In the wake of the hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Parliament pressured the British press into agreeing to a terrifying system of fines of up to a £1 million ($1.6 million) for news “errors.” The same system (recently put in place in Australia as well) has often been used by less democratically inclined governments to suppress independent, vigorous journalism; in Ecuador, for example, newspapers are regularly fined large sums for criticizing the government.