European Parliament rejects pornography ban

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT has accepted the report "Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU", but not the sections that call for a ban on all types of pornography in the media and a self governing rule machine.

The report was accepted by a vote today, and a spokesperson for the European Parliament confirmed that the contentious parts of the report were rejected.

The rejected parts of the report were paragraphs 7, 14, the second part of 17, 18, 19, 41 and 51, and recitals K and P. The amended resolution was adopted with 368 yays, 159 nays and 98 abstentions.

What was accepted then was a resolution that "[The] EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising."

What was deleted, according to the spokeswoman was the part of paragraph 17 that "called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism", and paragraph 14 that recommended an optional self-regulating governance body .

The report and those two elements were making headlines last week when an overzealous IT system began taking emails from citizens that included the word "gender" and putting them in a spam folder, apparently due to concerns that voters' democratic input to politicians might otherwise get out of hand.

This raised the interest of Pirate Party evangelist Rick Falkvinge, who told us that the words "gender stereotypes" were being used as identifiers for filtering out emails about the report.

There was a lot of interest in the report and its interpretation, and the EP told us that all its email filtering system had done was its job.

"The European Parliament has an alert system in case of an excessive influx of emails affecting the proper functioning of the email-system. In order to protect the email system, filters are then put into place," said the parliament in a statement.

"This system was triggered the 7 March, because of an enormous influx of mails... The emails are placed in 'quarantine' and can be released upon request."

So that's the job of the IT system, but it is the job of MEPs to vote, and that's what they did this morning. The report is an important one that seeks to improve the standing of women in Europe.

According to EDRI, a European digital rights group that was pleased with the result, the report was an "absurdity" anyway that could only limp in the directon of legislation.

EDRI said, "It is extremely badly drafted and almost certainly too absurd to be taken seriously."

Europarl adopts report against gender stereotypes - rejects #pornban & privatised enforcement by companies twitter.com/EDRi_org/statu…

— EDRi (@EDRi_org) March 12, 2013

"However, it is still important for the European Parliament not to undermine its own credibility with such proposals. It is also important not to give any support to privatisation of the regulation of our freedom of speech."

EDRI first reported on the rejection of items 14 and 17, part 2, and it has confirmed them with a link to a European Parliament video that shows the vote taking place.

The action starts at around the 13.10 mark. The ban is the vote on item 14, and the self policing is item 17, 2nd part. µ