South Africa's new Internet Censorship Bill is to be discussed today by the Films and Publications Portfolio Committee on Communications.

The Democratic Alliance has stated : "In its current form, it gives government wide-sweeping powers to censor content on the Internet" as "unworkable, unaffordable, vague and containing several unconstitutional provisions"
MultiChoice, eNCA, eTV, Right2Know, Media Monitoring Africa, the SOS Coalition, the South African National Editors Forum, the National Association of Broadcasters, Google and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) all made submissions to the Communications Committee opposing many of the bill’s proposed provisions.

Find the full article at http://it-online.co.za/?p=113833?utm_source=dailymailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article
Internet censorship is a slippery slope which leads to inordinate power in the hands of those who already have far too much. This bill is completely unacceptable and must be thrown out in its entirety, despite its two good points. lFailure is this regard will initiate the descent of our society to a state ultimately devoid of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech has been curtailed in every despotic regime the world has ever seen and gives the ruling government the power to eliminate all future opposition through keeping vital information from the people and preventing the people from appropriately collaborating to correct governmental ills.

The Internet is the only remaining medium through which the people can mount any action against a government which is not representative of the will of the people.

The duty of any and all government is to serve the people through fulfilling it mandate to represent and further the collective objectives of the people.

The new bill contravenes the dictates of the South African constitution and to quote from the article :

• The Bill is also unconstitutional in that it seeks to impose the pre-classification of content distributed online. Section 18(5) states that no digital film may be distributed unless it has been classified by the FPB. This amounts to pre-classification and is in direct contravention of the order of the Constitutional Court in Print Media South Africa v Minister of Home Affairs 2012. The court found that prior classification of content amounts to an unreasonable limitation to the right to freedom of expression. The government was instructed to amend the Films and Publications Act to ensure compliance with the Constitution, yet the proposed Bill does the exact opposite of what the court ordered.

• The Bill also infringes on the constitutional right to privacy. Section 24(3) states that any person who distributes a film or game classified as “X18” online must keep a register of all instances where access was granted to a user, whose name, address and verifiable age must be noted in the register kept for that purpose. The CEO of the FPB will have the right to access this list. This is an unjustifiable breach of the right to privacy. Section 14(d) of the Constitution affords the right to privacy, which includes the right to not have your private communications infringed. If the CEO is able to access a register of all the people that have accessed a site in the past year, the right to privacy of many may be infringed upon. There should be stricter conditions.

Primary source of information discussed : http://it-online.co.za/?p=113833?utm_source=dailymailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article

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