"Nuremberg Files" Decision Overturned

PeterMiller writes "ABC News is running a story on a US federal appeal court that threw out a record $109 million verdict against anti-abortion rights activists. From the article: 'If defendants threatened to commit violent acts, by working alone or with others, then their [works] could properly support the verdict,' Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote. 'But if their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment.' My question is, what does this do to every other lawsuit claiming a website, movie, video game or song lead someone to a violent act?" Readers may recall that this case involved an anti-abortion website which published the names and addresses of doctors who provided abortion services, and cheered whenever one of them was killed. Our previous stories are here and here. The Appeals Court's opinion reviews the history of the case, and the finding that the statements on the website were not true threats under U.S. law and were thus protected speech. There used to be a number of mirrors of the site available - most of them seem to have disappeared, but this one is still up, minus the lists of doctors.

Comments

A tale of two rulings

[kzinti]

Much as I despise these right-wing wackos, I love my First Amendment even more. So I'm pleased that the court would defend it.

Something more that interests me is what happens when you consider this ruling in light of another one covered here on /. not too long ago in this story:

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/02/26/1622248_F.shtml

And the CNET article referenced from the Slashdot discussion:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4930756.html? tag=nbs

The gist of the story is that the high school students published satire aimed at his high school principal on his own time, and on a web site entirely independent of the school. When the school district tried to punish the student, he sued and won. The court ruled that the school had no jurisdiction over the student's speech rights as practiced on his own time and his own equipment. And rightly so. You high school kids still have some speech rights in the eyes of the courts.

Now consider today's case, in which the court said that the anti-abortion speech is protected, including the "hit lists", so long as the speech doesn't directly threaten to commit violent acts. Wow. Juxtapose this case against the high school case from some weeks ago and tell me what you see.

How long is it going to be until we hear about some high school kid publishing a hit list on his personal web site? I thinking here of a list a teachers, administrators, bullies, and the like... of course, this kind of thing is probably happening already, but now it's protected. Are more kids going to start doing this kind of thing? How will the school districts react? Will they continue to suspend and expel... or will they just call the police?

It's a fascinating situation. It's great that speech rights on the Internet are seeing some protection, especially for students, but I'm wondering how these new protections are going to be interpreted by today's high school kids, and what the repercussions are going to be when they start pushing the envelope with them.

--Jim

Re:The judges are right

[taxman_10m]

It goes beyond religion.

There are athiest prolifers: http://www.godlessprolifers.org

And there are libertarian arguments against abortion: http://www.l4l.org

To view the issue as a "religious issue" is as incorrect to view slavery as a religious issue simply because many of the arguments surrounding its practice in the US were religious in nature.

The Importance of Freedom of Speech

[Bonker]

When I attended UT, I had dinner from time to time with an Iranian exchange student who couldn't beleive that Americans got away with so much in the way of criticising our leaders and the rich and powerful. I had to explain to him the difference between a threat and criticism, but he still couldn't beleive how liberal we were and how public we could be with our speech.

He did see, however, how important it was for us to keep hold of these freedoms, even if it meant sacrificing some safety. (I'm certain that the abortion doctors don't agree with me, but...)

For every Klan site and every kill the abortion doctor site, there's a cryptome.org or a peacefire.org who couldn't function without basic freedom of speech laws. For every nutcase redneck who promotes white power, there's a rainbow coalition website who would have been edged out by our republican, white congress, some of whom were in office and voted against civil-rights legislation in the 60's.

It is important to watch for threats and illegal behavior, but to be truly fair, free speech decisions must almost always come down in favor of the speaker.

These words are as true today as they were 50, 100 and 200 years ago: 'If it doesn't work for everybody, it doesn't work for anybody.'

Unrelated Terrorists?

[blair1q]

Unrelated?

Seems like if you apply a few degrees of Kevin Bacon to it I bet you would find that the people doing the shooting are not all that unrelated with the people doing the slandering and intimidating.

So now it's okay for, say, November 17 to come into the US and incorporate a 501(c)(3) front that recruits members for November 17 as long as it says "kill them with kindness" in the title?

There's a lot of bad craziness in this ruling. They reach back to a left-wing supportive ruling with at least as much bad craziness in it in order to support this instance of courtly insanity. It's almost as though they're trying to tangle this obvious case of hate-speech/violence in order to get a legal excuse to re-review the previous one. When the Supreme Court gets this, they can either validate the concept of violence-enabling speech as free speech, or they can fix it across all the cases cited.

And while I would agree that speech calling for violence necessary to revolutionize the government is clearly protected--it's the reason for the 1st Amendment--I don't agree that speech calling for violence against individuals engaged in medical practice should be protected. The government is not a doctor, and political action should be sufficient to decide the fate of such doctors. If political action is not sufficient, then your quarrel is with the government, not the doctors, or you're just plain wrong. In fact, I'm leaning towards the attitude that calling for violence against any person by name rather than a governmental institution is just plain wrong, though that would take some careful defining in a world where we place or inherit people in governing positions as an institution of one.

--Blair