the ‘review’s objective is to establish how far and by what means we can secure a sustainable future for high quality journalism, particularly for news’, asks respondents whether ‘the future of high-quality journalism in the UK is at risk – at national, regional and/or local levels’, and argues that ‘high quality journalism plays a critical role in our democratic system, in particular through holding power to account, and its independence must be safeguarded’. Continue reading
The new European Union Copyright Directive, passed recently by the European parliament after a vociferous campaign both for and against, has been described by its advocates as Europe striking a blow against US tech giants in the battle for control of copyrighted content online. Continue reading
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