Middle East Censorship News

A bill that would force ISPs in Israel to censor pornographic sites by default has been amended after heavy criticism from lawmakers over privacy concerns.

AN earlier version of the bill that was unanimously approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in late Octoberr but now a new version of the legislation has been passed which was sponsored by Likud MK Miki Zohar and Jewish Home MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli. The differences seem subtle and are whether customers opt in or opt out of network level website blocking.

Customers will have to confirm their preferences for website blocking  every 3 months but may change their settings at  any time.

The bill will incentivize internet companies to actively market existing website blocking software to families. ISPs will receive NIS 0.50 ($0.13 cents) for every subscriber who opts to block adult sites.

In a refreshing divergence from UK internet censorship, ISPs will be legally required to delete all data related to their users' surfing habits, to prevent creating de facto -- and easily leaked -- black lists of pornography consumers.

In comparison, internet companies are allowed to use or sell UK customer data for any purpose they so desire as long as customers tick a consent box with some woolly text about improving the customer's experience.

Update: Netanyahu voices privacy concerns

10th December 2018. See  article from sputniknews.com
See also  Netanyahu against anti-porn bill, rejects online regulation from al-monitor.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved to halt the adoption of a new law aimed at curbing pornographic content on the Internet and possibly keeping tabs on people who watch porn. Netanyahu inquired:

We don't want our children to be exposed to harmful content, but my concern is about inserting regulation into a space in which there is no government regulation. Who will decide which content is permitted and which is forbidden? Who will decide the interpretations?

Climax is a 2018 France musical horror mystery by Gaspar Noé.
Starring Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic and Souheila Yacoub.

Birth and death are extraordinary life experiences. Life is a fleeting pleasure. Following a successful and visually dazzling rehearsal, a dance troupe celebrates with a party. But when it becomes apparent that someone has spiked the Sangria, the dancers soon begin to turn on each other in an orgiastic frenzy.

The third edition of Maskoon, the first festival in the Arab region specializing in horror, fantasy, thriller, action and science fiction movies, has opened in Lebanon. However the festival is missing two items from its schedule.The country's censorship authorities have banned two films: one is a short Lebanese film titled Nocturnal Deconstruction by Laura El Alam and the second is a Gaspar Noe's Climax.

Nocturnal Deconstruction is a 16-minute film telling the story of a woman who has decided to overcome the void in her life by trying a drug that eliminates the problems of self-confidence, and allows everyone who takes it to love himself again.

Myriam Sassine, the festival's director, said in a speech that censorship had decided to ban the two films for vague and unclear reasons.

The festivals' Artistic director Antoine Waked expressed his regret for the ban of The Climax film, saying this movies was made to be shown in cinemas, and its artistic value appears on the big screen, but now everyone will see it via DVD, or download it from the internet, so all the censorship has done was depriving people from the chance to see it on the big screen, he said.

Kuwait's book censors have been very busy of late banning 4,390 books since 2014,  hundreds of them this year.

Recent targets include an encyclopedia with a picture of Michelangelo's David and a Disney version of The Little Mermaid . David had no fig leaf, and the mermaid, alas, wore half a bikini.

Shamayel al-Sharikh, a Kuwaiti women's activist explained that the powers that be thought her dress was promiscuous.

Sometimes the 12-member censors committee (six Arabic readers, six English readers) that rules on books for the Ministry of Information gives a reason: The anthology Why We Write was banned because its editor, Meredith Maran, had falsely accused her father of molestation.

In other cases, the justification is obscure, such as with The Art of Reading , by Damon Young. Maya Angelou's memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , is forbidden in Kuwait.

One Hundred Years of Solitude , by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, is banned because of a scene in which a wife sees her husband naked, as is Children of Gebelawi , by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel in literature.

George Orwell's 1984 is also banned