{"id":6487,"date":"2025-06-01T13:29:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T13:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=6487"},"modified":"2026-01-13T13:09:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T13:09:38","slug":"international-comm-law","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/international-comm-law\/","title":{"rendered":"International Communications Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NtG9z2rwmUU?si=AGDMfUecz5n2_tM_\" width=\"440\" height=\"315\" align=\"right\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 12px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>International communications law is based on the\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/Overview\/rights.html\">Universal Declaration of Human Rights.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Article 19, which says:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Modern int&#8217;l comm regulatory agencies include:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.itu.int\/en\/about\/Pages\/default.aspx\">The International Telecommunications Union<\/a> &#8211; A UN special agency that focuses on radio communication, standardization, and development of telecommunication networks. Most people are familiar with two of their ongoing standards projects, the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Joint_Photographic_Experts_Group\">Joint Photographic Experts Group<\/a>\u00a0 (jpg) and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moving_Picture_Experts_Group\">Moving Picture Experts Group<\/a> (mp4).<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wipo.int\/portal\/en\/index.html\">World Intellectual Property Organization<\/a> &#8211; A UN special agency that administers copyright and other IP treaties, especially the Berne Copyright Convention.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upu.int\/en\/home\">Universal Postal Union<\/a> &#8211; A forum for international cooperation for postal services<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.icann.org\/\">ICANN<\/a> (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) &#8211; an independent non-profit organization that coordinates the Internet&#8217;s unique identifiers, originally established with U.S. government oversight but now independent, operating under its own international community model. ICANN regulates\u00a0 web domain names and resolves disputes.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unesco.org\/en\">UNESCO &#8211;<\/a> UN educational, scientific and cultural organization founded in 1946 to promote ideas of peace and progress.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Int&#8217;l comm law &#8211; a short history<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>From the Bloomsbury textbook,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revolutionsincommunication.com\"> <em>Revolutions in Communication<\/em><\/a> by Bill Kovarik<\/p>\n<p><strong>International law<\/strong> is a collection of treaties, conferences, conventions, declarations, and other kinds of negotiated agreements, often administered through international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its many Special Agencies. It has emerged through historical experience from conventions, customs, and aspirations (Nordenstreng, 1984, 2010). It is based on the idea that peace and stability are in everyone\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n<p>Possibly the most famous thought about the path to peace was noted in 431 BCE by Greek historian Thucydides: \u201c<em>If great enmities are ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by\u00a0 the system of revenge and military success \u2026 but when the more fortunate combatant waives his privileges and, guided by gentler feelings, conquers his rival in generosity and accords peace on more moderate conditions than expected.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Two thousand years and many wars later, Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius (1582\u20131645) wrote <em>On the Law of War and Peace<\/em> to propose a set of international laws that would apply to everyone, regardless of religion or their justifications for war. These laws would guarantee fair treatment of prisoners of war, medical care for the wounded, respect for truces, and protection of civilians (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/46564\">Grotius, 1625<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>A century later, Prussian scholar Emer de Vattel wrote<em> The Law of Nations<\/em>, concerned with the moral obligations that are inherent in nationhood. Regarding communications law, he noted: \u201cIt is certainly an uncharitable act, and indeed a vital injury to a nation, to spread a false and dangerous doctrine among its citizens\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/constitutioncenter.org\/the-constitution\/historic-document-library\/detail\/emmerich-de-vattelthe-law-of-nations-1758\">Vattel, 1758<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Another milestone was the 1795 book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/50922\/50922-h\/50922-h.htm\"><em>Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch<\/em><\/a> by German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724\u20131804), who proposed conditions for peace and a parliament of European states. One principle was to forbid acts that would be so outrageous that they would prevent an eventual return to peace; and one example of an outrageous act was incitement to treason.<\/p>\n<p>Thucydides, Grotius, Vattel, and Kant were all well known to humanitarians like Jean-Henri Dunant, who organized the Red Cross and Geneva Conventions in 1863\u20131864.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 191px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/8d\/Francis_Lieber_-_Brady-Handy.jpg\" width=\"181\" height=\"241\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Francis Lieber, German-American lawyer who wrote the Lieber Code for the military in the US Civil War.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Also significant in the nineteenth century was the US Army\u2019s Civil War-era <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lieber_Code\">Lieber Code of 1863<\/a>, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, which required humane treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. The Lieber Code, in turn, influenced the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, whose main goal was to avert war crimes.<\/p>\n<p>These codes were an attempt to curb atrocities in war and bring nations together in peace. Even if the goal was often elusive, the quest continued through the League of Nations (founded 1920) and the United Nations (founded 1945)<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0Sources of international communications law (1860s\u20131930s)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>International communications law began with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itu.int\/en\/history\/Pages\/PlenipotentiaryConferences.aspx?conf=4.1\">International Telegraph Conference of May 17, 1865<\/a>. Twenty European nations signed a treaty agreeing to use Morse Code, to allow the free flow of telegraphy across borders, and to guarantee the individual right to send and receive telegrams. This approach\u2014prioritizing technical cooperation, internationalism, and human rights\u2014would become a hallmark of the international law of communication in radio and the postal service as well. And the institutionalization of communications agreements in a \u201cunion\u201d or \u201cconference\u201d continued with the International Telegraph Union in 1875. The ITU continued as the International Telecommunication Union after 1932, and became part of the United Nations as a Special Agency in 1946.<\/p>\n<p>Two other nineteenth-century initiatives in communications law involved the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upu.int\/en\/universal-postal-union\">Universal Postal Union<\/a>, established in 1874, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wipo.int\/treaties\/en\/ip\/berne\/\">Berne Copyright Convention<\/a> of 1886. In addition to these enduring international organizations, many private non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were formed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to defend human rights and freedom of the press. These included humanitarian organizations, especially the International Committee of the Red Cross\/Red Crescent (established 1863), the Geneva Conventions of 1864, the International Peace Bureau (established 1891), and the Nobel Foundation (established 1901).<\/p>\n<p>These new international organizations were part of a movement that also included organizations such as the International Office of Public Hygiene, founded in Paris in 1907 (now the World Health Organization), and the International Criminal Police Congress, started in Monaco in April 1914 (and now Interpol).<\/p>\n<p>Media-related NGOs established during this time included the Institution de l\u2019Union Internationale des Associations de Presse, formed in Antwerp in July 1894; the Empire (later Commonwealth) Press Union, established in London in 1909; the Press Congress of the World, organized in San Francisco, California in 1915; the Inter-American Press Association, established in Washington, DC in 1926; and the Federation Internationale des Journalists, formed in 1927 in Paris. The purpose of these media NGOs was to advocate better conditions for the press (such as cheaper telegraph rates and legal protection for journalists) and to call attention to the great issues and moral purposes of public communication.<\/p>\n<p>The League of Nations incorporated many of the existing international organizations when it was formed as part of the treaty ending the First World War in 1919. The war had been extremely destructive, killing an estimated twenty million, and many heartbroken people\u00a0 expressed a profound hope for a peaceful future.<\/p>\n<p>US President Woodrow Wilson backed the League idea and was deeply disappointed when, in a fit of isolationism, Congress refused to ratify the treaty. Nevertheless, the League began building a peace-seeking international organization in the 1920s.<\/p>\n<p>Recognizing the importance of communications, the League of Nations set up an International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC), whose members included famed scientists Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. It was the forerunner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).<\/p>\n<p>The League also brought media NGOs together in a series of conferences, first with the Conference of Press Experts in 1927 in Geneva, and then also with the Governmental Press Bureaux and Representatives of the Press in Copenhagen in 1932 and in Madrid in 1933. Resolutions from these conferences called for protection of news sources and for avoiding censorship in peacetime.<\/p>\n<p>The media NGOs also called for a study \u201cof the difficult problem of the spread of false information which may threaten to disturb the peace or the good understanding between nations.\u201d The essential factor in fighting false news, the organizations said, was freedom: financial freedom from governments and free access to information (<a href=\"https:\/\/digitallibrary.un.org\/record\/831229?ln=es&amp;v=pdf\">United Nations, 1953<\/a>).<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 372px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2015\/09\/albert-einstein-sigmund-freud-exchange-letters.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn8.openculture.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/02230113\/einstein-freud.jpg\" width=\"362\" height=\"259\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein<\/p><\/div>\n<p>One initiative of the League\u2019s ICIC was <a href=\"https:\/\/libraryresources.unog.ch\/lonintellectualcooperation\/IIIC\">\u201cA League of Minds,\u201d<\/a> a series of open letters on vital topics. Perhaps the most famous was \u201cWhy War?\u201d, a 1933 exchange between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud about the psychological nature of warfare and the prospects for peace. In response to Einstein\u2019s prompt, Freud wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">The cultural development of mankind (some, I know, prefer to call it civilization) has been in progress since immemorial antiquity. To this phenomenon we owe all that is best in our composition, but also much that makes for human suffering. \u2026 On the psychological side two of the most important phenomena of culture are, firstly, a strengthening of the intellect, which tends to master our instinctive life, and, secondly, an introversion of the aggressive impulse, with all its consequent benefits and perils<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">\u2026 By what ways or by-ways this [end of war] will come about, we cannot guess. Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is working also against war<\/span>.\u00a0 <i><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">(<\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/libraryresources.unog.ch\/ld.php?content_id=31431711\">United Nations, 1933<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another of the League\u2019s ICIC programs focused on cinema cooperation. The International Educational Cinematographic Institute was established in Italy in 1928. In conferences and publications in the 1920s and 1930s, the institute became a forum for discussion about the social role of film and topics such as archival film preservation. The institute had a wide latitude for discussion, despite its location in then-fascist Rome. In fact, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his friends were film enthusiasts and deeply involved in the institute\u2019s operation (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/24408070\">Druick,<\/a> 2007). The institute was successful despite being subjected to continuous economic and political controversy (<a href=\"https:\/\/shs.cairn.info\/article\/E_RI_183_0095?lang=en\">Taillibert, 2020<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Yet another program for international cooperation, this one for radio telegraphy, was already in its third decade when the League started. The cooperation began in 1903 after an incident in which an American Marconi station refused to relay a message from a German ship. The message was simply a thank-you from a departing diplomat to then-US president Theodore Roosevelt. The problem was that the German ship was using a German radio, and not Marconi technology, so the Marconi station refused the message, and there was no other way to send it.<\/p>\n<p>This kind of snub was not unusual at the time. Legally, it\u2019s called \u201crefusal to deal\u201d and is considered anti-competitive behavior. It became illegal in the US following the Radio Act of 1912 and the Motion Picture Producers Association antitrust case of 1915. Because of the snub, and also because of the danger that emergencies could go unreported, the government of Germany organized the first <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/International_Radiotelegraph_Convention_(1906)\">International Radiotelegraph Conference<\/a> to set rules for radio messages. By 1927, the group was allocating international frequencies and coordinating technical issues at its conferences. The IRC merged into the League in 1932 as part of the re-named International Telecommunication Union.<\/p>\n<p>Short-wave radio was a technical improvement that required more international cooperation when it was introduced in the late 1920s. Short-wave radio broadcasters like the BBC, Paris Mondial, and Germany\u2019s RRG could suddenly be heard across Europe, and sometimes thousands of miles away. The League of Nations began its own broadcasting service called \u201cRadio Nations\u201d on short-wave frequencies in 1929. The voice of the League was formulaic and bureaucratic, and it could have been used more effectively during the Ethiopian crisis or the other small wars of the 1930s, critics said. The problem was that the \u201cmost vital function of radio\u201d was neglected: advocacy of the League of Nations at the time when \u201ceverything depended on mobilizing public opinion for world peace and order\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/propagandabyshor0000harw\">Childs, 1943<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>One temporary League success involved a diplomatic response to complaints about a 1931 German broadcast featuring circus clowns telling offensive Polish jokes. The Polish government protested, and a bilateral treaty between Germany and Poland to minimize disparagement in radio broadcasts was accepted. (Obviously, this did nothing to stop the Nazi invasion of Poland in September, 1939 or the atrocities that the Nazis committed during World War II).<\/p>\n<p><strong>United Nations and UNESCO, 1940s\u20131950s<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The League of Nations could not prevent World War II, but it did create precedents for international cooperation. Many people agreed with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt when she wrote in 1938 that the world needed a new League of Nations. In her book <a href=\"https:\/\/erpapers.columbian.gwu.edu\/troubled-world-excerpt\"><em>This Troubled World<\/em><\/a>, Mrs. Roosevelt argued that a new league should have the power to exert economic boycotts and, when necessary, send an international police force to fight against aggressor nations. She also said that the mass media had not necessarily been an instrument of goodwill and peace because they were not free to express the will of the people. \u201cIf these sources of information are not really free, should not the people insist that this be one of our first reforms?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Freedom of knowledge and expression were key points in the 1940<a href=\"http:\/\/www.voting.ukscientists.com\/sankey.html\"> Sankey Declaration,<\/a> a charter of rights written primarily by H.G. Wells at the outbreak of World War II. It is one of the cornerstones of international communication and human rights law. \u201cInvention and discovery have so changed the pace and nature of communications round and about the earth that the distances which formerly kept the states and nations of mankind apart have now been practically abolished,\u201d Wells wrote. \u00a0\u201cAt the same time there has been so gigantic an increase of mechanical power, and such a release of human energy, that men&#8217;s ability either to co-operate with, or to injure and oppress one another, and to consume, develop or waste the bounty of nature, has been exaggerated beyond all comparison with former times. This process of change has mounted swiftly and \u2026 is now approaching a climax.\u201d\u00a0 The answer would be to build institutions of peace\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cupon a world scale\u201d (Sankey, 1940).<\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cUnited Nations\u201d\u2014first coined by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942\u2014became the label for the new league by 1943. Diplomatic meetings in 1944 laid the foundation, and as the Second World War ended and the survivors cleared away the rubble, desperate hopes for peace animated the restructuring of world institutions and international communications.<\/p>\n<p>These hopes focused on the United Nations Charter, ratified October 24, 1945. It emphasizes in its preamble a \u201cfaith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.\u201d And it also proposes \u201cto establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a New Year\u2019s Eve column, <span style=\"font-style: normal !msorm;\"><em>New York Times<\/em><\/span> columnist Arthur Krock said that the year 1946 had been \u201cthe high point of achievement\u201d in US history. In an article entitled <a href=\"https:\/\/timesmachine.nytimes.com\/timesmachine\/1946\/01\/01\/93008545.html?pageNumber=26\">The Mightiest Year in Our History<\/a>, Krock placed \u201cthe creation of a new world order to make and maintain peace\u201d on the year\u2019s list just after military and scientific success.<\/p>\n<p>Only a month after the UN Charter was ratified, delegates met in London to establish one of the new specialized UN agencies\u2014the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Along with the ITU, UNESCO and other agencies not only harmonized technical issues like radio frequencies, postal exchanges, and telegraph rates, but also began to sort through the larger issues of human rights, economic recovery, and media development. What the delegates hoped to build was a structure for international law that would \u201csafeguard and promote freedom of information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>UNESCO was the world\u2019s \u201cchief hope\u201d for building peace, its organizers said (<a href=\"#CBML_BIB_000_0285\">Fine, 1945<\/a>). The commitment was clear in UNESCO\u2019s Charter:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed \u2026 Parties to this Constitution, believing in full and equal opportunities for education for all, in the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth, and in the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, are agreed and determined to develop and to increase the means of communication between their peoples \u2026 [and to] promote the free flow of ideas by word and image\u2026<\/span><span style=\"color: #444444;\">(UNESCO, 1945)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>America\u2019s foremost legal scholar at the time, Alexander Meiklejohn, served as a delegate to the UNESCO founding conference. He wrote: \u201cNo one who attended the London conference could fail to feel the passion, the desperate determination, which ran through all its deliberations and decisions.\u201d The attendees were \u2018intellectuals,\u2019 he noted, but \u201ctheir logic was not cold. It was on fire\u201d (<a href=\"#CBML_BIB_000_0598\">Meiklejohn, 1946<\/a>). Among early ideas were a global educational exchange and a worldwide broadcasting network.<\/p>\n<p>To bridge one of the most difficult global divides, UNESCO Secretary Julian Huxley proposed a worldwide common philosophy of peace that might reconcile the Soviet Bloc and Western Europe. The idea was rejected by the delegates from Soviet-dominated countries, since, said delegate Vladislav Ribnikar, free circulation of thought would simply open the door to fascist propaganda. He hoped the West would accept Marxist principles, which he claimed were the only ideas that could advance human progress (<span style=\"font-style: normal !msorm;\"><em>The New York Times<\/em><\/span><a href=\"#CBML_BIB_000_0918\">1946<\/a>b).<\/p>\n<p>It remained for one great statesman to point out exactly what that thinking meant. \u201cA shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory,\u201d said Winston Churchill in a March 5, 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He continued:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><\/i><i><em><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">F<\/span><\/em><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">rom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">\u2026 subject in one form or another \u2026 to control from Moscow<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">\u2026 This is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace.<\/span><span style=\"color: #444444;\">(<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcmo.edu\/about\/history\/iron-curtain-speech.html\">Churchill, 1946<\/a><span style=\"color: #444444;\">)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Freedom of information was essential, the UN said in a resolution passed May 8, 1946. It was supported by the US, China, France, and India. The US press chimed in too. \u201cIt\u2019s up to UNESCO to free the press, movies and radio of senseless restrictions,\u201d one US delegate said (<span style=\"font-style: normal !msorm;\"><em>The New York Times<\/em><\/span>a). Soviet Russia also endorsed the concept of a free press, in its own way; it said that the press should be free from capitalist control. Printing and broadcast equipment should be the property of the workers to express their opinions. And it was only the progressive forces of the Soviets that could liberate emerging former colonies like India, Indonesia, and Indochina, according to Radio Moscow (<a href=\"https:\/\/digitallibrary.un.org\/record\/831229?ln=es&amp;v=pdf\">United Nations, 1953<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>As the Russian grip tightened on Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the rest of Eastern Europe, control of publishing and broadcasting was one of the first orders of business. There was no ambiguity. Publishers and radio broadcasters either did what they were told, or they were jailed, exiled, or executed under the Russian Soviet system.<\/p>\n<p>By 1947, UNESCO delegates were urging educational organizations to find ways to remove barriers to free information and \u201cattack\u201d the \u201cIron Curtain.\u201d Polish and Czechoslovak delegates to UNESCO responded by denying that any \u201ciron curtains\u201d even existed in their countries (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1947\/04\/14\/archives\/iron-curtain-attacked-unesco-is-told-it-must-find-chinks-in-ban-on.html\"><span style=\"font-style: normal !msorm;\"><em>The New York Times, 1947<\/em><\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The estrangement between former allies was also evident at a spring 1948 conference on freedom of information in Geneva. The conference was aimed at improvements in the means of sending information across frontiers, and, idealistic UNESCO leaders hoped, would be regarded as the Magna Carta of freedom of thought and expression. That seemed unlikely to Western observers, since one of the resolutions condemned propaganda or false news designed or likely to provoke a threat to peace or aggression. The implication was that defamatory broadcasts or publications should be censored by governments in the interest of peace (<a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.nyls.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&amp;context=nyls_law_review\">Goldberg, 2006<\/a>).<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6497\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/billofrightsinstitute.org\/essays\/eleanor-roosevelt-and-the-united-nations\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6497\" class=\"wp-image-6497 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/UDHR.Roosevelt-300x236.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/UDHR.Roosevelt-300x236.jpg 300w, https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/UDHR.Roosevelt-768x603.jpg 768w, https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/UDHR.Roosevelt-800x628.jpg 800w, https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/UDHR.Roosevelt.jpg 825w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6497\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt holds the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Against this backdrop, it became clear that a strong international code with basic human rights guarantees would need to be articulated, both in response to the barbarous acts of the Nazis in the Second World War and also now in response to Russian communist totalitarianism.<\/p>\n<p>A UN committee chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt created the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the resolution supporting it passed without opposition at the General Assembly on December 10, 1948. Article 19 is especially important in the history of communications. It says:<\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: normal !msorm;\">Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The above is excerpted from Chapter 12 of\u00a0 <strong>Revolutions in Communication<\/strong> by Bill Kovarik, Bloomsbury, 2025.<br \/>\nThe chapter starts with this brilliant quote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three\u00a0 recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder, and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world\u2019s efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure. And so it is to the printing press\u2014to the recorder of man\u2019s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news\u2014 that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.\u201d\u00a0 US PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, address to the American Newspaper Publishers\u2019 Association, April 20, 1961<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>ALSO SEE:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8y8BYI422NU\">US vs EU digital law\u00a0<\/a> &#8211; TLDR EU News<\/li>\n<li>Council on Foreign Relations &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/education.cfr.org\/learn\/reading\/six-essential-international-organizations-you-need-know?utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_source=google_edu&amp;utm_campaign=intl-orgs&amp;gad_source=2&amp;gad_campaignid=20360317593&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw9O_BBhCUARIsAHQMjS7oCTs7wrAUR4xOPsgrWEHT1ATZ5-sDxt7M3tSdhaVn_5ayDfDxtDwaAhAMEALw_wcB\">Six Essential International Organizations\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Media Defense &#8211;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediadefence.org\/ereader\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/Module-1-Key-principles-of-international-law-and-freedom-of-expression.pdf\"> Key principles of international law and fredom of expression<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff International communications law is based on the\u00a0Universal Declaration of Human Rights.\u00a0Article 19, which says: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/international-comm-law\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6487","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6487"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7138,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6487\/revisions\/7138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}