Council of Europe Pushes Net Hate-Speech Ban

omnirealm writes: "The N.Y. Times is reporting that the 43-nation Council of Europe is trying to ban racist and hate speech from the Internet by adding a protocol, or side agreement, to its cybercrime convention, which was stamped for ratification on Thursday."

Comments

so what is hate/racist speech?

[thogard]

So if I tell someone that I think they should go to jail because they just forced Female Circumcision on their 12 yr old daughter, is that hate speech? The only groups I know of around here that do it are Muslims so is that racists?

In case no one notices....

[Flavius Stilicho]

"The Justice Department fought hard to have the racist bits pulled from the cybercrime convention itself. I can't imagine they will let freedom of speech be curtailed via the backdoor in this way."

I wonder how hard the DOJ fought against some of the other recent bills that have been passed that fly in the face of the Constitution.

Re:In case no one notices....

[nomadic]

I wonder how hard the DOJ fought against some of the other recent bills that have been passed that fly in the face of the Constitution.

I don't wonder. I know exactly how little they've fought against those bills.

Damned whipper snappers

[DEATH AND HATRED]

When I was a youngen I had to walk up hill in 6 feet of snow bare footed just to write a/l on page 6!

WRONG

[SMN]

For example, it is illegal in the US to publicly say bad things about other people (particularly if those things are not true). This is called libel law, and it's a clear limitation of free speech. In most countries, it's also illegal to call for murder...

Your understanding of US laws and your definition of libel is severely flawed. It's ONLY libel IF the "bad things" are false. It's perfectly legal - and indeed constitutionally protected - to say bad things about someone, as long as they're true (the exception being sexual harassment, but that's a special case).

Also, in the US, it is perfectly legal to "call for murder." In fact, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this last year when ruling on a website that listed the names and home addresses of some abortion doctors calling for their deaths (there was, of course, an article on Slashdot, too). What you cannot due is threaten someone directly, or actually arrange for their murder. I can say "Someone should please kill CowboyNeal," but not "I'm gonna kill you, CowboyNeal," or arrange to pay someone else $50 to kill CowboyNeal.

The Europeans think that calling for the elimination of a category of people is at least as bad as calling for the murder of one particular person. Racism is simply a call for murder disguised as political speech (just like Bin Laden's ramblings are calls for murder disguised as religious speech).

And if someone wants to express a racist opinion, they do have every right to do so. Take your Bin Laden example -- the government hasn't outlawed showing Bin Laden's videos. Even after they asked networks not to show them, for fear of hidden messages, only some networks complied. The government would like that the others not show the videos, but it can't force them.

Indeed, there are a number of organizations operating in America that the government doesn't like, but can't do anything about. Look at all these odious cults (Scientology is certainly a common topic of discussion here), or some of those southern militant separatist groups. The government can't persecute these groups solely for expressing their beliefs. The few times they can arrest Scientologists are when they break actual likes, such as by transporting someone under 18 across state lines.

If you think freedom of speech exists in the US and not in Europe, then explainto to us why we don't see naked bodies anywhere on American network TV (unlike in Europe).

Now this is a very valid point.

To your credit, there were a few other valid examples above. No, you cannot threaten someone directly, and no, you cannot sexually harass someone, and no, you cannot falsely scream "fire" in a theater. These, however, are all illegal because they directly infringe on the rights of others. The nudity example is still inexcusable.

Explain to me why the government can't stop me from calling for the murder of people of one particular color, but Microsoft can stop me from publishing benchmarks of their SQL server, and my ISP can regulate what I can put on my web page.

Microsoft can't stop you from publishing benchmarks. They can threaten too, but that has not and will not be held up. And your ISP can regulate what you put up because you can choose your ISP, and when you make that choice you agree to certain terms of service. There are certainly ISPs that allow you to put up whatever you like, be it porn, warez, or hate speech, and you should stop complaining and go find one if you so choose.

The US government does NOTHING to help me protect my freedom of speech or my privacy. European governments actually protect the privacy and the freedom of speech of their citizens to a much larger extent (and I have lived on both sides of the pond).

And this us just absurd. In most all cases, freedom and privacy directly contradict each other -- you can't have consumer protection laws that forbid companies from sharing marketting data and say that the company is free to say whatever it likes. In the few cases where they're on the same side, such as when a company tries to discover the identity of someone who anonymously criticized them on some message board, the courts have in fact ruled in favor of both.

Is the US perfect? No, of course not. But the vast majority of your examples are absolutely wrong. Sounds to me like you're looking to "pcik a fight" where no basis for one exists.