The Law

From Matera

My final outing in Matera stay was to the Benedictine Abbey of Michael Angelo in nearby Montescaglioso, nestling in the village at the top of a hill. Reception offered a guided tour, which we took; and just as well. Most of the interest, apart from the main building structure, was behind locked doors which had to be opened by the guide. There were some Greek ruins over which the monastery had been built, starting in the 5^th century and ending in the 12^th. The monks seemed to have lived a fairly plush life when there wasn't a war going on around, the cells being spacious and quite well furnished. I enjoyed the visit.

I was due to fly home on the Monday but the strike by Air France pilots (euphemistically called a “mouvement social” rather than a “grève”) threw a spanner in the works. I am wondering if this interesting change in nomenclature lowers the official statistic for the number of strikes in a year. “No, no, nowhere near 1000; only 300 in fact; the rest were mouvements sociaux or some such.” Anyway, a flight from Bari to Beauvais, a coach from there to the Porte Maillot in Paris, a taxi from there to Roissy and a train from there to Avignon where friend Steve picked me up did the trick, even if it did take 15 hours door-to-door.

I am tempted to express my feelings on Air France but find myself inhibited by a recent court case reported in the papers. A lady who had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant (poor food, service) related the same on her Facebook page, naming the restaurant. The restaurant sued her for defamation and won damages. The court verdict was not based on any inaccuracies in her account but simply on the fact that what she wrote had the potential to damage the restaurant's trade (and so it bloody well should!). Liberté? Whatever happened to freedom of speech in France? And how on earth do you do restaurant reports or critiques of anything else come to that? So all I can really say is that the return flight by Air France didn't go off wonderfully because it didn't go off at all.

Countering Terrorism

France looks as though it could be going to put its foot well and truly in it with a new bill to counter terrorism. The problem of protecting freedom from terrorism without adversely affecting that same freedom too much is well known. However, the new French bill, which proposes blocking websites with terrorist material on them, has obvious and serious flaws.

For one thing it makes a special case of material available over the internet. That's just plain stupid and a refusal to acknowledge lessons that have been learned elsewhere over the years. Material that may be illegal over the internet could therefore be legal if delivered some other way; anomalies here we come. The UK Sale of Goods Act (1979), designed to protect consumers, defined an economic good as something tangible, thus failing to protect consumers from bad services (or computer software). Similarly, the ancient Copyright Act (1911) specifically assumed marks on a page or similar, thus requiring a much later intellectual property rights act. That mistake could at least be excused by changing times and history but there are no excuses now. All media and means of delivery should be covered by any new legislation; surely that lesson must have been learned.

Secondly, and more importantly, although the bill refers to the already legally defined terms provocation and incitement to terrorism, Article 4 also cites justification (apologie) of terrorism. But the bill doesn't give criteria for when a justification should be considered noxious and blocked, neither does it propose a body to define and interpret any such criteria. An explanation, for instance, could easily be interpreted as a justification if someone wanted to take that view. That looks like a free hand for the government to block anything it wants for just about any reason, including any embarrassing criticism it could do without.

NB  I included accents and they have screwed up the text presentation somewhat.  Why can't Blogger deal with accents?