The European Parliament has responded to protests against a ban on pornography by spamfiltering its consistuents’ protests, then deleting the explanation of what the bill does from the bill. While this can be typical behavior from the European Parliament (as we saw in the ACTA battle), that doesn’t make it any more excusable. This is, quite frankly, not something that politicians deserve to get away with.

First, some background: a so-called initiative report is coming to a vote next week that seeks to reinforce a previous ban on pornography in advertising and extend it into an undefined scope of internet traffic. As the report is written, it is easy to read its language as including all sexual communication online between consenting adults; the language is very broad and vague in scope.

An initiative report is a way for Parliament to express its opinion to those actually drafting legislation. It has been described as “legally non-binding”, but it is a little more than that – when legislation is drafted, it falls back on the opinions expressed by Parliament. Therefore, it is closer to a request for drafting of legislation on the matter, which would later come to a (binding) vote.

So, “stop a pebble before you have to stop a landslide”.

Like all other reports, this one has a single Member of European Parliament who is responsible for it, but up until yesterday, it was a done deal. It would just pass without notice. This morning, a lot of confusion was caused as hundreds and hundreds of people mailed (as per yesterday’s article) to all of Parliament. The issue went from a done deal to open for discussion. This was a huge win in itself, and we should all pat ourselves on the back for that.

What happened next is just dishonorable. The European Parliament’s IT group started classifying mail from its constituents as spam, on the server side, so the Members of European Parliament never saw the protests. Apparently, this happened following requests from individual MEPs. The Pirate Party office in Brussels was practically screaming in French-language emails to explain the dishonor in this behavior, and MEP Christian Engström has more details.

Also, hundreds of protest mails kept pouring in that protested agricultural subsidies, so it was just the protests against the ban on online pornography that was targeted for spam filtering.

(UPDATE on this topic: technical tests showed that it was the words “gender stereotypes” that caused a mail to be silently dropped. On International Women’s Day. You couldn’t make it up if they gave you a million. Therefore, the mail template below deliberately misspells “gender stereotypes”.)

The second thing that happened was that a MEP that acted as responsible for the ban on online pornography removed the explanation of that from the report. Removed the explanation, but not the effect. The new report, as written, still extends a previous ban on pornography in advertising into new forms of media, specifically the internet, and still calls for ISP to police that ban. It just carefully hides the fact that it does so:

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism;

Even with those words taken out, this is still a reference to this report, which still has this wording describing a legislative carpet ban on pornography in “the media”:

5. Calls for statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism

So striking out those words in point 17 of the new report has no other effect than deliberately obscuring the purpose of the new report, following loud objections over it. The key words “the media” in the old report are still redefined in point 14 in the new report to include the Internet, and Internet Service Providers are still called upon to unaccountably police the net:

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere

This can feel a bit like wrapping your head against a gentle slice of sweet soft lime, then banging it hard against a brick wall.

When I set up the mail alias yesterday to make it easier to mail the European Parliament, that was my goal – I wanted to lower the wall between elected and electorate. The elected swiftly responded by erecting new walls to not have to bother with their constituents, and that has me seriously annoyed. So instead of using my remailer at [email protected], I will supply you with all the addresses so that you can mail them all individually, rather than going through my server.

Therefore, I include the full list of addresses below. It looks quite large. That’s because it is.

The mail that has the best effect to Parliament is always one where you write exactly what you think and feel about an issue. One such mail is worth a hundred copied-and-pasted letters. So while I provide a sample mail below, I would really encourage you to write to the European Parliament from your heart instead. Don’t worry about getting the tone or the formalities right – these people work for you. You pay their salary. It is their job to listen to your concerns.

So send a mail right now:

Mail something like this to the European Parliament right now and tell them exactly how you feel about this display of disrespect and unprofessionalism.