In the first systematic account of judicial rulings striking down cyberbullying laws in the United States and Canada, Sympathy for the Cyberbully offers an unapologetic defense of online acid-tongued disparagers and youthful and adult sexters. In the first decade of the 21st century, legitimate concerns about the harmful effects of cyberbullying degenerated into a moral panic. The most troubling aspect of the panic has been a spate of censorship-the enactment of laws which breach long-standing constitutional principles, by authorizing police to arrest and juries to convict, and schools to suspend, individuals for engaging in online expression that would be constitutionally protected had it been communicated offline. These hastily drawn statutes victimize harsh critics of elected officials, scholars, school officials and faculty, distributors of constitutionally protected pornography, adolescents "talking smack," and teens who engage in the consensual exchange of nude images, even in states where teens of a certain age enjoy the right to engage in sexual relations. The victims' stories are told here. Sympathy for the Cyberbully is suitable for undergraduate, graduate and law school courses in media law, First Amendment law and free expression.

In the first systematic account of judicial rulings striking down cyberbullying laws in the United States and Canada, Sympathy for the Cyberbully offers an unapologetic defense of online acid-tongued disparagers and youthful and adult sexters. In the first decade of the 21st century, legitimate concerns about the harmful effects of cyberbullying degenerated into a moral panic. The most troubling aspect of the panic has been a spate of censorship-the enactment of laws which breach long-standing constitutional principles, by authorizing police to arrest and juries to convict, and schools to suspend, individuals for engaging in online expression that would be constitutionally protected had it been communicated offline. These hastily drawn statutes victimize harsh critics of elected officials, scholars, school officials and faculty, distributors of constitutionally protected pornography, adolescents "talking smack," and teens who engage in the consensual exchange of nude images, even in states where teens of a certain age enjoy the right to engage in sexual relations. The victims' stories are told here. Sympathy for the Cyberbully is suitable for undergraduate, graduate and law school courses in media law, First Amendment law and free expression.

"Freedom of Information in a Post 9-11 World" is, to date, the first international scholarly examination of the impact of the terrorist attack on the United States in terms of how it may alter academic and corporate research, as well as the sharing of information generated by that research, by international colleagues in technological fields. The collection of essays brings together a widely varied panel of communications experts from different backgrounds and cultures to focus their expertise on the ramifications of this world-changing event. Drawing upon the related but separate disciplines of law, interpersonal communication, semiotics, rhetoric, management, information sciences, and education, the collection adds new insight to the potential future challenges high-tech professionals and academics will face in a global community that now seems much less communal than it did prior to September 11, 2001.

In nineteenth-century Europe the ruling elites viewed the theater as a form of communication which had enormous importance. The theater provided the most significant form of mass entertainment and was the only arena aside from the church in which regular mass gatherings were possible. Therefore, drama censorship occupied a great deal of the ruling class's time and energy, with a particularly focus on proposed scripts that potentially threatened the existing political, legal, and social order. This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of nineteenth-century political theater censorship at a time, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the European population was becoming increasingly politically active.

Imperial Germany's governing elite frequently sought to censor literature that threatened established political, social, religious, and moral norms in the name of public peace, order, and security. It claimed and exercised a prerogative to intervene in literary life that was broader than that of its Western neighbors, but still not broad enough to prevent the literary community from challenging and subverting many of the social norms the state was most determined to defend. This study is the first systematic analysis in any language of state censorship of literature and theater in imperial Germany (1871-1918). To assess the role that formal state controls played in German literary and political life during this period, it examines the intent, function, contested legal basis, institutions, and everyday operations of literary censorship as well as its effectiveness and its impact on authors, publishers, and theater directors.

"When it comes to censorship in Hollywood, the bottom line is the ticket line. That's the central message in Jon Lewis's provocative and insightful investigation of the movie industry's history of self-regulation.a]Lewis shows that Hollywood films are a triumph of commerce over art, and that the film industry has consistently used internal censorship and government-industrial collusion to guarantee that its cash flow is never seriously threatened."
"-- The New York Times Book Review"

"a]an accomplished, comprehensive, and provocative new history of censorship and the American film industrya]And what of the perennial tussles between politicos and the film industry? All show business, suggests Lewis, make-believe veiling the real power structure that has nothing to do with morals, let alone art (it would be interesting to get his take on the recent marketing brouhaha and its relationship to the recent threatened actors and writers strikes). A staggering saga worthy itself of a Hollywood movie, Hollywood v. Hardcore is film history at its most illuminating and intense."
" --The Boston Phoenix"

"As provocative as his sometimes X-rated subject matter, film scholar Lewis detects an intimate relationship between the seemingly strange bedfellows of mainstream Hollywood cinema and hardcore pornography. From postal inspector Anthony Comstock to virtue maven William Bennett, from the Hays Office that monitored the golden age of Hollywood to the alphabet ratings system that labels the motion pictures in today's multiplex malls, Lewis's wry, informative, and always insightful study of American film censorship demonstrates that the most effective media surveillance happens before yousee the movie. Hollywood v. Hard Core is highly recommended for audiences of all ages."
"--Thomas Doherty, author of Pre-Code Hollywood"

"Jon Lewis weaves a compelling narrative of how box office needs-rather than moral strictures-have dictated the history of film regulation. Telling the complex and fascinating story of how Hollywood abandoned the Production Code and developed the ratings system and then telling the even more compelling story of how the X rating became a desirable marketing device when hard core pornography became popular, Hollywood v. Hard Core reveals a great deal about the true business of censorship."
"--Linda Williams, author of Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible""

"This is a fascinating account, both entertaining and scholarly."
--"Journal of the West"

In 1972, "The Godfather" and "Deep Throat" were the two most popular films in the country. One, a major Hollywood studio production, the other an independently made "skin flick." At that moment, Jon Lewis asserts, the fate of the American film industry hung in the balance."

Spanning the 20th century, Hollywood v. Hard Core weaves a gripping tale of censorship and regulation. Since the industry's infancy, film producers and distributors have publicly regarded ratings codes as a necessary evil. Hollywood regulates itself, we have been told, to prevent the government from doing it for them. But Lewis argues that the studios self-regulate because they are convinced it is good for business, and that censorship codes and regulations are a crucial part of what binds the various competing agencies in the film business together.

Yet between 1968 and 1973 Hollywood films werefaltering at the box office, and the major studios were in deep trouble. Hollywood's principal competition came from a body of independently produced and distributed films--from foreign art house film "Last Tango in Paris" to hard-core pornography like "Behind the Green Door"--that were at once disreputable and, for a moment at least, irresistible, even chic. In response, Hollywood imposed the industry-wide MPAA film rating system (the origins of the G, PG, and R designations we have today) that pushed sexually explicit films outside the mainstream, and a series of Supreme Court decisions all but outlawed the theatrical exhibition of hard core pornographic films. Together, these events allowed Hollywood to consolidate its iron grip over what films got made and where they were shown, thus saving it from financial ruin.

Cultural Writing. Pornography and censorship have carved a divide in feminist movement and beyond. NUDES, PRUDES AND ATTITUDES is essential reading for students of women's studies, media studeis, socilogy and will be of interest to all those concerned with civil liberties implications of censorship.

Lyombe Eko carries out an historical and cultural survey of the regulation of visual depictions of explicit human sexual conduct from their earliest appearance on the clay tablets of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in ancient Mesopotamia, to the tablet computers of Silicon Valley. The Regulation of Sex-Themed Visual Imagery analyzes the contemporary problem of the applicability of the human right of freedom of expression to explicit imagery in the face of societal interests in the regulation of representations of human sexuality. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and broad audiences interested in comparative studies in pornography regulation, the history of pornography, the law of pornography and obscenity, and visual culture and history alike.

Here is a whole new set of rationales to be used in defending challenged books. Beautifully reasoned arguments support the teaching of books that are frequently challenged by would-be censors. Karolides has chosen a wide range of literature, from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying to the contemporary bestselling Harry Potter books. Some books are challenged in the name of political correctness; others because of concern over violent or sexual content. The rationale, some written by the authors themselves, examine the value of each work as literature, its content relative to societal values, and the always thorny issue of what material actually constitutes "suitable" reading for young people. For librarians, teachers, and parents and anyone concerned with intellectual freedom.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Censorship in Japan has seen many changes over the last 150 years and each successive system of rule has possessed its own censorship laws, regulations, and methods of enforcement. Yet what has remained constant through these many upheavals has been the process of negotiation between censor and artist that can be seen across the cultural media of modern society. By exploring censorship in a number of different Japanese art forms - from popular music and kabuki performance through to fiction, poetry and film - across a range of historical periods, this book provides a striking picture of the pervasiveness and strength of Japanese censorship across a range of media; the similar tactics used by artists of different media to negotiate censorship boundaries; and how censors from different systems and time periods face many of the same problems and questions in their work. The essays in this collection highlight the complexities of the censorship process by investigating the responsibilities and choices of all four groups - artists, censors, audience and ideologues - in a wide range of case studies. The contributors shift the focus away from top-down suppression, towards the more complex negotiations involved in the many stages of an artistic work, all of which involve movement within boundaries, as well as testing of those boundaries, on the part of both artist and censor. Taken together, the essays in this book demonstrate that censorship at every stage involves an act of human judgment, in a context determined by political, economic and ideological factors. This book and its case studies provide a fascinating insight into the dynamics of censorship and how these operate on both people and texts. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in Japanese studies, Japanese culture, society and history, and media studies more generally.

The history of the European Reformation is intimately bound-up with the development of printing. With the ability of the printed word to distribute new ideas, theologies and philosophies widely and cheaply, early-modern society was quick to recognise the importance of being able to control what was published. Whilst much has been written on censorship within Catholic lands, much less scholarship is available on how Protestant territories sought to control the flow of information. In this ground-breaking study, Allyson F. Creasman reassesses the Reformation's spread by examining how censorship impacted upon public support for reform in the German cities. Drawing upon criminal court records, trial manuscripts and contemporary journals - mainly from the city of Augsburg - the study exposes the networks of rumour, gossip, cheap print and popular songs that spread the Reformation message and shows how ordinary Germans adapted these messages to their own purposes. In analysing how print and oral culture intersected to fuel popular protest and frustrate official control, the book highlights the limits of both the reformers's influence and the magistrates's authority. The study concludes that German cities were forced to adapt their censorship policies to the political and social pressures within their communities - in effect meaning that censorship was as much a product of public opinion as it was a force acting upon it. As such this study furthers debates, not only on the spread and control of information within early modern society, but also with regards to where exactly within that society the impetus for reform was most strong.

Censorship in South Asia offers an expansive and comparative exploration of cultural regulation in contemporary and colonial South Asia. These provocative essays by leading scholars broaden our understanding of what censorship might mean beyond the simple restriction and silencing of public communication by considering censorship's productive potential and its intimate relation to its apparent opposite, "publicity." The contributors investigate a wide range of public cultural phenomena, from the cinema to advertising, from street politics to political communication, and from the adjudication of blasphemy to the management of obscenity."

This is an authoritative study on the role of mass media in Third World development. Using broad historical, economic, and political perspectives, Gunilla L. Faringer details the obstacles to a genuinely free, mass circulation press in Black Africa and offers a thorough analysis of the African press. The volume's six chapters meticulously catalog all pertinent data on press development, performance, and goals in English-speaking, sub-Saharan Africa, with primary focus on Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, countries that represent three different courses of political development. Faringer critically analyzes widely held attitudes among scholars and international organizations as to the role of mass media in Third World development. Her findings challenge the prevalent belief that the primary task of Third World media is to function as a tool for economic development. Outlining both present and future responsibilities of Third World mass media, Press Freedom in Africa stresses the need for deeper understandings by mass media policy makers of the importance that history, macroeconomic structure, and political traditions hold in the Third World.

The detailed introduction considers the philosophical issues that underlie the crucial role of mass media in political change and national development. Faringer surveys the unique obstacles confronting African nations as they have attempted to develop their own comprehensive media structures. Subsequent chapters trace the history of newspapers in Black Africa before World War II; survey the role of the press in the independence movement; and examine the changing relations between government and press. Two final chapters offer a critical perspective on press freedoms and functions and lay the groundwork for a more realistic concept of the press in the Third World. This up-to-the-minute resource will find broad acceptance for courses in international journalism, African studies, Third World development, communications and mass media, government and politics of Africa, area studies, political science, political economy, and civil rights.

Since 2005, Thailand has been in crisis, with unprecedented political instability and the worst political violence seen in the country in decades. In the aftermath of a military coup in 2006, Thailand's press freedom ranking plunged, while arrests for lese-majeste have skyrocketed to levels unknown in the modern world. Truth on Trial in Thailand traces the 110-year trajectory of defamation-based laws in Thailand. The most prominent of these is lese-majeste, but defamation aspects also appear in laws on sedition and treason, the press and cinema, anti-communism, contempt of court, insulting of religion, as well as libel. This book makes the case that despite the appearance of growing democratization, authoritarian structures and urges still drive politics in Thailand; the long-term effects of defamation law adjudication has skewed the way that Thai society approaches and perceives "truth."

Employing the work of Habermas, Foucault, Agamben, and Schmitt to construct an alternative framework to understand Thai history, Streckfuss contends that Thai history has become "suspended" since 1958, and repeatedly declining to face the truth of history has set the stage for an endless state of crisis.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South East Asian politics, Asian history, and media and communication.

David Streckfuss is an independent scholar who has lived in Thailand for more than 20 years. His work primarily concerns human rights, and political and cultural history.

First published in 1997, this volume responds to attention in recent years which has been belatedly directed towards reviving World War II issues involving Japan. This study deals first with the manner in which such issues so long fell into abeyance under Cold War conditions, while tracing the vast and varied writing on the war which meanwhile appeared within Japan. Evolving Japanese views on the war are largely focused on debate over the revision of the postwar constitution, especially its renunciation of "war potential". The book also contains the first overview of the decades-long litigation within Japan on the screening of textbooks, especially on the war.

Since ratification of the First Amendment in the late eighteenth century, there has been a sea change in American life. When the amendment was ratified, individuals were almost completely free of unwanted speech; but today they are besieged by it. Indeed, the First Amendment has, for all practical purposes, been commandeered by the media to justify intrusions of offensive speech into private life.

In its application, the First Amendment has become one-sided. Even though America is virtually drowning in speech, the First Amendment only applies to the speaker's delivery of speech. Left out of consideration is the one participant in the communications process who is the most vulnerable and least protected--the helpless recipient of offensive speech. In "Rediscovering a Lost Freedom," Patrick Garry addresses what he sees as the most pressing speech problem of the twenty-first century: an often irresponsible media using the First Amendment as a shield behind which to hide its socially corrosive speech. To Garry, the First Amendment should protect the communicative process as a whole. And for this process to be free and open, listeners should have as much right to be free from unwanted speech as speakers do of not being thrown in jail for uttering unpopular ideas.

"Rediscovering a Lost Freedom" seeks to modernize the First Amendment. With other constitutional rights, changed circumstances have prompted changes in the law. Restrictions on political advertising seek to combat the perceived influences of big money; the Second Amendment right to bear arms, due to the prevalence of violence in America, has been curtailed; and the Equal Protection clause has been altered to permit affirmative action programs aimed at certain racial and ethnic groups. But when it comes to the flood of violent and vulgar media speech, there has been no change in First Amendment doctrines. This work proposes a government-facilitated private right to censor. "Rediscovering a Lost Freedom" will be of interest to students of American law, history, and the U.S. Constitution.

Discusses governmental responsibilities and individual liberties, ethical problems of moral judgement, and legal considerations in defining and suppressing obscene material.

Censorship and all it implies in terms both of our historical understanding and of issues of enormous moment in contemporary life defies brief definition because it is an idea that always engages our prejudices, penetrates to the dim regions where our manners and mores take form, and shapes our attitude to the rule law, while at the same time the responses it evokes, whether pernicious or benevolent, depend upon the actualities of the historical moment. Censorship is fascinating because its theory demands some decision on its practice whenever there is an intellectual or political crisis; it is a measure of individual rationality and liberalism. History, which has accelerated so powerfully in recent decades, has diffused our attention, and we tend to overlook the most urgent of the threats to ourselves from ourselves.
Censorship is one of the gauges of civilization, and it has always aroused men's most passionate and partisan feelings. The issues involved exploded into the modern world with John Milton's "Areopagitica" in 1644, and have become ever more pressing as our world has grown smaller and smaller. This anthology is therefore of urgent relevance to our own lives and times.
Milton's thesis rests upon the issue of religious belief, and it introduces the book's first part, "Censorship and Belief." With "Censorship and Fact," the book moves to the conflict of the interests of science and freedom of speech with those of the state. In "Censorship and the Imagination," the issue turns on the question of what art is and how it functions in society. And, finally, comes "Self-Censorship," with Dostoievsky and Freud opening up that modern vista where neurosis and politics meet.
"John McCormick" was for five years Professor of American Studies in the Free University, Berlin, and is at present Professor emeritus of Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. He is also a Honorary Fellow of English and Literature at the University of York.
"Mairi MacInnes" was educated in England and has published a novel and a book of verse there and poems in British and American magazines.

Allied propaganda and Eire censorship were a vital part of the conflict over Irish neutrality in the Second World War. Based upon original research in archives in Ireland, Great Britain, the United States and Canada, this study opens a new page in the history of wartime propaganda and censorship. It examines the channels of propaganda , including the press and other print media, broadcasting and film, employed in Eire and the agencies which operated them, and the structure and operations of the Eire censorship bureau which sought to repress them . It also looks at the role played by Irish-Americans in the conflict, some of whom supported, while others opposed, Irish neutrality. Which side could win this "war of words"? Could British and American propaganda overcome Eire neutrality, or would Eire censorship guarantee that it could not? In this detailed and wide-ranging examination of the "war of words" over Eire neutrality, the author addresses such subjects as public opinion, government policies, propaganda planning, objectives, content and channels of dissemination, and the purpose and tactics of censorship.

Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century brings together a range of international scholars for a reexamination of Ivan Goncharov's life and work through a twenty-first century critical lens. Contributions to the volume highlight Goncharov's service career, the complex and understudied manifestation of Realism in his work, the diverse philosophical threads that shape his novels, and the often colliding contexts of writer and imperial bureaucrat in the 1858 travel text Frigate Pallada. Chapters engage with approaches from post-colonial and queer studies, theories of genre and the novel, desire, laughter, technology, and mobility and travel.

Fifty years after the event, here is the first full account of an audacious publishing decision that - with the help of booksellers and readers around the country - forced the end of literary censorship in Australia. For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government officials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned; bookstores were raided; publishers were fined; and writers were charged and even jailed. But in the 1970s, that all changed. In 1970, in great secrecy and at considerable risk, Penguin Books Australia resolved to publish Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth's frank, funny, and profane bestseller about a boy hung up about his mother and his penis. In doing so, Penguin spurred a direct confrontation with the censorship authorities, which culminated in criminal charges, police raids, and an unprecedented series of court trials across the country. Sweeping from the cabinet room to the courtroom, The Trials of Portnoy draws on archival records and new interviews to show how Penguin and a band of writers, booksellers, academics, and lawyers determinedly sought for Australians the freedom to read what they wished - and how, in defeating the forces arrayed before them, they reshaped Australian literature and culture forever.

This book chronicles the history of movie censorship in Virginia from the 1920s to 1960s. At its most basic level, it analyzes the project of state film censorship in Virginia. It uses the contestations surrounding film censorship as a framework for more fully understanding the dominant political, economic, and cultural hierarchies that structured Virginia and much of the New South in the mid-twentieth century and ways in which citizens contested these prevailing structures. This study highlights the centrality of gendered and racialized discourses in the debates over the movies and the broader regulatory power of the state. It particularly emphasizes ways in which issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality framed debates over popular culture in the South. It ties the regulation of racial and sexual boundaries in other areas such as public facilities, schools, public transportation, the voting booth, and residential housing to ways in which censors regulated those same boundaries in popular culture. This book shows how the same racialized and gendered social norms and legal codes that placed audience members in different theater spaces also informed ways in which what they viewed on-screen had been mediated by state officials. Ultimately, this study shows how Virginia's officials attempted to use the project of film censorship as the cultural arm of regulation to further buttress the state's political and economic hierarchies of the time period and the ways in various citizens and community groups supported and challenged these hierarchies across the censorship board's forty-three-year history.

First published in 1997, this volume responds to attention in recent years which has been belatedly directed towards reviving World War II issues involving Japan. This study deals first with the manner in which such issues so long fell into abeyance under Cold War conditions, while tracing the vast and varied writing on the war which meanwhile appeared within Japan. Evolving Japanese views on the war are largely focused on debate over the revision of the postwar constitution, especially its renunciation of "war potential". The book also contains the first overview of the decades-long litigation within Japan on the screening of textbooks, especially on the war.