EU Censorship News

Ubisoft has censored the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of 18-rated comedy role-playing game South Park: The Stick of Truth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The PC version remains unaffected.

BT.com reported on a note sent to press alongside copies of the game that revealed the changes, which amount to seven scenes of about 20 seconds each:

• A mini-game in which the doctor is performing an abortion on the player.
• A mini-game in which the player is performing an abortion on the character Randy.
• Five anal probing scenes involving someone actively being probed. The scenes play out as normal before and after the active probing sequences.

Each censored scene is replaced by an image background and a description text selected by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Ubisoft said.

Speculation suggests that the censorship was applied to the entire region to appease the lowest common denominator of game censors, ie those in Germany.

Meanwhile in Australia

See article from gameplanet.com.au :

Ubisoft has said in a statement that a cut version of The Stick of Truth has now been accepted by the country's game censor:

A modified version has now been approved for release, under the guidance of R18+. No full sequences have been removed from the game, only small sections amounting to less than five minutes of game play. These modifications in no way detract from the narrative of the game, meaning the player will still enjoy an authentic South Park experience.

Update: Further cuts in Germany

28th February 2013. See article from gamespot.com

The German version of South Park: The Stick of Truth will not feature any swastikas, Ubisoft has confirmed. The Nazi symbols were discovered by VG247 during a recent play-through. An Ubisoft representative told the site:

With regards to the German version, all Nazi symbols have been removed from the game in accordance with German law.

A strange prudishness has seized a section of political opinion in France. The leader of the main centre-right opposition party, Jean-François Copé, declared on television last week that his "blood ran cold" when he read a children's book called Tous à poil ( All in the Buff ).

The book has comical drawings of ordinary people, policemen, bakers, and teachers, taking off their clothes. Its aim is to teach small children not to be obsessed with perfect bodies.

According to Copé, the book is being forced on primary school children as part of a campaign by an ideologically rigid socialist government to subvert traditional attitudes to gender and the family.

Tous à poil had sold only 1,000 copies before Copé's comments on television made it sound like a blend of the Marquis de Sade and Karl Marx for five-year-olds. Sales have since rocketed and the book is now the second best-selling French-language book on Amazon.

Copé's remarks have been widely mocked by in French media. The French are, after all, supposed to be relaxed about nudity; there is hardly a French movie without a nude scene; and French advertisers use female bodies (always perfect) to sell everything from cars to pasta.

All this would be mildly amusing if the remarks were not part of a campaign to radicalise the political debate in France along moral and cultural "identity" lines. Copé was trying, clumsily, to hitch himself to a bandwagon launched in recent months by ultra-Catholic conservatives and by the extreme nationalist right.

Update: French booksellers pose naked to support children's book on nudity

27th February 2013. See article from theguardian.com

After a children's book showing people naked was attacked by politicans of France's UMP party, a group of publishers and booksellers decided to register their displeasure, by posing naked (apart from strategically placed books that is).

Jean-François Copé appeared on television earlier this month to denounce Tous à Poil, a children's picture book in which characters including a policeman and a school teacher are shown getting undressed, and naked, before plunging into the sea. The authors, Claire Franek and Marc Daniau, wrote it to take the shame out of being naked. But Copé, president of France's centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party, said that when he saw the book, he was outraged.

His comments backfired, sending the book racing to the top of bestseller lists in France, and drawing widespread condemnation, with minister for education Vincent Peillon calling Copé a spokesperson for extremist groups. .

Easily offended French Muslims are taking satirical paper Charlie Hebdo to court for blasphemy over a front page insult of the Koran.

A court in Strasbourg set the hearing into Charlie Hebdo's supposed blasphemy for 7 April.

A Muslim legal defence group brought the case over a front page headlined The Koran is shit .

Blasphemy is not an offence in France. The trial will be a test case because, although it bans public insulting religious communities established on the territory , the agreement on the law only recognises Catholicism, three forms of Protestantism and Judaism.

A hearing has also been set for the 7 April in a case against former decentralisation minister Claude Goasguen that accuses him of offending the honour and dignity of the Muslim community . Speaking to a gala organised by a pro-Israel group, KKL, Goasguen claimed that the history of the Holocaust could no longer be taught in French schools because people are so scared of the reaction of young Muslims who have been drugged in the mosques .

Lawyer Khadija Aoudia, acting for one of France's two major Muslim associations, the CFCM, said that media coverage of Goasguen's remarks feed Islamophobia and create a strong feeling of rejection .

A strange prudishness has seized a section of political opinion in France. The leader of the main centre-right opposition party, Jean-François Copé, declared on television last week that his "blood ran cold" when he read a children's book called Tous à poil ( All in the Buff ).

The book has comical drawings of ordinary people, policemen, bakers, and teachers, taking off their clothes. Its aim is to teach small children not to be obsessed with perfect bodies.

According to Copé, the book is being forced on primary school children as part of a campaign by an ideologically rigid socialist government to subvert traditional attitudes to gender and the family.

Tous à poil had sold only 1,000 copies before Copé's comments on television made it sound like a blend of the Marquis de Sade and Karl Marx for five-year-olds. Sales have since rocketed and the book is now the second best-selling French-language book on Amazon.

Copé's remarks have been widely mocked by in French media. The French are, after all, supposed to be relaxed about nudity; there is hardly a French movie without a nude scene; and French advertisers use female bodies (always perfect) to sell everything from cars to pasta.

All this would be mildly amusing if the remarks were not part of a campaign to radicalise the political debate in France along moral and cultural "identity" lines. Copé was trying, clumsily, to hitch himself to a bandwagon launched in recent months by ultra-Catholic conservatives and by the extreme nationalist right.

The new European Union anti-terror chief appeared in front of MPs to discuss various issues, including what people are reading online.

Gilles de Kerchove told MPs he wanted to remove not illegal, undesirable websites. Setting out the action being taken by the EU he said:

The Commissioner for Home Affairs will set up a forum to discuss with the big players -- Google, Facebook, Twitter -- how we can improve the way one removes from the internet the illegal and if not illegal, undesirable websites.

Big Brother Watch commented:

Freedom of speech, and of the press, are essential parts of a free and democratic society. It should not be in the gift of politicians to decide what we read or who can write it and absolutely not on the basis of what some may consider undesirable. If content is to be blocked, it should be a decision taken by a court of law and only when a clear criminal test has been met establishing the content is illegal.

The mind boggles at what a European official might consider undesirable

A German court has ruled today that Google must block all access in the country to images of a sadomasochistic orgy involving the former Formula One boss Max Mosley.

The pictures, taken from a video filmed by the now-defunct News of the World and published in an article in 2008, were judged by the court to seriously violate Mosley's privacy. The paper was fined for a breach of privacy.

Google has resisted Mosley's attempts to make it block all access to the widely-circulated images, saying that to do so sets a disturbing precedent for internet censorship.

The search engine giant said it planned to appeal today's decision from a Hamburg court, which has ordered the company to prevent any pictures, links or even thumbnails images from the orgy to show up on the google.de site.

A top court in France has upheld the ban on a performance by the controversial comic Dieudonne M'bala M'bala.

The decision comes less than two hours before the comedian was due to give the opening performance of his national tour in the city of Nantes, despite his lawyers claiming a breach of his freedom of expression.

The ban had just been lifted by local judge Jean-Francois Molla who said that a perceived risk to public order could not be used to justify as radical measure as banning the show . However, France's highest administrative court, the Council of State, ruled that the show should not be allowed to go ahead.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who has led the campaign to ban the comedian's performances, said:

We cannot tolerate hatred of others, racism, anti-Semitism or holocaust denial. That is not France. This is a victory for the Republic.

The decision marks a landmark break with legal precedent in France, where previous attempts to ban Dieudonne from performing foundered against constitutional provisions on free speech.

The government has accused the comedian of insulting the memory of Holocaust victims, and his show has widely been condemned as anti-Semitic. However newspaper reports have not provided any details of his material, perhaps suggesting a weak case.

The ruling today leaves the rest of his tour uncertain.

Update: Appeal

11th January 2013. See article from bbc.co.uk

The French comic Dieudonne M'bala M'bala has appealed against a ban on his show. He lodged the appeal with the country's highest court, the Council of State, after it overruled a provincial judge on Thursday and reinstated the ban.

The ban took effect as fans gathered for the first show of a tour, in the western city of Nantes on Thursday. Authorities in other cities on the tour have also banned the performance.

Legal analysts say that while the Council of State decision applied specifically to Nantes, judges in other cities will have to take it into account and a flurry of further bans is likely.

Supporters of the comic and critics of the bans accuse the authorities of denying Dieudonne freedom of speech.

Shocked fans booed outside the concert hall in Nantes, where more than 5,000 people had been due to see the show. Some gave Dieudonne's trademark quenelle gesture, which is regarded by many as an inverted Nazi salute, while some brandished pineapples. One of the comic's most notorious songs, Shoananas, roughly translates as Pineapple-Holocaust.

Update: Walled Off

12th January 2013. See article from bbc.co.uk

The French comic Dieudonne M'bala M'bala has dropped a controversial show after it was banned by the authorities. He told reporters in Paris he would no longer perform The Wall , after France's highest court upheld a ban on the opening night of his tour on Thursday.

Citing blatant political interference , he said he wanted to perform a new show devoted to Africa. Dieudonne said in a statement on French TV:

The Dieudonne controversy and the Le Mur show are over. Now, I think we will get a chance to laugh more intensely with my new show.

We live in a democratic country and I have to comply with the laws, despite the blatant political interference.

Offsite Comment: Was Francois Hollande right to support a ban?

12th January 2013. See article from theguardian.com

Should controversial comedian Dieudonne' M'bala M'bala, the man behind the quenelle gesture, be silenced by the law -- or by sharper arguments? Andrew Hussey and Padraig Reidy debate France's thorniest issue.

...Read the full article