Rethinking Media Law

Rethinking Media Law

Instructor: Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Forum

Course Description

This course attempts to introduce students to critical questions related to media and the law. We often come across heated debates on censorship, freedom of expression or copyright and piracy, which are all questions that have to do with the interface between media and law. There is a commonsensical understanding that in such debates is the only thing that matters is which side we are on: are we for censorship or free speech? Or better still, for free speech with reasonable restrictions? Such an understanding is both inadequate and insensitive to a number of complex factors that come into play when media regulation is discussed.

This course will look into important periods in the history of media in India. Some of the questions we will ask are: How and why did the British colonial government introduce film censorship? Is censorship merely about reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech? What is the public that the law protects by regulating media? What is obscenity? How does law define obscenity? Can art be obscene? Can speeches hurt people? When are books banned? What is media piracy?

It seeks to provide some answer by approaching the filed through an inter disciplinary approach that attempts to blur the lines between media law, media history and media theory.

Major court cases and government documents related to media and law will be examined. Students will be provided with critical tools to not only understand the history of media regulation but also contemporary issues.

Some of the topics covered by the course are: History of Film censorship in India; Free speech and reasonable restrictions; Understanding the Public in Media Law; Obscenity; Hate speech; Contempt of Court; Banning of Books - The Rushdie Affair; Media Piracy and the Urban experience.


Course Id: Rethinking Media Law
Title: Module : Introduction


Reading List:

1.    Shyam Narayan Chouksey v. Union of India ( The K3G Case)
2.    Annete Kuhn, Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality
3.    Anne Barron, The Legal Properties of Film

Title: Module 2: Touch of Evil


Reading List:

4.    Tom Gunning, Flickers
5.    Lee Grievson, Introduction to Policing Cinema
6.    John Wertheimer, MUTUAL FILM REVIEWED: THE MOVIES, CENSORSHIP, AND FREE SPEECH IN PROGRESSIVE AMERICA, 37 Am. J. Legal Hist. 158,

Title: The Natives are Watching



Reading List:


1.    Priya Jaikumar, More Than Morality: The Indian Cinematograph Committee Interviews, The Moving Image 3.1 (2003) 83-109

2.    Poonam Arora, "'Imperilling the Prestige of the White Woman': Colonial Anxiety and Film Censorship in British India," Visual Anthropology Review11, no. 2 (fall 1995): 36-50

3.    Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Empire Cinema: Hollywood, Britain, India (unpublished)

4.    Madhava Prasad, The Natives Are Looking: Cinema and Censorship in Colonial India,” in Journal of the Moving Image

5.    Stephen Hughes, Examining the cinema menace by Committee: Is There Anyone Out There? Exhibition and the formation of silent film audiences in south India. PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago (1996)

Title: Reasonable Restrictions and Unreasonable Speech


Reading List:

1.    Eric Barendt, Freedom of Speech, Chapter -1
2.    Larry Alexander, The paradoxes of Liberalism and the failure of theories justifying a right of freedom of expression from Is there a right of Freedom of Expression
3.    Bijoe Emanuel v. State of Kerala
4.    Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech

Title: Reasonable Restrictions and Unreasonable Speech


Reading List:

1.    Granville Austin, Working  a democratic constitution, Chapter 2, PP.40-50
2.    Upendra baxi, , Constitutionalism as a site of state formative practices, 21 Cardozo L. Rev. 1183
3.     Romesh Thapar v. Union of India, AIR 1950 SC 124
4.    Niveditha menon, Citizenship and the Passive Revolution: Interpreting the First Amendment. EPW Special Articles, May 1, 2004

Title: Obscenity, decency and Morality

Reading List:

1.    Ranjit Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1965 SC 88
2.    Bobby Arts International v. Om Pal Singh Hoon, AIR 1996 AIR SC 1846
3.    Charu Gupta, Dirty Hindi words: Contests around obscenity in late Colonial India,
4.    Andrew Kopellman- Does obscenity cause Moral harm?

Title: Protect us from all evil

Reading List:

1.    Shohini Ghosh, Censorship Myths and Imagined Harms
2.    Monika Mehta,
3.    Shohini Ghosh, Looking in Fascination and Horror, Sex Violence and Spectatorship in India

Title: Beyond Contempt


Reading List:

1.    Arundhati Roy, The greater common Good
2.    V Venkatesan, What constitutes 'scandalising the court'
3.    In re Arundhati Roy
4.    Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech

Title: Hate Speech and the Philosophy of Language

Reading List:

1.    Judith Butler, Excitable Speech
2.    Richard Delgrado, Words that wound
3.    Shohini Ghosh
4.    Shuddabrata Sengupta
5.    Joseph Bain v. State of Maharashtra

Title: Reasonable Restrictions and Unreasonable Speech

Reading List:

1.    Dhanraj, The cable Story
2.    Ravi Sundaram, Uncanny Newtworks
3.    Lawrence Liang, Porous Legalities and Avenues of Participation
4.    Brian Larkin,  Degraded Images & Distorted Sounds