20 Banned Album Covers

On occasion of the controversy over the sexually suggestive cover of Kanye West’s upcoming album “My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy,” Billboard has created a fun slideshow of 20 banned album covers.

Check them out here:

If you want to learn more about music censorship, you can check out NCAC’s Timeline of Music Censorship, which was created by former NCAC intern and blogger, Umberto Plaja.

Book censorship round-up for this week

Suzanne Collins’s young adult novel The Hunger Games is challenged in New Hampshire by a parent whose 11-year old said the book gave her nightmares. The parent has yet to file a formal complaint or read the book. Regardless, the Superintendent is gathering a committee to review the book while it remains in the classroom.

A Texas school district in Buda has removed all copies of The “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Boys because a father claimed it was inappropriately available to his 8-year son.

San Luis Obispo High School in California decided not to ban Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane after an anonymous complaint come in from a parent who objected to one page describing boys prostituting themselves for food. A committee unanimously decided to keep the book about apartheid the on shelf.

Kudos to YouTube

Earlier this year we reported on YouTube’s removal and subsequent restoration of videos by dance-artist Amy Greenfield. At that point we voiced serious concerns about the lack of an appeals process for individuals who believe that their work has been unfairly removed from the site as well as the absence of “art” in the list of exceptions to the YouTube community guidelines banning nudity. Proving our point that, unless there is an exception to the nudity guidelines, well-regarded works would continue be removed by YouTube reviewers, in July a 37-year-old work by L.A. artist Susan Mogul was caught in the net of restrictions.

We are pleased to report that, in response to NCAC’s and EFF’s jointly voiced concerns, YouTube now has instituted an appeals process and has changed their community guidelines to include “artistic” purpose as justifying an exception to their no nudity requirement. This is unlikely to be the last time that we see art censored on YouTube, ­ after all “artistic” is a somewhat subjective category, ­ but it makes correcting errors much easier and assures us that YouTube values artistic expression.

To provide YouTube reviewers with enough information so that they can make an informed decision when reviewing flagged work,  YouTube advises its users to add as much context as possible when posting videos:

Titling and tagging your video correctly is the best way to add context to your videos. When our team is reviewing flagged content, titles or tags with words as simple as “human rights” or “police abuse” will help us understand the context of the footage you’re uploading. Try to add some specific information into the description: who is in the video, what is happening, where and when did it happen, and why. You can also add this detail directly onto the video itself, using our annotations tool.

We applaud the company’s responsiveness to the interests of the wide and diverse community of people who use YouTube to access art work. We are also impressed that the company has so promptly acted to protect free speech.

Announcing the 2010 YFEP Film Contest Judges!

Announcing our esteemed judges for our youth film contest I’m All For Free Speech, BUT…!

Jordan Allen, 2009 Film Contest Winner
Tom Shadyac, filmmaker/screenwriter (including Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, Evan Almighty)
Cecily von Ziegesar, author of young adult books Gossip Girl
Debra Zimmerman, Executive Director of Women Make Movies
and the New York Film Academy

If you could censor anything, what would it be? Students 19 and younger are encouraged to film their response in 4min or less for the chance to win up to $1000 and a scholarship to the New York Film Academy. See more details on our website or even apply online now! But hurry! The deadline is October 31st, 2010.

According to the Knight Foundation, “Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted and more than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” The YFEP film contest offers young people an opportunity to think critically and creatively about these issues.

Winning films are made available on our website and are used in a larger effort to foster youth voices and to educate the public about young peoples’ rights.

Controversial artwork vandalized in Colorado

What began as a heated protest over Enrique Chagoya’s artwork at the Loveland Museum in Colorado has ended in vandalism.  A disgruntled woman ripped into Chagoya’s controversial lithograph “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals” after she busted the artwork’s plexiglass case with a crowbar. City council members, religious groups and individuals had hoped that the public pressure caused by the artwor’s racy religious content would get Chagoya’s piece yanked from the government-funded museum. Part of the lithograph appears to depict a Jesus Christ face on a female body receiving oral sex. The Loveland City Council met on Tuesday to discuss the issue, ultimately deciding not to intervene.

NCAC sent a letter to the City Council cautioning that if public officials intervene to suppress Chagoya’s work because they dislike the ideas expressed in it, they are likely to be found in violation of the First Amendment. The letter reminds councilors of a 1999 case where former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani pressured the Brooklyn Museum of Art to remove an “offensive” work from its “Sensation” exhibit. In that case, a federal district court ruled that Giuliani’s attempt violated the First Amendment.

NCAC writes:

Confronted with a forcefully expressed viewpoint that stands in opposition to their deeply held beliefs, people often react emotionally by being offended. In accordance with the U.S. Constitution, however, those who disagree are free to express their outrage, but cannot impose their viewpoint on everybody else. There are many ways to express disagreement with the ideas expressed in an artwork that do not entail going against the founding principles of this country: the separation of church and state and the right to free speech.

In Loveland, an offended party indeed expressed her outrage, but through means unacceptable in a civilized society: i.e. by destroying the work

Download 74 Banned Books for Free!

Wanna get your banned books reading on?  In celebration of last week’s Banned Books Week, Internet Archive has opened up access to 74 banned books. Check them out – download is available in many different formats.

You can also view the latest map of book challenges across the US, created by NCAC’s newest board member, Chris Peterson.

View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2010 in a larger map

This map is drawn from cases documented by ALA and the Kids’ Right to Read Project, a collaboration of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

(HT: Thanks Open Culture & Thomas Cott!)

Craigslist “Censored” and the War on Adult Services Ads

For several days in September, Craigslist, the Internet’s premier destination for classified ads, replaced the link to its adult services section with a bar reading “censored.” The eight-letter word was a symbol of the way in which the government managed to regulate the site’s content despite the existence of a federal law – Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 – which immunizes service providers from liability for user-created content.

After it successfully pressured Craigslist to remove its adult services section, the brigade of attorneys general who believe that censoring the Internet is an effective way to combat sex trafficking continued to march on. Its next target of censorship: backpage.com, an online classified service with an adult services section similar the one Craigslist had. Backpage.com is not backing down yet, but only time will tell if it will be forced to give into the pressure as well.

The adult services sections under attack contained mainly ads for legal services: massages, escorts and the like. But the AGs insist that since illegal activities like prostitution and child sex trafficking sometimes slip through the cracks, the entire adult services sections should be banned. One major problem with this reasoning is that adult services ads will invariably move to other areas such as personal sections (as they did in Craigslist’s case) — so what section will be censored next? Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal, who in the midst of a tough re-election campaign has spearheaded this censorship crusade, is arguing that Section 230 is outdated and should be amended to impose liability on websites that knowingly host illegal activity on their sites. If a court adopted this argument, it would undoubtedly have a chilling effect on online speech, threatening the openness of social media as we know it.