Socially organized activity cannot occur without censorship. Going beyond ideological arguments, this collections of essays explores the extent of censorship in Canada today, the forms censorship takes, and the interests it serves.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Examines the right to parody as a natural right in both the free speech and the copyright contexts.

In the 1980s, the Ontario Board of Censors began to subject media artists’ work to the same cuts, bans, and warning labels as commercial film. Ruling Out Art reveals what happens when art and law intersect, when artists, arts exhibitors, and their anti-censorship allies enter courts of law as appellants, defendants, or expert witnesses. The administration of culture during Ontario’s censor wars was not a simple top-down exercise. Members of arts communities mounted grassroots protests and engaged the province in court cases that ultimately influenced how the province interpreted freedom of expression, a fundamental and far-reaching legal right. The language of the law in turn shaped the way artists conceived of their own practices. By exploring how art practices and provincial legislation intertwined during Ontario’s censor wars, this innovative book documents an important moment in the history of contemporary art and cultural activism in Canada, one that helped artists secure their constitutional rights under the law.

This book is a must read for academics, policy-makers and teachers who grapple with policy and pedagogical decisions about what to include or exclude in schools that cater to diverse stakeholders.

Free expression is under threat. Social media and "fake news," misinformation, and disinformation have prompted governments to propose new forms of regulation that are deeply challenging to free expression. Hate speech, far-right populism, campus speech debates, and censorship consistently make headlines in Canada and abroad. Dilemmas of Free Expression offers forward-looking appraisals of ways to confront challenging moral issues, policy problems, and controversies that pay heed to the fundamental right to free expression. The essays in this volume offer timely analyses of the law, policy, and philosophical challenges, and social repercussions to our understanding of expressive freedom in relation to government obligations and public discourse. Free expression and its limits are multifaceted, deeply complex, inherently values-based, and central to the ability of a society to function. Dilemmas of Free Expression addresses the challenges of limiting free expression across a host of issues through an analyses by leading and emerging voices in a number of disciplines, including political science, law, philosophy, and Indigenous studies.

The library controls access to information by the very act of selecting materials, and must, therefore, deal with censorship on a basic level. The author has surveyed a response group of practicing librarians with questions that target some of the toughest questions librarians ever face. Curry's analysis focuses on the factors--personal beliefs, professional ethics, political pressures--that influence responses.