Internet Censorship- a response from an Arts and Culture

perspective

Draft Online Regulation Policy Film and Publication Board (FPB) of

South Africa (March 2015)

What is the FPB?

• The FPB is a public entity that falls under the Department of Communications and was created to regulate the creation, production and distribution of films, games and ‘certain publications' through classifications.

Background and Rationale

• SA has seen an increase in the use of portable devices for gaming and social networking

• economically beneficial BUT also ensures a proliferation of illegal content in and the abuse of social media platforms (moral corruption)

Examples: racism, nude school boys, nude pastor and pastor making his congregation drink petrol.

Undermining the government's agenda on social cohesion…

• Sexual predators • Racist ideologues

"in 2014 cases related to freedom of speech increased from 3% to 22% of the more than the 10 000 cases dealt with by the Human Rights Commission.

Furthermore, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter contributed to this increase and appear to have shifted the discourse of free speech.

These cases are often complex, containing elements of racism, poverty, ignorance and misguided hatred."

What is the main change?

• The policy requires anyone who wants to publish or distribute content to first apply for a digital publisher's online distribution agreement with the FPB, which will require a subscription fee.

• After that step, the publisher then has to submit the content to the FPB for classification before publishing (http://www.r2k.org.za/2015/03/10/statement-stop-the-film-and-publications-boards-attempt-to-censor-the-internet/)

4.1 Platform-neutral regulation- One legislative regime establishing obligations to classify content across all media platforms.

•Accordingly, this Policy seeks to elevate the Act's `platform-neutralilties to ensure uniform compliance by all content distributors regardless of whether the content is screened in cinemas, streamed via the internet to television, sold in retail outlets, provided online, or otherwise distributed to the South African public.

4.2. Clear scope of the type of content to be classified. This includes self-generated content uploaded on platforms such as You-Tube, Facebook and Twitter, feature films, television programs and certain computer games which are distributed online by streaming through the internet.

•Accordingly the obligation to classify content will not generally apply to persons uploading online content on a non-commercial basis.•Child exploitative and pornographic posting, hate speech and racism may be prosecuted and the content creators be convicted and sentenced, Internet intermediaries, including application service providers, host providers and internet access providers will bear the responsibility of putting in place content filtering systems to ensure that illegal content or content which may be harmful to children is not uploaded in their services.•In addition to the above the FPB through its online compliance monitoring work, may refer any self-generated video that is found to contain classifiable elements for classification to its classification committee, instruct the distributor to take down the unclassified content and only reinstate it after having complied with the FPB classification decision

43. Co-regulation and industry classification This refers to classification of content by the industry subject to the FPB's regulatory oversight.

4.4 Regulatory Oversight and guidance by the FPB The role of the FPB in the application of the Policy and co-regulation scheme is defined

•encouraging, monitoring and enforcing compliance with the Act; r- •auditing distributors complaints handling mechanism in relation to digital media content; •auditing all media content self-classified by online distributors using the Act and the Classification Guidelines. •providing and rolling out classification training to all registered online distributors; •coordinating joint public awareness and education campaigns on cyber safety and digital content classifications with online distributors; •liaising with relevant South African and international media content regulators, online distributors and law enforcement agencies to combat child pornography and sexual exploitation on the internet; •and educating the public together with online distributors about the new Online Regulation Policy and promoting cyber safety.

Feedback on Regulations

• "It goes to the paranoid mindset of policy-makers in government who do not understand the damage they do to the lives of South Africans by introducing extreme measures that ultimately cannot be enforced.“ (Adrian Schofield, ICT commentator)

R2K’s main concerns

• Time pre-classifying content undermines immediacy of online content.

• Open access and diversity of internet to be undermined by fees and bureacracy

• Invasion of physical privacy- FPB to send classifiers to distributors' premises to classify digital content.

• Likely that the majority of online users will not apply to the FPB for pre-classification of content, nor pay the subscription fee prior to publication, but under these regulations online users stand to be criminalised for doing something as simple as posting content online.

• This is at odds with Section 16 (1b) in the Bill of Rights. It also reveals a massive ignorance on the part of the FPB on how the internet actually works.

• Regulations cannot practically prevent the distribution of content that is harmful to children.

• "The FPB wants broadly defined powers to police everything published on the Internet – including blogs, personal Web sites and Facebook pages, which amounts to censorship and is a violation of freedom of expression.“

• In terms of the wording of the document, everything published on the Internet – including blogs, personal websites and Facebook pages – could be subjected to classification from the FPB.

Freedom of speech and artistic expression:

1)Can artistic expression be bound by moral codes?2)Censorship and all art forms have a long and intimate relationship.

• BRAVE NEW WORLD BY ALDOUS HUXLEY (1932)• THE SATANIC VERSES BY SALMAN RUSHDIE (1988)• THINGS FALL APART BY CHINUA ACHEBE (1958)• THE METAMORPHOSIS BY FRANZ KAFKA (1915)

Art or pornography?

Racism or thought provocation?

Parts of the Artistic Community most affected by FPB regulations?

• Bloggers• All artists promoting their own work• Any critical content especially relating to

anything falling under ‘nation building’• What does a society without critical culture

look like?• China, Saudi Arabia?