Legal Censorship

An amendment to the code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production Code Administration (PCA) and required that all films released on or after July 1, 1934 obtain a certificate of approval prior to release. Over the next thirty years, virtually all films produced in the United States and released by major studios adhered to the Code. The production code was not created or enforced by the federal, state, or municipal government. In fact, Hollywood studios adopted the code largely in hopes of avoiding state censorship, preferring self-regulation to state regulation. There is no generally accepted theoretical or conceptual framework for addressing confidentiality issues. Given their social importance, there is a surprising lack of empirical or explanatory research that attempts to understand the contours of secrecy and openness, and why and with what consequences certain forms of support for the law have. There is also not much research comparing different forms of legal secrecy. A famous court case in 1734-1735 involved John Peter Zenger, a New York newspaper printer who regularly published critical material about New York`s corrupt governor, William Cosby. He was imprisoned for eight months before being tried for seditious defamation. Andrew Hamilton defended it and became famous for his speech, which began with “The nature and laws of our country have given us the right to freedom to expose and fight arbitrary power. by telling and writing the truth.” [6] Zenger`s lawyers have attempted to set a precedent that a statement, even a defamatory one, is not defamatory if it can be proven. As the judge ruled against his arguments, Hamilton lobbied for the liberty jury to be annulled and obtained an acquittal. The Zenger case paved the way for the inclusion of press freedom in the U.S.

Constitution. As the founding father, Governor Morris, put it, “The Zenger Trial of 1735 was the seed of American freedom, the morning star of liberty that then revolutionized America.” [6] In a democratic society, secrecy and transparency reflect conflicting social values and needs and exist in an ever-changing dynamic tension. Information control efforts take place in a variety of contexts. Information concealment standards and communication restrictions should ideally be considered alongside their conflicting standards that require disclosure of information and protect the freedom to know and communicate. These standards may include formal legal rules such as the UK Official Secrets Act or the US Freedom of Information Act, non-legally binding formal guidelines such as a bank`s refusal to disclose customer information without a warrant, or consumer information voluntarily provided on certain product labels, or include informal expectations (close friends are not supposed to provide common ground for strangers). Revealing secrets, but revealing some personal details. , real feelings about common interests). The correlates and consequences of such variations provide rich material for analyzing the sociology of secrecy.

This article provides an overview of some social forms, processes and consequences of secrecy and the law as applied to censorship. Between the decisions of Mutual Film and Joseph Burstyn, local, state and municipal censorship authorities had the power to edit or ban films. City and state censorship orders are almost as old as the films themselves, and such orders prohibiting the public screening of “immoral” films have increased. IS VIOLENCE IN THE MEDIA A THREAT TO SOCIETY? Current calls for censorship are motivated not only by morality and taste, but also by the widespread belief that exposure to images of violence causes people to act destructively. Proponents of censorship, including many politicians, often cite a variety of “scientific studies” purporting to prove that fictional violence leads to actual violence. PORNOGRAPHY is not a legal term at all. Its dictionary definition is “writing or images intended to arouse sexual desire.” Pornography comes in as many varieties as human sexual impulse and is protected by the First Amendment unless it meets the definition of illegal obscenity. Summary: Secrecy and censorship include standards on information control.

Communication censorship in the modern sense is associated with large, complex urban societies that have some degree of centralized control and technical means to effectively reach a mass audience. It is about what can and cannot be expressed in light of given political, religious, cultural and artistic norms (or, in the case of non-governmental efforts, should and should not). The advent of new communication technologies (e.g. printing or the Internet) inevitably leads to demands from conflict groups for greater openness and freedom of communication and demands for more control. The authorities try (often in vain) to control new mass communication techniques. Three main means of direct censorship (pre-publication verification, licensing and registration, and state monopolization) are preventive in nature. Among democracies, there are considerable differences in censorship depending on content, means of communication, place, time and between societies. There are degrees of censorship and individual interests are weighed against those of the community, even if it is difficult to define the latter. More common than outright prohibition is the segmentation of material that includes time, place, and person restrictions.