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Except that isn't true. Various jurisdictions in Europe have problematical laws and positions regarding free speech on the internet that you haven't touched on.

Some examples include abusive libel laws, especially in GB, and lese-majesty laws still in force in Norway, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Belgium has a long history of blocking web sites that are engaged in 'naughty' activities such as sharing files, scalping tickets and selling drugs such as diet pills online.

France has in place three-strike legislation and offices of several online media firms and their journalists were targeted for break-ins and court summons and pressured to identify their sources. On 14 October 2011 a French court ordered French Internet service providers to block the Copwatch Nord Paris I-D-F website.

  In April 2013 DCRI forced the deletion of the article when it summoned a volunteer with administrator's access to the French language Wikipedia and ordered him to take down the article that had been online since 2009. DCRI claimed the article contained classified military information and broke French law.

And this is just Western Europe. The former soviet bloc members like Poland and Estonia have much bigger issues.

http://www.article19.org/resou...

Don't try to put forth the idea that free speech protections in the EU are as liberal as they are in the US, because it flat out isn't true.

There are many organisations already working on behalf of ordinary people in cases such as this...the summary already has highlighted one such in the most excellent EFF but there are a number of others who are charitable donation funded and the like so negating your belief that huge wealth is needed to have voices on our side in this, and other, conflicts with the corporations who seek to enrich themselves by removal of our freedoms and liberties. I'll offer a small selection of such organisations below: https://www.eff.org/ http://ffii.org/ http://www.publicknowledge.org/ http://keionline.org/ http://infojustice.org/category/trade-agreements/ http://www.article19.org/ http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ http://www.edri.org/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ The last link is to Professor Michael Geist a prominent a noteworthy intellectual and activist in the field. All the above worked diligently to stop ACTA.

Let's start with getting one key issue in place: The difference between plain communicative speech and functional speech. This distinction is important: Freedom of speech is only considered to apply to communicative speech, not functional speech, both by the law and by what people that look carefully at this consider important.

Functional speech is things like yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, where the direct effect of changing people's behavior is what is wanted from the speech, instead of more indirectly changing people's knowledge / interpretation of knowledge to change their behavior. (This is a fuzzy line that is hard for me to describe well.)

Hell, if the kids said to each other, online or otherwise, "lets try to get her to kill herself" then you can bump up to conspiracy to commit murder.

How so? If I say to you "let's see if we can get Bill to say bad and inaccurate things about someone", am I guilty of conspiracy to libel?

I'd say "Yes, you are guilty, the question is whether that should be punishable", but if you want to get technical, it depends on the laws in your particular location. In the US, as far as I remember, conspiracy only applies to criminal (not civil) law, so it would require you to be in one of the 16 states that have criminal defamation laws and be for a type of defamation that was targeted by those laws. It would also assume that those laws would be upheld under the US constitution. In most of the world, there are criminal defamation laws, so this objection would likely be moot.

As sad as her death is, she's the one who chose to take that path. Outside influences may impact our decision making process, but the final call is always up to the individual.

You're diving far into philosophy and psychology here; it would be nice if you were qualified in the area. I can recommend Daniel Dennet's "Freedom Evolves" as a reasonably straightforward introduction to some of the ways to think around this.

Short summary: There are many, many cases where there is no way to reasonably conclude that an individual has a choice. Start with a baby. Continue with somebody that's injected with drugs that make them psychotic (ie, they can't perceive reality.) Then, how about somebody that gets hypnotized into being psychotic? (I've seen hypnosis trigger schizophrenia; it's not pretty.)

From working with hypnosis, I'll say that having a group press somebody's buttons is more powerful than direct hypnosis. It can lead to larger changes faster. It can, effectively, take away all choice: If you control what people perceive and how they interpret it, there's no choice left.

That's why the phrase "I was just following orders" is not considered a valid defense.

And we come back to the point of fact-checking. "I was just following orders" is considered a valid defense in a lot of cases; just not all. And the defense is considered invalid in a less psychologically coercive environment that above, so you application is moot.

Also, from my point of view, invalidating "I was only following orders" as a defense is a tactical choice, based on changing consequences. By removing it as a defense, the segment of people for which there *was* a choice will be coerced towards making the right choice, sacrificing the segment for which there was no choice.

This isn't a case of one person constantly sending her harassing messages - it's a case of many people exercising their free-speech rights.

No. Their "free-speech rights" end where harassment begins, and spreading this out over many people don't resolve the issue, especially if it was willful. It only makes it harder to punish.

Some of their other actions are certainly illegal, and should be prosecuted, but let's not invent new "crimes" to charge them with.

Let's not invent new defenses, either.

Google doesn't ask Indian Police for justification. All it takes is an email request, and these IP addresses could be in USA!

A common reason India Cyber Crime cops ask for IP addresses is "cyber defamation"... and India has Criminal Defamation laws still in the books.
(Despite the original land of their laws changing with the times: United Kingdom: Defamation Decriminalised)

In 2005, a Singapore company eSys won the 2005 Ernst and Young award, rubbed shoulders with the elite, launched a Foundation and so on.

Things became more noteworthy when eSys used Indian Police Cyber Crime cell to fight their cyber-defamation ... and by 2009, it was clear that there was some serious fraud at eSys.

Mumbai Police even ordered an American to delete a Cartoon... did they need an excuse to do that ?

So if Indian Police can get IP address records from USA simply by asking, why not FBI ?

or on drugs.

If you want to get into the legal specifics of it, Libel, and all forms of defamation are Civil Torts under federal law. 17 states DO have CRIMINAL LAWS against defamation though.

For more information, I would recommend reading the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation and check out this handy map on world wide defamation legality: http://www.article19.org/advocacy/defamationmap/map/

Defamation has NOTHING to do with dissenting speech, and in the US has a number of minimal criteria that must be met. For instance, saying "In my opinion, President Bush is a total douche bag" is NOT defamation. On the other hand (for sample only, I do not believe the following sentence to be true in any sense) "President Bush looks at kiddie porn, and I have logs to prove it!" could be libel, or at least it would be if not clearly presented in this context. You can insult people, you can oppose their point of view, you can let your opinion be known. But you can't make inaccurate statements about people that you know to be false in a factual manner, well you can, but if those statements go on to cause harm, you can be held liable (either civilly or criminally) for your statements.

In the United States, you are protected from libel, whether you take it onto yourself to sue the attacker in civil court, or if you reside in one of the states where defamation is a criminal act AND you can convince a DA to push the charges.

-Rick