more on the state of europe...

Since we were on the subject of parts of Europe functioning differently than we thought (and by "we" I mean you, whereas I am so underinformed that I couldn't have been surprised either way), here's something else: According to an article in the new issue of Bitch magazine, the European Union is encouraging its member states to adopt "codes of conduct" in their media: less gender stereotypes and impossible body images. This statement strikes me as something similar to the UN's Declaration of Human Rights: no attempt at any actual binding universal law, just a standard of what practices will be expected and praised in the future.

The move is thanks to a report published by the EU's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, which states, "Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys by restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles that are often degrading, humiliating, and dumbed down for both sexes." The EU urges member states to create policy to monitor improvements.

To me this is a progressive moment, but if looked at as a form of censorship I suppose it could be construed as a step backward. You know, like France's new government construction.

yeah, i think anything that can be defined as a form of censorship is best left up to social groups and not politcal ones. although many would agree that their power is not fully binding, the EU still holds quite a bit of leverage on the countries it "supervises" and therefore should not engage in these sort of policies. Private ad campaigns would work better, if people no longer want to see these things, they'll stop being used so much in media, its simple economics.

I don't think it's that simple when passivity is so common in people, especially those not looking at the marketing closely enough to realize they're being passive towards something they probably wouldn't approve of if they weren't so used to it. And since socially concious respondent groups are a media minority, they can't count on circulating their private ad campaigns to the extent that would be necessary to bring people out of passivity to an extent that economics would be affected. For example, the adbusters organization has tried for years to purchase airtime for their expository messages that show darker sides of our cultural commodities, etc., but because the airwaves are owned by corporations that might suffer from such messages being advertised on big scale, they won't sell the airtime. So adbusters has been trying to get a court ruling on free speech to allow them to put their ads on tv. I'm sure i could find a link to an article about this, hang on...
Okay here's something:
http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/updates/adbusters_wins_legal_victory.html