A new bill before Parliament will effectively outlaw weather information that is not provided by the state-owned SA Weather Service. Warn someone that a storm is brewing, and you could go to jail for many years, or pay millions in fines. Has the government gone mad?
Talking about the weather is overrated, it is true. It ought to be discouraged, in favour of talk about more important things like football and sex.
However, the more tedious kinds of small-talk ought not to be illegal. And it certainly shouldn't be illegal on the odd occasion that the talk is about interesting weather and it affects your planning for the day.
A bill (PDF) amending the South African Weather Service Act of 2001 (PDF) includes a new section that proposes penalties of up to ten years in prison, or a R10 million fine, if you issue anything that could be interpreted as a “severe weather-related warning”.
It has technically been an offence to issue such warnings all along, but no penalties were prescribed in law. Now we learn that committing this obscure offence could get you a R10 million fine or land you in prison for 10 years. For context, at last count only 36% of prisoners served more time for their murders, rapes and robberies.
Even first offenders can get up to half of this extraordinarily harsh punishment. This, frankly, is astonishing.
A cynic might note that the government is clamping down on exactly the wrong thing: talking about interesting weather. Boring weather remains a legitimate subject for discussion.
However, there is no definition in the law for what constitutes a “weather-related warning”, or how bad “severe” might be. If someone blogs about a storm system making its way across the country, is that a “severe weather-related warning”? If someone warns hikers or beachgoers that winds or waves will pick up dangerously during the course of the day, is that a very serious crime? If a radio announcer repeats a listener-provided report of thunderstorms or icy roads in a traffic report, are they beyond the pale? If I see a tornado heading towards a town, and post it to the internet to warn residents, am I a criminal because I did not obtain the written consent of the SA Weather Service (SAWS) to do so?
The law doesn't say, and it appears to depends entirely on whether SAWS decides to press charges. If it does, it can do so secure in the knowledge that it is protected by a blanket indemnity clause, which prevents people who could have been warned, but weren't, from claiming damages against it.
It also has the added incentive that the bill proposes to allow it to summarily claim commercial damages, if it believes it could have sold similar information to what was provided by the criminal talker-about-the-weather. In practice, such a claim would amount to SAWS's commercial subscription fees times some hypothetical number of users who had access to the alternative service, so it could be very much non-trivial.
The bill doesn't say whether it makes a difference if you collect your own weather data. If my own barometer drops precipitously, and I mention this in the pub (or, more realistically, I send this information to a weather site or a social media account that broadcasts it), it is as much of a crime as using commercial SAWS data to do so.
Those handy internet-connected weather stations used by many farmers and other individuals country-wide? It will now be illegal to distribute their data in your community if the information could be interpreted as a “severe weather-related warning”.
The law appears to be aimed at organisations that provide weather-related information to the public in competition with SAWS. Many consist of voluntary networks pooling their own private data. Others are international agencies that use both private and public data. Most do rather better than the free service offered by SAWS, which consists of a very limited set of temperature and rainfall data for only 100 locations in South Africa, presented via a website that is remarkable only for how hard it is to use.
By contrast, a site like Windguru is a private service that offers far more information in far more detail, including useful data like wind speed, wind gusts, wave height, and cloud cover. It appears from experience to be fairly accurate. Other popular international services include AccuWeather, yr.no and WeatherUnderground. The latter collects live data from a private weather station two houses from where I live. The best SAWS can do at the same price is far less data collected six-hourly in a town 30km away.
These sites may have to shut down their services to South African visitors, who will instead be reduced to the largely useless SAWS products.
Alternatively, you'll have to pay SAWS for your supposedly “commercial” requirements. Granted, you might operate an airline, in which case you would probably consider paying for highly specialised data, but chances are you're just a small-scale farmer, a hiker, or a water-sports enthusiast. You may want to know whether you can arrange a braai this weekend, or whether watering the garden tonight would be a waste of money.
SAWS can't help you with that. Any useful level of detail is considered “commercial”, and the bill gives the minister the power to decree additional services to be commercial at the request of SAWS.
If you're an environmentalist or a concerned resident, and you see a factory pumping smog into the air, you can't tell anyone either. “Air pollution-related warnings” are covered by the same penalties as those that apply to “severe weather-related warnings”.
These draconian restrictions are, ostensibly, justified in a memorandum attached to the bill. Or are they?
The memo claims: “The Weather Service is a member of the World Meteorological Organisation and as such has a legal obligation to comply with and implement Resolution 40 of the Twelfth Congress of the World Meteorological Organisation. In this regard, it is necessary that only the Weather Service must be able to issue severe weather-related warnings in order to ensure that there is only one authoritative voice.”
If you bother to read that resolution, you find that it enjoins governments to “strengthen their commitment to the free and unrestricted exchange of meteorological and related data and products”. It does not even mention, let alone require, a monopoly on the provision of weather-related warnings.
It is perfectly feasible to have any number of people and organisations issuing weather-related warnings, while the law, organs of state, and serious disaster management, commercial or academic users of weather information view only SAWS as authoritative.
In short, the stated justification for restricting the right to provide weather-related warnings, severe or otherwise, to a state-owned monopoly, does not hold water.
Without a hint of irony, section 26 of the original law remains unamended by the bill, although it establishes strict intellectual property rights and usage restrictions over the information provided by the Weather Service. Only to a politician could the wording of Resolution 40, “free and unrestricted exchange” be interpreted to mean “not for distribution without written permission”.
Since the attempt at a justification is so blatantly false, one can only conclude that the bill's purpose is to establish and protect an unfair monopoly on commercial services on the part of a state-owned entity. A spokesman for SAWS once informed me that it operates under “a brutal [Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism] mandate to wean off taxpayer funding”.
Outlawing competition to help it become commercially self-sustaining seems like something that might occur to a politician. After all, innovation and efficiency isn't something with which you want to burden a government department, is it?
The unfortunate consequence, however, will be that citizens will have less information, not more. It will outlaw competition on price, quality and type of weather information that's out there. Commercial innovation in new ways of using weather-related information will be illegal.
That some users rely on alternative services, even though SAWS is able to offer far more accurate information, should indeed trouble the government. But the solution is not to ban what consumers clearly think are better services. The solution is to improve SAWS to exploit its obvious advantage – an unrivalled observation network and extensive data processing function all paid for by taxpayers – to compete.
It is deeply disturbing that this bill would make criminals of the volunteers at the SA Weather and Disaster Observation Service (SAWDOS), who post warnings such as this: “Large and intense storm now active in the Mthatha area. Hail possible. Take care out there. - SAWDOS 23 minutes ago via TweetDeck.”
This organisation happens to be a non-profit service based on a network of volunteers, but there is no reason why a commercial, for-profit organisation shouldn't be allowed to offer exactly the same service if it thinks it can.
In its submission to Parliament, SAWDOS rightly points out that those who will feel the impact of this law the most are the poor who are at high risk in heavy weather, but cannot afford commercial subscriptions to real-time weather warnings from SAWS.
Many small farming or coastal communities also rely on such networks of volunteers or semi-professional data gatherers, sharing information from various sources and keeping each other informed via amateur radio, the internet or telephone. Depriving them of the freedom to do so, when it can often save money, and in some cases save lives, seems perverse.
All this is troubling enough, but it is downright scary that yet another law that is so badly written is tabled in Parliament. As it stands, it can be used to imprison anyone who warns anyone else, using any medium at all, about any weather of a standard of severity that a magistrate will make up after the fact.
This kind of law makes South Africa less competitive, less safe, and less free. One assumes that this is not what its framers intended. If it is, throw the lawmakers out with as much contempt as this law. DM
All laws should be carved into granite slabs and every member of parliament should be required to carry the full set in a haversack at all times. Then perhaps they won't waste their time dreaming up nonsense like this and we may see some sanity return to the statute books.
I suspect the latter, as this bill stops anyone refuting SAWS predictions.
The track record to-date of SAWS as reported through the the various weather reports, is probably well less than 50% accurate (at least as personally observed on the Reef)(Looking out the window is far more accurate), which thus defines it as mainly BS. And they want to protect this?
Background info on Future Foresight and SAWS is here. http://www.avcom.co.za/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=71130
The "SAWS becoming unaffordable" thread wich also looks at the accuracy of SAWS forecasts is here. It is quite long, page 17 shows some research into their reliability. http://www.avcom.co.za/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=68849
Talk about suffering delusions of considerable grandeur?
These goons seem to want the ultimate monopoly….sole right to the fabrication of reality; all else is heresy, punishable by death, or something which for most would be close enough not to matter.
The exact history is September 7th, 2007. The SAWS issued a "severe storm" warning (not exactly unusual in Johannesburg in Springtime), this was misinterpreted by a netcare employee who then send a warning to her friends and direct family somewhat exaggerating the threat (which she claims she herself had understood in an exaggerated way). All this was around the time of the 6am radio news. The mail rapidly morphed into a fast-spreading urban legend (excellently documented by Arthur Goldstuck in his book "The burglar in the bin bag") that a Tornado was expected to hit Pretoria or Johannesburg that day.
Even as meteorologists tried to debunk the hoax the urban legend won the day. Schools sent pupils home early, nearly every company in these cities sent their employees home early (out of genuine concern for their safety). The cost to the South African economy of this false rumor must have reached several billion as just about every industry in the economic hub of the country lost half a day of productivity. To make matters worse - all these people all leaving work at the same time led to what is considered the single worst traffic jam in Johannesburg/Pretoria history (a road that is already among the worst in the country). Commuters were stuck for an excess of three hours on a 50km stretch of highway. Had the warning been real - they would actually have been stuck even more in harms way ! That added a further massive drain to the economy (fuel use during long-term idling is by far the most inefficient in any vehicle) deliveries were late (quite a lot of perishable goods were lost - the kind that aren't usually shipped in refrigerated trucks since the trips are so short in mid-afternoon).
It was, in short, a disaster, one of the worst results ever in the country from an urban legend. Coming from a netcare e-mail address only added to it's veracity. As it happens while storms did happen over most of the South African Highveld and indeed in Johannesburg and Pretoria they were no worse than the type of energetic thunderstorms that hit the region in Spring all the time anyway.
This law is intended to prevent a repeat of that event. The approach being taken is, of course, entirely and utterly inappropriate. In fact one could argue that no new law is needed as spreading false panic is already an offense (the classic "shouting fire in a crowded theaterhouse" exception to free speech) so there is really no need for a new law - the existing law would have worked fine if prosecution was an option.
As it happens there wasn't much you could prosecute - the original sender had made an honest mistake based on a real report - and sent a friendly warning to a very small group of close friends and family, you could hardly then prosecute every one of the thousands who embellished and sent it on.
This is likely why government now feels they need a special law to deal with such situations. I don't believe they do - there was provably no harmful intent in the event (and intent is a crucial factor in such laws), and that is WHY it wasn't prosecuted. In this case they are trying to now block that entire area of speech with a blunt instrument and deliberately remove intent as a factor.
So as we challenge this ridiculous intrusion on liberty - this is the background of why the law is being proposed, and with this background we can draft our challenges to assuage the real risk (proven real by having happened already) being addressed WITHOUT the need for mass censorship being employed.
This bit of background information suggests that, in order to verify or nullify such weather related hysteria, the more weather sites that are available to us the better.
It would in any case be a ludicrous motivation. Assuming that the event happened as yuo describe, it originated with a formal severe weather warning issued by the SA Weather Service, not by someone else. It was relayed and paraphrased by word of mouth, as such things do, leading to widespread over-reaction.
Children play "broken telephone" to teach them this problem. Adults who haven't learnt this lesson deserve the losses they incur as a result. What adults don't do in a free country is pass draconian laws to ban rumours.
I'll bet a lot of people learnt to verify with a trusted authority (like the SA Weather Service) before incurring significant costs because of unfounded alarmism. Those who didn't have only themselves to blame.
Wait, I know, ban the internets! Ours wouldn't be the first government to outlaw spreading rumours. Totalitarianism advances by degrees, and before you know it, anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. That's why this law is deeply disturbing.
This does not surprise me in the least - does it you ?
>Assuming that the event happened as yuo describe
Well my description is basically a summary of the entire chapter in Goldstuck's book - so it's a case of whether his sources are accurate but that the event happened is quite certain - it made major news around the country at the time, A.G. just collected all the background details.
> it originated with a formal severe weather warning issued by the SA Weather Service, not by someone else
Indeed, and this is why I made a point of including this. That second call on the broken telephone caused a problem - hopefully a lot of people learned a valuable lesson as you say. I absolutely agree with you - that the solution to such problems is most certainly not censorship - I sincerely doubt that any solution to reducing such events could come from government at all (they happen in all spheres of life with alarming regularity under all forms of goverment and in all countries and have been doing so for thousands of years). Basically even banning the internet will not reduce them in the least. Rumor and Urban legend spreads via whatever means of communication exist, even if you cut it back to word-of-mouth it would still persist.
There is no way for a government to prevent that even with the most severe censorship laws of the most draconian governments it is simply not possible. All the Nazi's propaganda and media control didn't stop the rumors of the deathcamps from reaching at least a few Germans and inspiring at least the occasional heroes (the Schindler's and such) - and I chose that example on purpose - for all the harm they can do rumor is a fact of life and it can also be a force for good. Trying to modulate it with truth is something humans haven't been able to figure out in all the years since we first started grunting at the monkeys in the next tree.
That is the essence of my point - no matter how severe the results of such urban legends can be, attempts to prevent them by force of law are doomed before they start and the only possible outcome will be censorship of the most severe levels humanity has known - which will still not achieve that goal.
In other words - as I tried to say - I am absolutely with you on this, and I was trying to take the most likely argument we would face in challenging this bill and debunking it early on. We've had our differences in the past - but you'll always find me a supporter and an ally when freedom of thought and freedom of speech is the issue. I am on record - on your pages in fact - for saying that the unintended consequences of censorship is always and without exception far more harmful and dangerous than that which is being censored - even for the worst kinds of speech such as child pornography and that, therefore, no censorship is ever justifiable.
Every morning, I and various acquaintances watch cloud build-ups with enthusiasm, hoping for rain; the general greeting at this time of year in Durban is: 'Hot enough for you?' Swimming in the rain is considered luxury on a par with Christmas dinner.
I used to work in the same building as the weather service in Pretoria. My colleagues considered it a good joke to tell its employees how long it had been since their daily forecast had been correct. In Durban, the incorrect forecasts are legendary, as we lust after a few cooling drops promised, that seldom arrive.
The weather reports of the early 1990s were fascinating, when we were told how many mm had fallen, where, each day/month. A discontinued trend and the most useful. Drought became real to me, an urbanite; I empathised with farmers.
I had a look at the proposed amendments and see nothing untowards. Private weather forecast companies will just have to learn to operate without ever issuing a 'code red' weather forecast.
English is flexible enough to issue severe weather forecasts without ever using the word 'severe'. Imagine arguing a case in English in a magistrates court in Vredendal, Vereniging or Vryheid! It would make for super TV!
If a someone frequently posts observations about, say, oncoming weather systems, or relays "crowdsourced" reports from users, some will constitute "severe weather-related warnings". And because the bar is so low -- even mild weather could, conceivably, cause damage sufficient to meet the definition after the fact, there is no legally safe way for anyone to provide much useful weather information at all, under this law.
And that includes the rain queen.
So, if anyone is in the same position as I am, please check your bankstatements for November and check what Netcash deducted.
@ivo Not sure if I want a free subscription, Windfinder is very good with speed and direction, Yr Norway and Wunderground are good with temperatures. SAWS wind forcasts are not to be trusted.
My strongly held opinion is that SAWS belongs to the taxpaying citizens of SA. Attempts to turn it into a business are wrong. The taxpayer MUST get some value for their taxes. When comparing SAWS to government weather services in other countries it is readily apparent that we are being 'ripped off'. This proposed legislation is sinister. Please keep up your efforts to halt it.
Complete, utter, madness.
http://www.polity.org.za/article/south-african-weather-service-amendment-bill-b22-2011-2011-11-02
Look at the attached, a dangerous trend.
http://www.epaw.org/media.php?lang=en&article=pr7
Here in the UK we have the biggest fool in Christendom, Chris Huhne, in charge of energy and windmills and solar panels. He is using the powers of the anti-terrorist laws to intimidate and investigate people lobbying against the construction of wind farms.
The reach and powers of the Agenda 21 mob is everywhere, what makes you think that you can escape it in the colonies?
Trevor Manuel is on standby to help with the distribution of the funds collected by the carbon taxes, and nothing is going to stand in the way of that US100 billion a year that is going to help Africa stay in the stone age!
Going to jail, or getting fined for saying it's going to rain, is small beer for this mob!
Just light a camp fire and sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya!
Bouyweather is a semi-subscription service and in the Cape we go out 40nm (74 kms) on fairly small boats.
If this becomes a reality people will die.
CONCERNS OVER SEVERE WEATHER OR AIR POLLUTION-RELATED WARNING PROVISIONS OF THE CURRENT SOUTH AFRICAN WEATHER SERVICE AMENDMENT BILL
12 JANUARY 2012
In May 2011, the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs published the South African Weather Service Amendment Bill for public comment. Having taken into account the few public comments, a revised Bill was introduced in the National Assembly of Parliament and an explanatory summary of the Bill was published at the end of September last year. Although the formal public comment period on the initial draft Bill closed some time ago, the Bill is now being considered by Parliament and Parliament is planning to hold public hearings in the next few weeks.
Over the last two weeks, the amendments to the South African Weather Service (SAWS) Act proposed in the SAWS Amendment Bill appear to have become the subject of concern.
In particular, the concerns appear to relate specifically to a proposed provision that prohibits the issue of “…a severe weather or air pollution-related warning without the necessary written permission from the Weather Service” and especially the possible penalty of up to R10 million or 10 years imprisonment for persons found guilty of contravening this provision.
These provisions are sincere attempts to ensure that all South Africans are protected against false, misleading and/or hoax warnings that can result, and have resulted, in undue public panic, related stress and injury, evacuations and/or the mobilisation of emergency services and subsequent fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Furthermore, since its establishment, the South African Weather Services has always been the only official provider of “…severe weather-related warnings for South Africa in order to ensure that there is a single authoritative voice in this regard”. Indeed, it is only the proposal to make this 11 year old provision enforceable that is now causing concern. In other words, although it has effectively been illegal for anyone other than SAWS to issue severe weather-related warnings for South Africa since 2001, it is only now that there are possible criminal consequences for illegal warnings that are being proposed, that concerns are being raised.
To further put these provisions into our current context – one of the accepted impacts of climate change is the possible increase in the frequency, intensity and range of extreme weather events. In order to ensure that we build our resilience to these impacts, we must ensure that our warning systems are efficient, effective and, most importantly, credible. With the real possibility of increasing extreme weather events, the potential for false, misleading and/or hoax warnings significantly undermining public confidence in, and/or appropriate public reaction to, warnings is of real concern.
However, it is also clear from various comments that these proposed provisions are perceived in some quarters as going way beyond its intention as indicated above. It is suggested by commentators that the proposed amendment may actually limit access to weather and air pollution-related information that is in the interest of the general public’s health, safety and well-being.
As Parliament has now called for another round of public comment by 12 January 2012, it is highly likely, given these recent concerns around the Bill, that Parliament will request the department to review the perceived problem provisions. Naturally the department will then take a very close look at these concerns and will revert to Parliament with its findings and recommendations.
One of the important lessons from this is that active public participation is fundamental to good law-making and, if indeed the Bill’s honest attempts to protect South Africans from the potential harmful impacts of false, misleading and/or hoax warnings turn out to have unintended negative consequences that can be addressed in the final amendment, then it will be the public who must be thanked for their interest and involvement. Members of the public are accordingly urged to not only criticise the current draft, but to possibly propose alternative wording to ensure that the intention as indicated above is achieved.
ISSUED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS ON 12 JANUARY 2012
The South African Weather Service Amendment Bill
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 12 January 2012 14:53
As I am sure many of you know if you've been keeping an eye on the news, the new South African Weather Service Amendment Bill which seeks to censor sites like this, has come under great scrutiny. Personally, I think it's great that so many large names are getting behind the cause to fight a bill that would censor areas that people don't really think of all that often.
I have been in contact with Randolf from www.weather.co.za who is going to be attending the Parliamentary public hearings on the bill next week. And I have requested he be the representative speaker for me and stormchasing.co.za while there and asked that he present the following piece on my behalf.
Storm Chasing South Africa is a private non-profit website founded in 2009 as a personal expansion of a hobby and interest of mine, namely severe weather. I provide articles based on my opinion of what the weather may be doing. At no stage in my articles do I claim that my information is official and in no way do I seek to cause alarm or spread misinformation. I also provide an online forum where users are able to discuss upcoming weather events and severe weather threats, also in an environment that nowhere claims to be official information.
The SA Weather Service amendment bill includes the ban of the general public or other meteorological agencies issuing severe weather warnings, while I can see how this can easily be manipulated into sounding as though the bill will be doing the general favour to the public by removing hoax e-mails and fake stories about upcoming severe weather events, it in fact is just the monopolization of meteorological information.
Firstly I'd like to bring attention to the wording used in the bill. The new amendments within the bill under section 30 and in particular section 30(a) are far too broad. It states no person may issue a severe weather warning without the necessary written permission of the Weather Service. The issue here is that a severe weather warning is a blanket term which has not been described in enough detail for it to be understood. If I were to make a post on my website with the content mentioning the potential for thunderstorms, would that be included in the bills definition of a severe weather warning? Would I be prosecuted? What if I was to say that it looks like there is going to be a heatwave? Under this bill, one is forced to refrain from the publication of any kind of weather information that may be of interest.
I'd now like to bring attention to how the weather services are operated in other countries, for example the United States. In the United States of America, the government sponsored environmental websites such as www.weather.gov operate free of charge to the public, where their intention is the safety of U.S citizens. The U.S has a similar law in place as the one proposed in the South African Weather bill, but with one fundamental differences, while in the United States only the National Weather Service may issue official severe weather warnings, the general public and other weather agencies still have the legal right to issue their own warnings.
Another outlandish clause in the bill is that it will be illegal to spread "false or misleading information about the South African Weather Service". That sentence sums up the amendment bill pretty accurately. It is a clear indication that it's not safety or integrity of information that the South African Weather Service is worried about, it's about becoming an untouchable monopoly that can be corrupt and flawed to any degree but at the same time an untouchable entity. Who would determine if the information is false and misleading, most likely a judge. What this does, is use fear into scaring people into making sure that they never criticize the Weather Service and that doing so may land them in jail or even just in court.
I see no evidence that this bill or the South African Weather Service are trying to increase safety and awareness, The reason for the bill, in all likeliness is to create a monopoly that would allow for a single channel of uninterrupted revenue. If this bill were to be passed, it would mean that there would be no alternative for information to the general public, they would be forced to use the South African Weather Service. The South African Weather Service over the years has become increasingly profit orientated, something that contradicts the ideas of increasing safety among the public. For anyone who has been a frequent visitor to the South African Weather Service website, as I have, over the past 10 years, you would have seen the shift it took from being a source of information to a business model. The website has undergone several redesigns in the past 10 years, each redesign lending itself to easier income, while each redesign also limiting the amount of free information. As an official weather service who's responsibilities are to protect the public, I see no place for a business model - unless only those wealthy enough to afford the insane costs of membership are worth protection.
As I touched on earlier, I am no stranger to the annoying hoax e-mails that get passed along with the South African Weather Service logo on them, and I whole heartedly agree that it's something that must be handled and punished. But there is a huge gap between impersonating the South African Weather Service and forecasting severe weather unofficially, especially since vast majority of us that do it unofficially offer disclaimers stating that we are not an official source.
There is large support for the bill being scrapped and media sources all over publishing content on the ludicrous nature of the bill. If it were truly imperative to safety and well being of the public, one would imagine that the public themselves would come out in support of the bill, instead of rallying behind how it's just another form of censorship and monopolization with some going so far as to describe it as a breach of the constitution, which would probably be an accurate statement.
In closing I'd like people to think about the bill and the reasons behind it. If you are looking to increase the safety of the general public, this bill is not how one is going to achieve that. All this bill will do is monopolize meteorology in South Africa, it will censor weather enthusiasts, it will turn what should be awareness into a complete business model and ultimately it will make the country look like a joke internationally. As stated in opening, I make no money from my website, I stand to lose nothing financially. But I am unable to sit back and have my interests and opinions censored so that a corporation can turn over a good profit. I, along with the others involved in local weather related sites have poured thousands of hours of work and money to bring a service to the public and provide a free platform to communicate.
I have faith that it will be as easy as it is to me to see the flaws and ludicrousy in this bill and the unwarranted censorship that it will enforce.
I urge everyone else able to make it to the hearings next week to please do so and voice your concern over this bill.
Last Updated on Thursday, 12 January 2012 14:59
The condescension shown towards the end of this piece demonstrates just how far up their own arses these bureaucrats are.
And "if indeed the Bill’s honest attempts to protect South Africans [...] turn out to have unintended negative consequences"... that would not be the first time, would it? It would only be surprising if a Bill did NOT turn out to have unintended negative consequences.
..."that can be addressed in the final amendment" -- they can, if and only if the final amendment does not include the provision in question.
(BTW, isn't that sneaky reference to GW as a justification for this provision at least as potentially misleading a warning as any they hope to combat?)
One logical extension of this proposed Bill is for the present govt. to commence with banning Creedence Clearwater Revival because songs like "Bad Moon Rising" contain the advice "looks like we're in for nasty weather...."
Warning to Ster-Kinekor!!! Your forthcoming biopic about Marilyn Monroe had better happen soon. One of her songs starts with, "We're having a heat wave, a tropical heatwave..."
But may we be spared "What a wonderful world", despite it containing, "I see clouds of white........."
Part of me really wants to use that API on a web site hosted outside of SA -- your comment to Mark regarding international enforcement notwithstanding.