Some other legal restrictions on communication that aren't normally included in the "free speech" debate:
* Distributing pirated media/breaking copyright or trademarks
* Slander and libel laws
* HIPAA and medical information privacy laws
* Sharing information for insider trading
* Market manipulation by sharing false or misleading information
* Breaching attorney-client privilege
* Laws governing how jurors are allowed to communicate
* FCC and obscenity laws in US media
* Distribution of illegal porn (for various definitions of illegal)
* Holocaust denial laws in Canada and Europe
* US anti-boycott provisions that ban "furnishing information" about doing business with certain countries
* Military and government classified information (thanks rmc!)
There are many others. The point is we're always a bit selective about what counts as free speech, and there are lots of exceptions, some very well motivated.
These articles about "free speech is in danger" seem to be unnecessarily abstract: if you want to discuss the problems with Islam or the merits of social justice or whatever, don't argue about the way you're having the debate, just have the debate. Because our society doesn't really view free speech as a consistent principle anyway.
The "free speech" concept in its most noble and pure form is about government censorship.[1] It's not about about commercial censorship (e.g. Facebook) or social censorship (e.g. your Flying Spaghetti Monster offends my sacred Zeus.)
Protection from government censorship means an American can criticize President Obama as "a stupid incompetent Chief Executive" without fear of black helicopters surrounding the protester's home. The military operatives won't come to arrest him and keep him silent. This type of "free speech" does not exist in North Korea.
I concede that the label "free speech" has been diluted to mean, "I get to say whatever I want without any economic ramifications or social disapproval." Unfortunately, the non-government censoring is what the vast majority of free speech articles are about. Well, the real world will never let you have that type of "free speech". If it bothers people that Facebook / tv networks / college campuses / etc won't allow certain types of speech, they can start another website/college that allows it. However, they shouldn't be surprised if sponsors that help fund the "oppressive" businesses and institutions don't also spend money on the alternative "free speech" platform.
In other words, the non-government "free speech" has a cost and sometimes, society doesn't want to pay for it. That's the underlying issue that's never highlighted.
"Free speech" is not "free beer." Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater has been widely accepted as harmful speech and as such is not free.
As an American, I have the right to bear arms (ok the constitution actually says not to infringe on "a well-regulated militia" but bear with me), but not the right to spray automatic gunfire wherever I please.
I disagree with your assertion that "our society doesn't view free speech as a consistent principle." Of course we do. Free expression is a staple of Western civilization, and shows us how far we have come from mandated religion and the sanctity of the nobility.
However, free expression can be damaging in certain circumstances. It is a testament to the strength of our civilization and our values that we find ways to mitigate the harm from certain kinds of expression, rather than scrapping the 1st Amendment altogether. It lasted over 200 years, why not 200 more?
Most of those involve people entering into contracts or making agreements not to share information (pirating, medical information, insider trading, market manipulation, attorney-client privilege, jurors, probably anti-boycott?). Slander/Libel, obscenity and holocaust denial are the only ones on that list that I think are truly problematic.
I don't think holocaust denial should be a crime. Yes it's despicable, but I'd rather put it in the same category and hollow earthers and UFO spotters. We can't legislate people out of their own stupidity. It's not going to stop people holding such views or circulating them among themselves anyway, so it's utterly pointless.
For me Porn is easy too. If it only involves consenting adults, it's fine. If it doesn't then other crimes have been committed and distributing it is de facto complicity by association in those crimes.
That only leaves slander and libel. These are civil, not criminal matters and should be prosecuted as private matters based on the harm done to the individuals so slandered or libeled
I'd add incitement to commit crimes as an issue. But that falls under complicity or conspiracy to commit a crime. If the speech in question doesn't cross that line, then it should be free.
Add to that list "criticizing Islam, Muhammad and quran."
It seems it is okay in USA to make fun of Jesus/Christianity, Moses/Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism but if one makes fun of Islam, Muhammad or quran all of a sudden it becomes hate-speech, Islamophobia and even racial attack.
The liberal and leftists have double standards here.
I would argue that the consistent principle is to protect the right to freely express ideas, arguments and points of view, no matter how stupid or poorly supported they may be. _That_ is what should be protected; not the literal interpretation of "anything that comes out of a mouth".
Most of the things you list are not about expressing ideas or making arguments, they're mostly about breaking contracts. Those that are not, e.g., holocaust denial, are precisely the contentious and dangerous ones.
No right is unlimited. It's not difficult to come up with a consistent definition of free speech that disallows all or most of your examples.
At least in the US, I think free speech is the right that's treated most consistently and broadly. "Free speech" isn't meaningless just because it doesn't fit the meaning you've outlined here.
> The point is we're always a bit selective about what counts as free speech
that a principle should be applied differently in different situations is the very the definition of wisdom reaching back to dawn of philosophy, (which by no coincidence was also the dawn of democracy)
> [article] seem[s] to be unnecessarily abstract
if wrapping up discrete facets of discourse into a concrete, higher order order concept of discourse, and then reasoning about how discourse regarding discourse is affected in different ways is too difficult to bear, there's always a doctrine out there looking for adherents
> just have the debate
we are; we are discussing how (1) anti speech doctrines have motivated violence, and (2) how doctrinally motivated violence has affected free speech; free speech, moreover, as (i) a crucial element of social justice, and (ii) a reflexively open principle, or constitution, which founds modern society
don't reduce thinking about these matters to a referendum
> or whatever
no, finish your thought. maybe: "or whatever people pretend to care about" and you clearly can't be bothered by
> [we don't] really view free speech as a consistent principle anyway
the fact that we have upheld the term "free speech" despite its many forms is our collective recognition of the usefulness of the idea, the pervasiveness of its application, and our consistent concern over its worth, or fate
>The third recent change is that, whereas the threats to free speech used to come almost entirely from governments, now non-state actors are nearly as intimidating
This pretty much completely circumvents your point
> * Distributing pirated media/breaking copyright or trademarks
> * Slander and libel laws
> * Sharing information for insider trading
> * Market manipulation by sharing false or misleading information
> * Slander and libel laws
> * Holocaust denial laws in Canada and Europe
The trend here is that the information is provably false or misleading. It isn't slander if it's true. You're allowed to use someone's trademark to refer to their products. You can't claim someone else's copyrighted words as your own but you can convey the same information in your own words and when you have a need to use the author's words there is fair use. Insider trading is fraud via a lie of omission -- publish the information and it isn't insider trading.
Professional confidentiality obligations:
> * HIPAA and medical information privacy laws
> * Breaching attorney-client privilege
> * Military and government classified information (thanks rmc!)
The defining characteristic is that you signed up for that profession. The Pentagon Papers were classified but The New York Times can still publish them because they never agreed not to. If the client blabs attorney-client privileged information to the other side or the press then they can use it.
Obscenity:
> * FCC and obscenity laws in US media
> * Distribution of illegal porn (for various definitions of illegal)
These are, honestly, free speech violations, and often get struck down. But at least they're easy to cordon off.
The odd one out is juries, and there is a legitimate argument that we shouldn't do that, but it's also very old and so unlike anything else that it doesn't really generalize to anything.
And after you get through the whole list, there is something that still holds in the end: The press (including the people) can write and publish any not-provably-false story.
But now people are being threatened by angry mobs for criticizing inhumane religious practices or publishing a contrary opinion about pronoun usage.
Canada does not have holocaust denial laws. It has hate speech laws. Conveniently holocaust denial writers struggle to keep their antisemitism out of the writing.
Absolutely. It feels especially jarring to hear this from a paper based in the UK, with its notoriously muzzling libel laws. Then again, libel laws tend to defend the rich and powerful, who are much more a part of the Economist's readership than the typically poor immigrant Muslim communities who are endangered by hate speech calls for violence.
I don't know, islamic terror in particular seems to stand out from the rest. I mean, china, or the mexican drug lords are directly defending their interests. Islamic terror is not, it's revenge against a nebulous 'enemy' that they are being forced to tolerate (terrorists are not defending the honor of the peaceful muslims (who wouldnt even read charlie hebdo); instead they are trying to radicalize them).
> he could not live “in any country where free speech is allowed”
There is something to be said about incompatibility of certain cultures here.
Why is Economist pushing the narrative that Innocence of Muslims had anything to do with the embassy attack and murder of the US Ambassador in Libya when that cover story was completely debunked?
It wasn't debunked. While, unlike the attacks at US embassies in Egypt, Yemen, Indonesia, and other US diplomatic and cultural facilities in the same week (and protests without attacks at many more), there were no protests at the Embassy in Libya (and some early reports had tied the attacks to nonexistent protests about the film), numerous eyewitnesses did report that the attackers claimed to be motivated by the film, and while the later claim of responsibility from al-Qaeda claimed a different retaliatory motivation, it's also al-Qaeda (al-Qaeda central, not regional affiliates, in both cases) that was behind the hijacking of previously planned protests over a different issue in Egypt to focus on the film that culminated in the attack on the US embassy in Egypt.
The only thing that was debunked were the early reports of protests in Benghazi, that the film played a role in motivating the attacks was never debunked.
Seems like the facts listed in the first paragraph are substantial indications for it having at least something to do with the attack. It wouldn't be the first time or the last time extremist muslims reacted violently. Do you have a source for that complete debunking?
Edit: The article as a whole isn't about just that incident either. It is about the growing suppression of speech from regimes of all kinds.
Fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Glad to see the article mention the more civilized cases of free speech suppression such as the Yale one, in addition to the really gruesome and macabre ones across the world. We should prevent a death by a thousand cuts if possible AND obviously do something about the brutality in other parts of the world.
The magnitude of the efforts to criminalize BDS activism is far too big for this exclusion to to be considered as something forgotten, unintentionally unmentioned.
Disturbing thought, I wonder if free speech is only politically feasible under the assumption of limited distribution. If we look at free speech two decades ago, the two ways of enjoying free speech were, you could convince an editor, or you could copy a few hundred leaflets and distribute them by hand. The first case limits the distribution to people who buy the newspaper (or who buy from that publisher, there's a reason that explicitly Anarchist bookshops are a thing) and the second limits both the numbers and the geographic distribution.
Today anybody can, at least in principle, overcome these limitations just by getting a youtube account, with the effect that for all X, group X is constantly confronted with vile hatred. The effect is, everybody is pissed off, while only groups which are explicitly pro freedom of speech tell themselves that they have to live with the trolls.
The idea is, that as long as freedom of speech was limited by the practicalities of distribution to a, for most people, tolerable level, everybody was happy to endorse free speech. Nowadays it is no longer constrained by distribution and people start to revisit their assumptions about free speech.
The Internet may have a wide reach but there is also an awful signal-to-noise ratio. You can say whatever you want and share it with your friends but that doesn't mean they will share it or even read it.
So given that, I don't think the semi-frictionless free expression is all that different from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" leaflets of the late 18th century.
It is only sad that people refuse to revisit their assumptions about whatever X is where contradictory voices about X would drive them to think the solution is to cause violence.
Yep, the response to the BDS movement is the definition of double-standards. It's also proof that Israel loves to pull the anti-Semite card whenever it feels like it.
It's interesting that many who advocate a "free speech über alles" approach have a curious exemption for property rights. They claim the right of Facebook/Twitter/reddit/etc. as privacy companies to control their property (i.e. their websites) apparently trump right to free speech. An earlier free speech article also from the Economist, which is linked from the sidebar[1], claims that private companies should be exempted from free speech rules, and should be allowed to publish, or not publish, anything they want.
Should Facebook's property rights overrule my free speech rights?
100 years ago, a person in the wrong place in the United States who happened to say something someone else didn't like might end up getting murdered by a mob.
I guess that is getting to be a long time ago, but history should not be viewed with a tight lens.
US attacks on whistleblowers are not mentioned. US religious ’fatwahs’ against abortion doctors aren’t mentioned, but much is made of Muslim misbehavior.
Kind of a bad article. It also doesn’t mention anything about UK slander laws.
What we will see more and more in America is the privatization of all "public" utilities and services (schools->charter, Libraries-->?). This will enable and allow these non-public corporations to enact and enforce censorship. Since the "free" speech applies mostly to our Government interactions, it won't apply to "private" corporate institutions. They will be outside of the constitution of the US.
America must wake up to what is happening. It's not too late.
We Americans must always be able to speak our minds no matter how offensive, true or false. But we must also never harm ourselves or each other. This should also apply to Government and Corporations. We must always hold those in "power" accountable for their actions public or private.
This "right not to be offended" a part of the article is talking about is such a Trojan horse. Groups are not claiming a right not to be offended, they are claiming the right to feel "mortally" offended, giving them leverage to pursue goals often not that much related to the original act of offending speech.
Since it is the offended who get to define what offends them, the term "right, not to be offended" falls quite short of the actual problem. Everybody already is perfectly free to not feel offended by anything. This right is a given, everywhere. So the only thing remaining to claim is the right to declare stuff as offending at will and force those decisions on others.
It's really hard to say how our world will look in the coming decades...
On one hand, we have all this explosively liberating technology, cheap and powerful, that is changing the way we communicate and share information. On the other hand, you see the 'natural' result of all this power moving towards the individual: states and governments gripping tighter than ever to control it and maintain their elevated status.
It serves to illustrate how asinine our arguments over 'appropriate' speech are. The result of any kind of forced censorship is the same no matter what the content of the speech is : less freedom.
Canada has blasphemy laws [1]? I knew they had "hate speech" laws which basically meant that they could prosecute you for saying anything that some might find offensive but I had no idea about blasphemy.
The problem with the free speech debate is everyone has a different definition or understanding of what free speech is.
Free speech should be considered the right to publically criticise and call to account governments, police, judiciary and other state institutions.
It should not mean the right to say absolutely anything to anybody. Having laws on racism and hate speech (for example) provide well-meaning guidance on acceptable behaviour within civilised society and help reduce discrimination, bias etc.
But like all rights "free speech" confers privilege and responsibility on the holder: just because you have a right to doesn't mean you should (e.g the video referenced at the beginning of the article).
In my opinion, free speech only applies to the state as the state is not a product you can decide not to use such as Facebook and Twitter (from which you do not need free speech protection), that is the fundamental difference.
People should face no punishment other than the potential scorn of the public for their words. Say whatever you want, but be prepared to take disapproval for it.
Edit: I don't know how to explain what I said earlier but apparently I didn't get my point across so I'm going to remove it.
Several people are currently in jail without trial for making non-specific verbal or written threats against schools in the USA.
One could play devil's-advocate and argue that is free-speech since the threat is non-specific and no actual action was taken.
Using that same logic however, insulting a religion specifically to demonstrate/cause violent reaction should trigger a per-emptive jail term without trial in the USA?
But now you've got me defending an abrahamic religion, I feel like I need to take a shower to get clean.
[+] [-] sevenless|9 years ago|reply
* Distributing pirated media/breaking copyright or trademarks
* Slander and libel laws
* HIPAA and medical information privacy laws
* Sharing information for insider trading
* Market manipulation by sharing false or misleading information
* Breaching attorney-client privilege
* Laws governing how jurors are allowed to communicate
* FCC and obscenity laws in US media
* Distribution of illegal porn (for various definitions of illegal)
* Holocaust denial laws in Canada and Europe
* US anti-boycott provisions that ban "furnishing information" about doing business with certain countries
* Military and government classified information (thanks rmc!)
There are many others. The point is we're always a bit selective about what counts as free speech, and there are lots of exceptions, some very well motivated.
These articles about "free speech is in danger" seem to be unnecessarily abstract: if you want to discuss the problems with Islam or the merits of social justice or whatever, don't argue about the way you're having the debate, just have the debate. Because our society doesn't really view free speech as a consistent principle anyway.
[+] [-] jasode|9 years ago|reply
Protection from government censorship means an American can criticize President Obama as "a stupid incompetent Chief Executive" without fear of black helicopters surrounding the protester's home. The military operatives won't come to arrest him and keep him silent. This type of "free speech" does not exist in North Korea.
I concede that the label "free speech" has been diluted to mean, "I get to say whatever I want without any economic ramifications or social disapproval." Unfortunately, the non-government censoring is what the vast majority of free speech articles are about. Well, the real world will never let you have that type of "free speech". If it bothers people that Facebook / tv networks / college campuses / etc won't allow certain types of speech, they can start another website/college that allows it. However, they shouldn't be surprised if sponsors that help fund the "oppressive" businesses and institutions don't also spend money on the alternative "free speech" platform.
In other words, the non-government "free speech" has a cost and sometimes, society doesn't want to pay for it. That's the underlying issue that's never highlighted.
[1]The first sentence from wikipedia also explains "free speech" in terms of government censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|9 years ago|reply
As an American, I have the right to bear arms (ok the constitution actually says not to infringe on "a well-regulated militia" but bear with me), but not the right to spray automatic gunfire wherever I please.
I disagree with your assertion that "our society doesn't view free speech as a consistent principle." Of course we do. Free expression is a staple of Western civilization, and shows us how far we have come from mandated religion and the sanctity of the nobility.
However, free expression can be damaging in certain circumstances. It is a testament to the strength of our civilization and our values that we find ways to mitigate the harm from certain kinds of expression, rather than scrapping the 1st Amendment altogether. It lasted over 200 years, why not 200 more?
[+] [-] simonh|9 years ago|reply
I don't think holocaust denial should be a crime. Yes it's despicable, but I'd rather put it in the same category and hollow earthers and UFO spotters. We can't legislate people out of their own stupidity. It's not going to stop people holding such views or circulating them among themselves anyway, so it's utterly pointless.
For me Porn is easy too. If it only involves consenting adults, it's fine. If it doesn't then other crimes have been committed and distributing it is de facto complicity by association in those crimes.
That only leaves slander and libel. These are civil, not criminal matters and should be prosecuted as private matters based on the harm done to the individuals so slandered or libeled
I'd add incitement to commit crimes as an issue. But that falls under complicity or conspiracy to commit a crime. If the speech in question doesn't cross that line, then it should be free.
Anything left?
[+] [-] tmptmp|9 years ago|reply
It seems it is okay in USA to make fun of Jesus/Christianity, Moses/Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism but if one makes fun of Islam, Muhammad or quran all of a sudden it becomes hate-speech, Islamophobia and even racial attack. The liberal and leftists have double standards here.
[+] [-] zmb_|9 years ago|reply
Most of the things you list are not about expressing ideas or making arguments, they're mostly about breaking contracts. Those that are not, e.g., holocaust denial, are precisely the contentious and dangerous ones.
[+] [-] burkaman|9 years ago|reply
At least in the US, I think free speech is the right that's treated most consistently and broadly. "Free speech" isn't meaningless just because it doesn't fit the meaning you've outlined here.
[+] [-] aporetics|9 years ago|reply
that a principle should be applied differently in different situations is the very the definition of wisdom reaching back to dawn of philosophy, (which by no coincidence was also the dawn of democracy)
> [article] seem[s] to be unnecessarily abstract
if wrapping up discrete facets of discourse into a concrete, higher order order concept of discourse, and then reasoning about how discourse regarding discourse is affected in different ways is too difficult to bear, there's always a doctrine out there looking for adherents
> just have the debate
we are; we are discussing how (1) anti speech doctrines have motivated violence, and (2) how doctrinally motivated violence has affected free speech; free speech, moreover, as (i) a crucial element of social justice, and (ii) a reflexively open principle, or constitution, which founds modern society
don't reduce thinking about these matters to a referendum
> or whatever
no, finish your thought. maybe: "or whatever people pretend to care about" and you clearly can't be bothered by
> [we don't] really view free speech as a consistent principle anyway
the fact that we have upheld the term "free speech" despite its many forms is our collective recognition of the usefulness of the idea, the pervasiveness of its application, and our consistent concern over its worth, or fate
[+] [-] rmc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] trizzashamafoo|9 years ago|reply
> Shut up or I’ll kill you
>The third recent change is that, whereas the threats to free speech used to come almost entirely from governments, now non-state actors are nearly as intimidating
This pretty much completely circumvents your point
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|9 years ago|reply
Laws regarding fraud and misrepresentation:
The trend here is that the information is provably false or misleading. It isn't slander if it's true. You're allowed to use someone's trademark to refer to their products. You can't claim someone else's copyrighted words as your own but you can convey the same information in your own words and when you have a need to use the author's words there is fair use. Insider trading is fraud via a lie of omission -- publish the information and it isn't insider trading.Professional confidentiality obligations:
The defining characteristic is that you signed up for that profession. The Pentagon Papers were classified but The New York Times can still publish them because they never agreed not to. If the client blabs attorney-client privileged information to the other side or the press then they can use it.Obscenity:
These are, honestly, free speech violations, and often get struck down. But at least they're easy to cordon off.The odd one out is juries, and there is a legitimate argument that we shouldn't do that, but it's also very old and so unlike anything else that it doesn't really generalize to anything.
And after you get through the whole list, there is something that still holds in the end: The press (including the people) can write and publish any not-provably-false story.
But now people are being threatened by angry mobs for criticizing inhumane religious practices or publishing a contrary opinion about pronoun usage.
[+] [-] abandonliberty|9 years ago|reply
Canada does not have holocaust denial laws. It has hate speech laws. Conveniently holocaust denial writers struggle to keep their antisemitism out of the writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial
[+] [-] maldusiecle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __john|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] good_sir_ant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xADADA|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DannyB2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
> he could not live “in any country where free speech is allowed”
There is something to be said about incompatibility of certain cultures here.
[+] [-] zaroth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
The only thing that was debunked were the early reports of protests in Benghazi, that the film played a role in motivating the attacks was never debunked.
[+] [-] simonh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveguy|9 years ago|reply
Edit: The article as a whole isn't about just that incident either. It is about the growing suppression of speech from regimes of all kinds.
[+] [-] tomp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadassFractal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbronn|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/02/16/greatest-threat-to-free-...
[+] [-] wallace_f|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] typon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cyph0n|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelukelugames|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igravious|9 years ago|reply
edit: It does seem to be a glaring omission. I would have expected better from the Economist.
[+] [-] yk|9 years ago|reply
Today anybody can, at least in principle, overcome these limitations just by getting a youtube account, with the effect that for all X, group X is constantly confronted with vile hatred. The effect is, everybody is pissed off, while only groups which are explicitly pro freedom of speech tell themselves that they have to live with the trolls.
The idea is, that as long as freedom of speech was limited by the practicalities of distribution to a, for most people, tolerable level, everybody was happy to endorse free speech. Nowadays it is no longer constrained by distribution and people start to revisit their assumptions about free speech.
[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|9 years ago|reply
So given that, I don't think the semi-frictionless free expression is all that different from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" leaflets of the late 18th century.
[+] [-] zanny|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tepix|9 years ago|reply
Andrew Cuomo and Other Democrats Launch Severe Attack on Free Speech to Protect Israel
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/andrew-cuomo-and-other-d...
[+] [-] Cyph0n|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|9 years ago|reply
Should Facebook's property rights overrule my free speech rights?
[1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21699909-curbs-free-sp...
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
100 years ago, a person in the wrong place in the United States who happened to say something someone else didn't like might end up getting murdered by a mob.
I guess that is getting to be a long time ago, but history should not be viewed with a tight lens.
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|9 years ago|reply
Kind of a bad article. It also doesn’t mention anything about UK slander laws.
[+] [-] l3m0ndr0p|9 years ago|reply
America must wake up to what is happening. It's not too late.
We Americans must always be able to speak our minds no matter how offensive, true or false. But we must also never harm ourselves or each other. This should also apply to Government and Corporations. We must always hold those in "power" accountable for their actions public or private.
Peace
[+] [-] usrusr|9 years ago|reply
Since it is the offended who get to define what offends them, the term "right, not to be offended" falls quite short of the actual problem. Everybody already is perfectly free to not feel offended by anything. This right is a given, everywhere. So the only thing remaining to claim is the right to declare stuff as offending at will and force those decisions on others.
[+] [-] good_sir_ant|9 years ago|reply
On one hand, we have all this explosively liberating technology, cheap and powerful, that is changing the way we communicate and share information. On the other hand, you see the 'natural' result of all this power moving towards the individual: states and governments gripping tighter than ever to control it and maintain their elevated status.
It serves to illustrate how asinine our arguments over 'appropriate' speech are. The result of any kind of forced censorship is the same no matter what the content of the speech is : less freedom.
[+] [-] Jerry2|9 years ago|reply
Scary.
[1] http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...
[+] [-] known|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retube|9 years ago|reply
Free speech should be considered the right to publically criticise and call to account governments, police, judiciary and other state institutions.
It should not mean the right to say absolutely anything to anybody. Having laws on racism and hate speech (for example) provide well-meaning guidance on acceptable behaviour within civilised society and help reduce discrimination, bias etc.
But like all rights "free speech" confers privilege and responsibility on the holder: just because you have a right to doesn't mean you should (e.g the video referenced at the beginning of the article).
[+] [-] jswny|9 years ago|reply
People should face no punishment other than the potential scorn of the public for their words. Say whatever you want, but be prepared to take disapproval for it.
Edit: I don't know how to explain what I said earlier but apparently I didn't get my point across so I'm going to remove it.
[+] [-] MicroBerto|9 years ago|reply
We are that close to it being gone. 2016 is the most important year in the history of this country, I am thoroughly convinced of that.
[+] [-] ck2|9 years ago|reply
One could play devil's-advocate and argue that is free-speech since the threat is non-specific and no actual action was taken.
Using that same logic however, insulting a religion specifically to demonstrate/cause violent reaction should trigger a per-emptive jail term without trial in the USA?
But now you've got me defending an abrahamic religion, I feel like I need to take a shower to get clean.