Slashdot Mirror
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."
Filters that ban racist and hate speech don't work, because people find ways to get around them. Do we want to say the word "bicycle" assuming it's banned? What can we do:
b i c y c l e
b1cycle
bycycle
b icycle
All to the same effect. And there simply aren't enough people out there to monitor hate speech and get it removed, which is why we haven't solved the drug problem in most countries.
-Evan
I believe that any form of censorship, and yes folks, this is censorship is wrong. Now I do not and never will condone ignorant and/or hateful speech, but even Europe should learn that in order to maintain a free society, a government should allow freedom of speech, even if that speech is not touchy-feely. Remember, even the idiots have the fundamental right to free speech!
I hate sigs.
The people who really want to get their message of hate out will be able to find servers in other countries to host their sites. Besides, you cannot put aside the humour value of seeing the blather that some of these idiots come up with.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Free speech should be an inalieable right no matter how offensive your words are.
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?
"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.
I have never been able to understand why Americans feel that they can use racial slurs and hate speech freely. What purpose does it serve ? All civilised countries have laws about what can and cannot be said, to protect the minorities, and ensure stability.
Anyway, I hope Slashdot gets a censorship policy up and running soon, since all the racist crap that I have to put up with when I read at -1 will surely contravene this law...
Obviously the Council of Europe hates racists and are being given a public platform for their hateful beliefs! The N.Y. Times should be forced to remove this hate speech from their web site!
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
There's a very real danger of conventions like this to grow into a "meta-government" only within reach of lobbyists, especially if additional meta-government enforcement measures are provided, e.g. through the WTO in the case of certain WIPO treaties. But in this specific case, as in the Hague Convention, it should be possible for Europeans to lobby effectively against blatant violations of free speech and new privacy-violationg laws on a national level. Just don't be fooled by politicians telling you that they have to obey "international treaties". Tell them what you think these treaties, signed without any prior democratic discourse whatsoever, are really worth.
Ooops, now I'm in trouble.
In France for example, you can easily go to jail if you say anything about the Jews : for example, if your opinion is that most banking establishments are run by Jews and you voice it publicly, you open yourself to antisemitic lawsuits against you, and most likely lost by you as well. That opinion isn't particularly antisemitic, and is frankly quite dumb (IMHO), but it's your right to have it. Just don't say it otherwise you could be in trouble.
If the same laws were even proposed in the U.S., people would scream bloody murder, and it's good. But in Europe, things like that happen all the time and people don't even notice.
So, what is surprising here ? nothing. This is a piece of non-news (for Europeans) reported by the US-centric Slashdot team. It's exactly like the Nazi memorabilia ban France tried to impose on Yahoo.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I mean, c'mon. You'd think Europeans would learn after a few centuries or so that trying to make bad people shut up doesn't really work.
No, I'm not an American.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Why is racist/hate speech wrong?
For example, I hate MSCE's, and we all know that they're inferior to the rest of us.
What's wrong with stating that? Are MSCE's going to get offended? Then let them be offended! And let them learn how to patch IIS so it isn't assaulted by countless virii!
On a more serious note, this is indeed stupid. Perhaps racist and hate speech is wrong, however, everyone's entitled to their opinion. What's next? Book burning?
Harry Potter, burn 'em all, they promote witchcraft. Get rid of those copies of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Man, if that doesn't promote violence, I don't know what does. Don't get me started on Tolkien..
Sounds ridiculous, eh? Not so much. If someone wants to believe something they read, whether that be that a certain race is inferior, or that the Nazgul are chasing them down.. Well, shouldn't it be their choice whether or not to believe it?
Banning hate speech from the internet isn't going to make the problem go away. Nor will banning it from being written anywhere else. You could always make it illegal to even speak hate, but in the end, if someone wishes to hate something, be it a person, place, thing, or an entire race, they will.
And there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
Fight now, Europeans, or become slaves to tyranny.
If you ban sites like http://www.godhatesfags.com from spouting their idiocy, then all kinds of poor saps on usenet will have to make up their own strawmen to shoot down.
It helps so much more to have these morons right there, where everyone can see, laugh, cry or whatever it is they do when they see such silly sites.
Why support a government that doesn't want its people to feel strong emotions?
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Hate Speech = Thought Crime.
One of the reasons that things like this concern civil libertarians is that its really not a very big step from hate speech to politically unpopular speech. In the United States, jurisprudence is such that many forms of speech and expression, including things both hateful or vulgar, can quite easily also be considered statments of political content, and therefor protected on general principle.
C//
Right now, 300 of you are probably starting to write replies, all in the vein of..
Free speech doesn't end where you disagree with what the other person has to say. You can't muzzle people just because they're evil or stupid. Information wants to be free, even if it'll be misused. etc.
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link. Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day. In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them; Germany saw hundreds of attacks on blacks and non-Germans, with many of them dying in the attacks.
People were burned to death in their sleep.
There's a deep-seated strain of virulent fascism in Europe that's been intermittently expressed in politics and popular culture for most of the 20th century. Hitler and Mussolini didn't come out nowhere - there were fascist governments in many European countries because the authoritarian tradition instilled by the former feudal/royal systems was a fertile breeding ground for fascists.
Sure, Germany and Italy lost the war. That doesn't change the fact that Italy has a Prime Minister with strong ties to the fascist right. That doesn't change the fact that neo-Nazi skinhead groups in Germany are getting more and more support from stupid teeangers every day. Jewish cemeteries are being defaced. Blacks are attacked, asylum seeker homes are burned down.
What's that have to do with freedom of speech? Someone once said that in order to stop the hate, you'd have to kill all the grandmothers. (paraphrasing badly, basically in order to stop having hate passed on through generation)
Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) remains banned in Germany. Even though public education in Germany is far better than in the US, with history being one of the most thoroughly-taught subjects, and the Nazi regime being thoroughly exposed as the evil that it was, a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals. They will use everything they can as propaganda material. They will find followers - probably not many, but enough. People are being killed by those 'few' followers. Hate is being spread. A lot of harm has been done to Europe through politics of hate, wars have been started, millions and millions have been killed.
The internet is difficult to regulate. Neo-nazis use it to co-ordinate their activities unchecked, and to spread as much hate-filled material through the net as possible. You can't make accessing it impossible, but you can make accessing it illegal. You can make it illegal to spread false propaganda that's only intended to harm people and cause harm. You have to try.
Most of you haven't lived through the type of hate that's being spread by the hate speech being banned. It's easy to be an armchair critic. It's easy to criticize. Please don't. I know many of you will say that the only way to fight this is by allowing the complete and unfettered flow of information, with public education taking center stage to show the people how wrong all of that hate speech is. Sure. That has been done, for more than half a century now. But a small minority persists, a small minority causing a disproportionate amount of evil.
Yes, we have to be very careful not to let matters escalate too much - after all, who watches the watchment? It's important to note that banning hate speech is an approach that crosses party lines in Europe: in Germany, both the ruling Socialist/Green coalition and the right- and left-wing opposition are strongly in favour of dealing harshly with neo-Nazis.
In closing, hate speech is a genuine problem. There are very, very few solutions to dealing with it, and trying to criminalize its flow is one of the few approaches we have.
Maybe you want to think about that next time you make fun of France banning Yahoo! nazi auctions. A lot of the stuff auctioned off could conceivably be worn by people burning down houses simply because they didn't like the skin colour of the people living in them.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
if you ban hate/racist speech you have to ban the things anyone considers racist or hateful.. to some the word niggers is racist, to others its not. if you only ban certain words then that is being racist to the people that don't like words you don't ban.
Once again, liberals are demonstrating that they are the modern-day Nazis...only they do it under a the guise of "for the children", and other feel-good nonsense. Free speech is free speech. It comes with the danger that it may be offensive. It's no big deal to defend speech that isn't. Liberals are all for "diversity", but apparently that only applies to diversity of skin, diversity of lifestyles, etc. It apparently doesn't apply to diversity of opinions.
What's next, a book-burning? Ooops, I forgot, liberals are already doing that on campuses. Well, newspapers that dared to print something that liberals didn't agree with, anyway. See: Brown University and the PAID advertisement of an individual who was refuting the absolute nonsense of paying reparations for slavery. That justified a good ol' fashioned newspaper burnin'. If you think that reparations should be paid, that's fine, discuss it in an open forum, logically and rationally. Burning newspapers is about as anti-American as it gets. But this new breed of liberal is hardly pro-American anyway...
Oh BTW, the UN has been targetting our rights (ie, Second Amendment) for years. They are irrelevant anyway: they kicked US off the human rights commission??!!! We (the U.S.) are the only reason there is any decency in the world at all, and don't ever forget that!! Sudan was nominated as one of our replacements on the human rights commission (and I think got the position). What a farce. Sudan has been ACTIVELY practicing slavery until at least the 80's. They may be doing it even now. Why the UN gives voice to absolute criminals like this is beyond understanding.
I don't really think so. I'm Jewish and I could care less what other people say. But I'll tell you this -- sometimes I wish that we _did_ run everything as is sometimes claimed. Then I could get a better job. ;)
Anyway I'm definately opposed to censorship. You won't catch me claiming that offensive speech should be silenced.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well then.... if Euro folks are so adimate to censor people, then why don't they just create a proxie, and firewall, for their people? This would shelter their citizens from all that evil free speech, and free expression. While thier at it, why not just physically remove the internet, and replace it with euro-net.... a fully contained intra-net for euro folks that is protected from the hate-mongers?
serriously folks, the most logical reason this amendment is being slipped in is because the USA court rulled that Frenchy anti-hate laws do not apply to USA based companies. I would not doubt it to find that a french person sponsored this addition into being. IT is too ironic that this slips in not even a week after the USA court rullings.
"I HATE YOU"
OOOO.. oh no... I said it.... now I'm going to be banned in Europe.... and slahsdot is going to be sued in a French court....... its a damn shame.
Go ahead... balkanize the internet.... the folks in the USA wiull simply go on with what we have always done... freely express ourselves. And the folks in Europ will still do what they always do... read USA internet sites.
As if anything is going to change by this.... it might lift the ego of some politician for a year or two. If Europe folks are so advanced, and enlightend then it would seem that they would be mature enough to simply not look at the hatefull items on the net....
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Yeah I'm glad in the US we don't censor anything on TV,Radio or the internet like the beepheads at the European Union. I mean what a bunch of beepholes.
Right now, 300 of you are probably starting to write replies, all in the vein of..
Free speech doesn't end where you disagree with what the other person has to say. You can't muzzle people just because they're evil or stupid. Information wants to be free, even if it'll be misused. etc.
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link. Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day. In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them; Germany saw hundreds of attacks on blacks and non-Germans, with many of them dying in the attacks.
People were burned to death in their sleep.
There's a deep-seated strain of virulent fascism in Europe that's been intermittently expressed in politics and popular culture for most of the 20th century. Hitler and Mussolini didn't come out nowhere - there were fascist governments in many European countries because the authoritarian tradition instilled by the former feudal/royal systems was a fertile breeding ground for fascists.
Sure, Germany and Italy lost the war. That doesn't change the fact that Italy has a Prime Minister with strong ties to the fascist right. That doesn't change the fact that neo-Nazi skinhead groups in Germany are getting more and more support from stupid teeangers every day. Jewish cemeteries are being defaced. Blacks are attacked, asylum seeker homes are burned down.
What's that have to do with freedom of speech? Someone once said that in order to stop the hate, you'd have to kill all the grandmothers. (paraphrasing badly, basically in order to stop having hate passed on through generation)
Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) remains banned in Germany. Even though public education in Germany is far better than in the US, with history being one of the most thoroughly-taught subjects, and the Nazi regime being thoroughly exposed as the evil that it was, a small minority will still flock to neo-fascist ideals. They will use everything they can as propaganda material. They will find followers - probably not many, but enough. People are being killed by those 'few' followers. Hate is being spread. A lot of harm has been done to Europe through politics of hate, wars have been started, millions and millions have been killed.
The internet is difficult to regulate. Neo-nazis use it to co-ordinate their activities unchecked, and to spread as much hate-filled material through the net as possible. You can't make accessing it impossible, but you can make accessing it illegal. You can make it illegal to spread false propaganda that's only intended to harm people and cause harm. You have to try.
Most of you haven't lived through the type of hate that's being spread by the hate speech being banned. It's easy to be an armchair critic. It's easy to criticize. Please don't. I know many of you will say that the only way to fight this is by allowing the complete and unfettered flow of information, with public education taking center stage to show the people how wrong all of that hate speech is. Sure. That has been done, for more than half a century now. But a small minority persists, a small minority causing a disproportionate amount of evil.
Yes, we have to be very careful not to let matters escalate too much - after all, who watches the watchment? It's important to note that banning hate speech is an approach that crosses party lines in Europe: in Germany, both the ruling Socialist/Green coalition and the right- and left-wing opposition are strongly in favour of dealing harshly with neo-Nazis.
In closing, hate speech is a genuine problem. There are very, very few solutions to dealing with it, and trying to criminalize its flow is one of the few approaches we have.
Maybe you want to think about that next time you make fun of France banning Yahoo! nazi auctions. A lot of the stuff auctioned off could conceivably be worn by people burning down houses simply because they didn't like the skin colour of the people living in them.
Andrew T-B
St Alex
I don't disagree that racism and fascism are serious problems in Europe, but those are serious problems everywhere, including the United States. We have the Klu Klux Klan, and Al Sharpton and every other kind of maniac you could imagine. But we also have a key philosophical premise that it is unacceptable to make thought or speech illegal, because that is the real root of facism: the desire to control another persons thoughts and actions.
If the same laws were even proposed in the U.S., people would scream bloody murder, and it's good.
The problem is, after Sept. 11, people probably wouldn't scream bloody murder. I think that Slashdot readers probably understand that free speech is necessary for a free society, but unfortunately there are a lot of dumb/ignorant people out there that think that the U.S. should be censoring speech. It really is too bad, but if you look around you, you'll see many of your own rights gradually slipping away.
Well, apparently you haven't heard of so-called "hate speech", and "hate crimes". Being something essentially just made up by liberals, they have the luxury of defining just what these things are. Apparently, at least for now, they are usually something that only whites or heterosexuals can commit.
A crime is a crime is a crime. It doesn't matter what frame of mind or what reason the criminal had when he committed the act. But try telling that to a liberal. If a gay man is killed by a heterosexual, it must be a hate crime. It doesn't matter that hate always accompanies murder (well, unless the murderer is a nutter). Apparently, my murder would be a less serious crime than say, a black man killed by a white guy, huh? I doubt liberals really think through their positions too much, or they would have realized that this would have been the outcome. Or maybe that's what they wanted?
I guess Orwell knew what he was talking about when he coined the term "thoughtcrime". It's here and now, ladies and gentlemen.
If you want to keep up on the wide world of hate I would recomend Hatewatch.org. If I can recall correctly they have had some trouble with keeping up with all the hate sites the web has to offer and had to suspend their arcive of hate sites. /. tradition of mentioning GPL any time you can, hatewatch is made with Post-Nuke a slashcode style GNU/GPL licanced app.
If they can not keep up with just monitoring these sites how is anyone going to cut down on them?
Also, in the grand
Ascii artist &
What?? The only people you can make fun of now are white Christian heterosexual non-handicapped American males. That's it. Everyone else is a a victim now. And I haven't heard a Pollock(sp?) joke in YEARS. I never did understand those jokes anyway, because all the Polish folks I ever knew very well at all were very, very smart people. Wasn't Mandelbrot Polish, too?
And besides, some Jew comedians/entertainers are self-deprecating enough that they already covered that ground pretty well. Woody Allen, Jon Stewart, uh, well Woody Allen did quite a lot on his own, I doubt I really need too many more examples...and don't radical black "leaders" (in quotes because no one elected them) CONSTANTLY blame the Jews (and Koreans) for their problems at every turn? I think even Jesse Jackson still does that, doesn't he? I guess certain groups get a free pass on racism all the time, so it's easy to see how this was overlooked.
at least we have the new terrorism laws here in the u.s. to stop a lot of the facsist gangs like the kkk and the nazis and black panthers.
the feds now have the wherewithall to bring these
idiots down when before theyre hands were tied.
C;YA, don't wanna B'YA. =P
But I wouldn't expect anything less from the inferior life forms passing for human that Europe spawned. Man are those people stupid. And they smell awful. Don't they believe in baths?
... Somebody's got it in their sig here, and it goes something like this:
"I may not like what you have to say, but I will fight for your right to say it."
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
Once again, this proposition is a type of law that only hurts the innocent. Te real haters out there will continue on with there hateful websites, probably on some foreign server. But you and I (or in this case, innocent European civilians) will have to watch out that they don't accidently click on a link to a site that mentions the word nazi, or else the they'll find the KGB knocking on their door.
This is really like gun laws in the US. Real criminals can get any gun that they want through the black market, but law-abiding citizens have to jump through hoops just to get a gun so that they can protect their own home.
The more recent Anti Terrorist bill is more of a hassle, especially since members of congree didn't even get a chance to read it before passing it Many of the problems in the European measure are is a secondary or side agreement which is not binding on everyone - Citing from the article:
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
While I don't doubt this is well-intentoned, it must not be allowed to happen.
If all people are to be held equal before the law, then all human thought must also be held equal before the law, because it is thought which truly makes us human. And if that is true, then all human speech must also be held equal before the law, because it is via speech that ideas are formed and propagated. Even the right to say things as reprehensible as hate speech must be held as absolute and sacrosanct.
The reason for this is simple: no one person knows the absolute truth. Not just about morality, but about basically anything (even sciense; Heisenberg showed that with his Uncertainty Principle). And yes, I include myself in this. It is only at some point in between all the differing viewpoints that the truth can ever be found. Start disallowing thoughts of any type, and you permanently cripple humanity's ability to seek truth. This is a far greater crime against humanity than any hate speech could ever be.
Trying to eliminate racism is an honorable goal. But this must be achieved through education, not legislation. Yeah, it's not as efficient. But it doesn't limit the human mind, and that is what makes it ethical.
Ok. I have a solution to all this. I call it FacistNet(tm). It will be under the strict control of a committee of representatives from concerned interests who are unhappy with all the nasty freedom that the Internet provides. Users will not be allowed to post, send, say, think, or otherwise express anything that might offend, damage, cost, inconvenience, or otherwise do anything to make anyone sad. Membership will be open to anyone willing to submit to constant scrutiny and investigation, just to make sure that no bad people can use FacistNet(tm). Everything that goes onto FacistNet(tm) will have to be approved by the ApprovalsBoard(tm) to make sure that it doesn't violate any of the Terms Of Lets All Be Nice Conformist Citizens And Do What The Nice People Tell Us(tm).
Then maybe the rest of us can use the internet to send information to each other.
Geeze...
Unfortunately, you don't have an equivalent to the amendment that is the most important, and that is the 2nd one. How are you going to fight for those rights you listed if you suddenly get a dictator in power up there? I bet no German thought it could happen in Germany, either. A list of rights don't mean a hill of beans if you have a dictator in power and no muscle to knock him/her out of power.
Somes americans are so blind regarding the first amendment... In Europe you have freedom of speech BUT hating speeches are censored. In US you have freedom of speech BUT sexuality and vulgarity are censored. What's the difference ? Easy. One culture place "hate" as the public ennemy. The other place the "politically incorrect" as the public ennemy. I'm 100% against any form of censorship, but if I HAVE to choose one, I prefere the one that is less hypocrite...
"The only solution to harmful speech is more speech."
-- Thomas Jefferson
To deny everyone the right to communicate in a way that may be deemed hateful to some group, especially in an international network, would be a rather large limitation on political freedom, and the ability to many forms of otherwise legitimate humor.
For instance, let's say I start a page ridiculing the beliefs of the Amish. I have many patently offensive Amish jokes on the page. I post ways to encourage Amish people to stop being Amish, and take a persona of someone who idealizes a world where Amish people do not exist.
Seeing those words may be reprehensible to many. However, it would be a valid work of humor, and also of political thought. These are all things that one would be able to print in a newspaper editorial, and say in a public forum - but suddenly would be illegal to write on a web page.
As an added 'bonus', such a law would clog up the legal system as special interest groups begin to accuse every one of their detractors of hate on the Internet.
Ryan Fenton
Why? Axiom? Dogma?
It doesn't matter what frame of mind or what reason the criminal had when he committed the act. But try telling that to a liberal.
Killing in self-defense is not a crime at all, while killing while committing a felony is a capital crime punishable by death (in death penalty states of course).
If I kill you because I am upset you're sleeping with my wife, my punishment will be entirely different than if I kill you because your wife paid me to.
Intent and motivation is a major part of the crime. Mens Rea. This is not a liberal concept.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Sorry the clause in bold above negates the entire document. Rights by definition may not be subject to any law. They exist through providence, divine or not, and therefore are not subject to the whims of a filthy democracy. This is why Canadians have "hate speach" laws in place. Thanks for playing "Who Wants to be a Freeman". Try again.
(prelude: Read this link over at applinks. Some responses to the racial law suit that is being levied at apple. Excellently written commentary and responses. A must read)
Political correctness, anyone?
This to me was and still is the greatest mind phuck of all times.
Censoring something via law, violence, flames, war all pale in comparison to making you afraid of saying the wrong thing because you did not use the right code-word of "society-speak".
The kick in the balls is this:
Politically Correct speech such as "African-American" belittles those of color as "less than American".
To hell with this -American shit...YOU...ARE...AN...AMERICAN.
That is first and formost.
Yes, your fore fathers before you came from another country...guess what? All Americans, save for the Indians (the original 'Americans') came from other countries.
Censoring people is one thing, making them censor themselves is another. Making people force censorship upon themselves is more incidious than burning books, forbidding knowledge, denying access to content of anyform.
One day the EU, and maybe our own government, will wake up and realize this simple fact:
Laws (like locks) keep an honest man honest.
If a criminal, scholar, rich/poor man, tech, politician or whomever wants something bad enough they will get it.
As far as Nazi paraphenalia goes? Don't want to see it? Don't go looking for it, dammit.
And one question to the EU:
Considering this and the measures you are taking agianst Microsoft, I am forced to ask, could you please tell us ahead of time which face will be talking, and when.
The right'ing wrongs and wrong'ing rights gets confusing after a fashion.
(sigh)
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
...timothy posts a message that uses some term or slogan from the book 1984, on a post which deals with some [obscure|overhyped|underwhelming] "privacy invasion" which we should, of course, band together like mindless monkeys to oppose.
I'm sorry to have to be direct, but timothy needs to be shown to the door and asked not to return.
Mod me down for saying so, but you know that I'm right.
to recycle an old overused quote:
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
and couple that with
"Your opinions are as wrong as everyone elses."
the sensation of reading a /. comment you have read before...
(i.e. "Free speech? There's a difference." by at-b)
Not only has this comment been copied ad verbatim, but apparantly two moderators found it "original" enough to give it a +2 bonus. Hrm...
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Pray tell me what is non-divine providence? And how is it that rights are not subject to the law? They exist because of the law! Thanks for playing "Who Wants to Be a Political Philosopher". Please do not try at home.
Y'know, I think this "hate" speech ban is the right way to go. I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who agree with me. We should do something to band together, something to show that we all think this "hate" ban is a good thing. I propose that we all wear some something similar so that we can easily spot like-thinking friends in a crowd. Brown shirts are very easily noticed, so I propose that everyone who supports a ban on hatred to wear brown shirts every day from this point forward.
Once we have sufficient numbers of "brown shirts", we might want to come up with something snazzier to show that we're organized and "trendy". I think we should come up with something that's easy to spot in a crowd. How about armbands? Sure, they're a little old fashioned, but retro is trendy these days, no?
And to make sure the public is made aware that our legions of brownshirts and armbands are heard in our united front against hatred, we ought to stage some public rallies! I propose something dramatic: let's gather as much hate-filled literature as we can and publicly burn it! After all, what patriotic, faithful, GOOD citizen could be against the destruction of hate?
I have a glorious vision of all of us, dancing around a huge pyre of burning books, wearing our brown shirts and armbands, preaching to the masses, exhorting them to destroy hatred wherever it is found! Quick! Take a picture!
...wait...
Now, go find a newsreel, circa 1938, Berlin, Germany. Compare the pictures.
How far we've come...and how short a distance we've travelled. Is it ironic to anyone other than me that Europe, twice a charnel house in one century, is proposing to institute the very fascism and censorship that brought about such ruination and destruction half a century ago? Will we never learn?
I forgot, we can't learn...history books mentioning hateful times have been banned or rewritten. Can't have hate around, can we?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Too many of you people are posting hatefull comments about the Council of Europe. That means you're all outlaws.
Since the days of freedom and free speech are counted, I guess I better grab the few occasions I have and say what's on my mind. All those pro-censorship laws are crap.
What this might mean for Slashdotters :
1. No more anti-MS posts;
2. You can't say anything against John Katz;
3. You can't oppose any government or any law;
4. You can't say that a video card sucks;
5. Even if you're a crazy alcoholic criminal SOB, it's against the law to admit it.
What is your point? The usurpation of rights in the US by the federal government has no bearing on the legitimacy of the aforementioned "Canadian Charter". First of all slander is a civil matter, not a criminal one. The Bill of Rights and Constitution of the United States deals explicitly with the relationship the government has with the people. That relationship being defined by granting the government explicit powers.
The Canadian charter began with the hedge I quoted previously. It continues on with its feel good socialist agenda and then towards the end makes a half-hearted attempt to claim this litany of rights is not an exhaustive one. Well, if the list is not exhaustive...WHY MAKE IT. What is the point of this Charter. If a government is organized such that its powers are explicitly stated, the rights of citizen units need not be emblazoned in some happy pappy charter. This was a chief argument against the Bill of Rights by the way.
No, the real purpose of such a document is an Orwellian attempt to make folks think they are being given these rights. That they are a gift from the benevolent ones. The result being that what was once a right becomes, in the minds of the people, a privelage. Additionally while citizens are busy arguing over new law and its relationship to the Charter, other laws which destroy non-enumerated rights are put in to place with nary a whimper.
A right that is granted is not a right at all.
They exist because of the law!
The law cannot grant rights. A government may grant privelages, but, not rights. Acknowledging that the law grants rights implies that the right no longer exists if the law is revoked.
Okay, you got me there. My wording was not the best. However, trying to discern WHY they conducted the act should not play a part.
The state of mind, yes. That's why there's 1st degree, 2nd degree, manslaughter, kiling in war, etc. Good point. But the way "hate crimes" are prosecuted is entirely a different matter, and I find it offensive and a travesty of justice that my life would be worth less (under such a new set of laws) than a minority or someone with an "alternative" lifestyle.
And hate speech is just ridiculous. Some talk show I listen to, the guy was reading a newspaper clipping about a guy yelling the word "nigger" at a black man who was apparently attacking his wife. I forget all the details, but in any case the man whose wife was being ATTACKED got charged with hate speech. The attacker is lucky he wasn't ventilated, but he chose to be offended? I'm sorry, but if you are attacking someone physically, you lose the right to be offended, that's for sure. At least in a world ruled by common sense.
Here I am, sitting in the U.S., watching my Constitutional rights slowly being eroded and chipped away...2nd Amendment, 4th Amendment, today the 5th and 6th Amendments, and even part of the 1st Amendment with the reactivation of the (clearly unconstitutional) Sedition Acts.
Now Europe seems to be engaged in its own form of idiocy, simultaneously berating us for 'giving up' freedom while at the same time actively attempting to muzzle its citizenry. God forbid that anyone indulge in hate speech! It might warp the fragile little minds of the chiiiillllddddrreeennn!
Has the whole world gone mad? Doesn't anyone give a shit for freedom anymore? And how hard is it to wrap one's mind around the fact that in order to truly have freedom that freedom must be applied to *everybody* - even fascist assholes? What is so difficult to understand here?
Hey Europe, take a look at the U.S. and see what you have in store for you! First they weaken one freedom, and then another, and another, a little at a time until some day your rights are nothing more than a hollow shell of what they once were. That's happening right here in my country as we speak - you want the same thing done to you?
This 21st century 'civilized' world seems to be on it's way to becoming nothing more than a factory for producing right-thinking, government-loving sheep. Perhaps a nice, violent revolution would be a good antidote to this lunacy...oops, I think I just violated the Sedition Acts, now I'm off to jail!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Well, I'm certainly no military expert, but I think an armed populace has a much better chance of fending off an evil regime than any non-armed populace.
After all, that's why the Nazis asked their population to turn in their guns ("for their safety", note) as one of their first actions when they came to power. Luckily, some opted NOT to do that, and fought back. Guess what? Many of them were able to escape, thereby surviving their gov't. I think some network just made a movie about recently, too. That's good, because many folks seem to get confused about WWII, and how it proves that the Second Amendment is not some kind of rusty old thing that some dead white guys came up with so "they didn't have to pay their taxes."
The second amendment is still VERY relevant. It was only sixty years ago that the world was again reminded in no uncertain terms of that.
Here's something that comes a lot closer to a sovereign individual than those pussies:
One sovereign individual says to the other: "You filthy son of a geezleforp! Your kind fratzlebgratz their sisters and fail to properly potty train their boys which is why they grow up to become triffsings!" This, being said in a prominent weblog can result in only one rational response: "'Sir' and I use the term lightly, I hereby formally and publically challenge you to a formal combat to the death. My purpose is to end your tyranny of hate speech against my people. If I cannot end your tyranny of hate speech against my people, then perhaps others, more expert, cunning and/or lucky, will see my example, and put an end to yours!"
After a mandatory 3 days of waiting, typically counseling with community leaders who attempt to find less extreme measures and avert bloodshed, the fateful day arives. Each individual sovereign gets 15 meters of strong cordage, a 10 inch blade, a wilderness area large enough to allow strategy chosen by a panel of community leaders, and a mandate that only one shall return. They enter from opposite sides and no observers are permitted in the wilderness area.
If one entering into a community bound by such rules of such individual sovereignty refuses combat or attempts to leave during the 3 day waiting and counseling period -- anyone may lawfully take any action whatsover against him at any time. See Valoric Fire: A Working Plan for Individual Sovereignty.
Seastead this.
In the United States, a person's rights end where another person's rights begin. As an example:
My fist has the right to fly through the air
Your nose as the right to be in its current form
My fist does not have the right to alter the current form of your nose.
This is why we have prisons, and slander is a no no. I'm not saying laws arent passed that seem to infringe upon our rights (DMCA) but thats the way its meant to work.
In any event, it didn't turn out to be a "we must ban it" whitewash. It was particularly good having the Australian Broadcasting Authority give a speech about how wonderful filtering software was and having David Goldman blow everything they said away completely.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Three problems with that line of thinking.
.50 cal target rifle and about 100 DU cored hot loads that'll punch through the side walls of most APC's. Since armed citizens outnumber armed soldiers about one hundred to to one in this country, we could stop them.
#1 The common foot soldier is still the most devastating part of any army. If you look at all the wars of the twentieth century, you'll notice that the longest and hardest part of the wars were fought by foot soldiers carrying rifles and pistols. In Somalia and Vietnam, all the technological might of the U.S. forces were actually bested by shoeless rebels with nothing more than AK-47's. And what about artillery and tanks? Well, you can build cheap bombs and build tank traps, or shoot the driver when he pops out to take a piss. It doesn't matter because there are ways to shut them down without high powered weaponry. You've also got nuts like me to help out...I've got a Barrett
#2 But I think that's a rather pointless argument anyway. All branches of the U.S. military are made up of 100% volunteer citizen soldiers. If a dictator somehow came to power in Washington and ordered the military to take control of all major U.S. cities, about 90% of the soldiers would politely tell him where he could shove it. Very, very few volunteer soldiers would follow an order to undermine the U.S. Constitution and fire on their friends and families.
#3 Your comment smacks of defeatism. Even if the military went along with a government overthrow of some type, and even if they had us completely outgunned, there are many of us who would rather fight and die than meekly submit to oppression. I personally don't care what the government has in it's arsenal, I know what I have in mine and I know how to use it. If worst came to worst, we could at least make life a living hell on an oppressive government long enough to incite a full scale rebellion.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
All I have to do under such a society is become a kung fu master, and I'm always right in any argument?
Fucking awesome.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I wonder if you'd find agreement with that statement in, say, India. Or Egypt. Or Mexico. Or Peru. Or anywhere in Africa (except South Africa). Or the Pacific Rim. Or...
To drag this back on topic, at least in the US, you're allowed to point out our hypocricies, our fallacies, and our failings. You're allowed to rail against the government and/or anyone you feel responsible. You're allowed to think and speak what you will. Our greatest danger is the growing acceptance by some of the sort of restrictions on speech common in Europe.
We aren't perfect and we aren't saints. But as far I can see, free speech is one thing we got right.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
why do most slashdotters care about this? Are you all planning to make a site about killing people because they have a certain color or a certain believe?
I actually hoped that the average slashdotter was smart enough to not have racist views.
Those are two different kinds of crime. Here's a more apt comparison.
#1 I kill you because I don't like you.
#2 I kill you because I don't like you since you're black.
How exactly is #2 worse than #1? Are hate crime advocates stating that I should get off easier for #1, simply because I didn't take your race into account? Shouldn't both crimes be treated equally harshly in court?
Don't misunderstand us anti-hate crime people. We aren't objecting to the fact that murderers and criminals are being harshly punished for their hate crimes, we simply think that a white man who rapes a white woman should be sentenced just as harshly as a white man who rapes a black woman and calls her a "n*gger" in the process. If we're willing to double the sentence for someone who commits a "hate" crime, why don't we just double the sentences for everyone who commits that crime? A raped woman is a raped woman, regardless of why she was raped. A dead man is a dead man regardless of why he was shot. Don't just stiffen some penalties, stiffen them ALL!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
*sniff* *sniff*
What's that smell?
Oh, yeah. It's the rancid stench of A Stupid Idea That Will Never Work.
SIGFEH
So, here's the deal... you have to protect the right of the crackpots and hatemongers because there's no clean way to protect everyone's rights except theirs.
There's nowhere that you can safely draw a line.
The Republican banner that Lincoln was elected under doesn't stand for the same values as it does today. Actually, the Republican party was much more "left" when Lincoln was elected, though you won't find anything saying that on theGOP's website...
you have to protect the right of the crackpots and hatemongers because there's no clean way to protect everyone's rights except theirs.
what about child pornography?
do we have to protect the rights child pornography makers becauce there's no clean way to protect everyone's rights except theirs? Or can we suddenly draw a line?
Thankfully, that's a false analogy. Sexual imagery involving children simply does not blend into other imagery (including adult pornography) in the same way that hate speech blends into political speech and the social discussion. In the instance of child pornography, there is a line that can be safely drawn. It does sometimes become murky, yes, but there aren't nearly so many shades of gray involved.
What a nice idea! I am looking forward for a secure job in a very important small-animals sub-departement of the european-hate-free-enforcement-agency. There is a new bussines of registering web servers, issuig web publisher non-hate certificates etc.
it isn't difficult to identify a site which say that a minority should be throw out of the country.
Well, for the Council of Europe (an Organisation not related to the EU) freedom of speech is a very important right. This has been showen in the past. There is just something else that is more important.
The Council of Europe has priorities different from the priorities of the people writing the US constitution some hundred years ago. For example, in Europe death penalty is banned, because the life has a higher priority than revange.
The reason for the different priorities about anti-nazi laws is the different history.Anyway, i hope 10 years later all those anti-nazi laws will not be nescessary anymore, then maybe it will be more harm than use and the law should be changed. (In most european countries it is far easier to change a constitutional law, than it is in the usa)
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
While the US does have the 1st amendment there is much to say for the claim that there is less free speech in the US than in many other countries.
US TV is phemonmenally bland, there is also a marked lack of decent media to really question goverment and business. What has been built up is a system where it is okay for someone to stand up on national TV and say "Evolution is rubbish" but someone who stands up and says "God doesn't exist" is liable to get lynched.
The US has one of the most terrible self-censorship mechanisms in place on planet earth. Examples of this are demonstrated above. Most people in the US have no clue about the laws of other countries, and don't attempt to find out. You can't "easily" go to prison for saying anything about Jews. For godsake if you knew anything about French politics you'd know they have a real problem with racism with the Front Nationale who polled 15% of the vote a few years ago.
Now as to the idea that the US would scream bloody murder if the same laws are applied... take scientific bigotry there are States in the US (esp Kansas) where Evolution isn't accepted. No one in Europe would have a _chance_ of getting that even close to being approved, they'd be laughed at so hard and then locked in the nut house.
The self-censorship applied by the US media and US citizens is quite stunning, opinions voiced about "Global Terrorism" from the country that supported Pinochet, the IRA, Contra rebels etc etc. The country of the McCarthy Witch Hunt. The country of DMCA.
In other countries people fight for freedom, the US clings to the 1st ammendment as if it solves the need to fight.
In the UK if a policeman pulls me over I do not have to be carrying my driving license, or any other identification, I do not have to give my identity. Sure he can then take me into custody on suspicion... but it is not a crime to not say who you are. Do you have the same freedom ?
In France if a company wishes to close down they must first discuss it with their employees, do you have such power over your life ?
In the Netherlands you can smoke cannabis for your own personal enjoyment, do you have such Freedom.
The last 3 prime ministers in the UK have been a middle class lad turned new Labour (Tony Blair), the son of a bloke who worked in a circus and who was an accountant and very working class who led the conservative party (John Major) and the daughter of a grocer who got a degree in Chemistry and led the Conservative party in 3 successive election victories. Working class, middle class, upper class, man or woman and no-one cares about religon... all have led the UK. Do you have such equality.
Freedom is education.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
"I may detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Voltaire
Personally, I am extemely anti-rascist. However, I do believe in full freedom of speech. If somebody wants to post something rascist on the internet, I believe they have every right to do so. However, those of us against rascism (hopefully the majority), in turn have every right to post something in defense of our beliefs. As idiotic as these beliefs are, the people who hold them need to be allowed to express them, That is the foundation of human nature. It can't be stopped
Hate speech is not problem, people who are receptive to it are. C'mon, I know the people around here are intelligent enough to recognize BS when they see it. As is anyone with a healthy background and a secure life. Insecurity breeds anger and gives a breeding ground for all these little happy skinheads.
Governments have been major culprits for creating all so much economic unstability... Now, instead of fixing the mess they've created, they'll try to apply the same tool, the most natural for them, again: restraint.
Don't expect this to help anytime soon.
have you. He gave a very informative account of what goes on in some parts of Europe, in an attempt to try and help you to understand why hate speach should not be tollerated.
But for you, the right to speak out is more important than the right to fight the spread of Evil. Hasn't Sept 11th taught you anything?
Meaning speech, meaning source code, meaning all digital information, and not free as in you dont pay for it, but free as in anyone can write anything they want, and own any file, and trade any file.
This is freedom of expression, freedom of thought, etc
Now about the hate sites, you cannot Ban them from the internet, what they should do is treat hate sites like they treat kiddie porn sites
Meaning they should be monitored, the people should have a right to launch these sites but there should be rules. No one can have a hate site which threatens anyone for example,
people can host a kiddie porn site in europe, doesnt mean people wont arrest them for doing it.
People can host a hate site too, but if they choose to host this, they better be careful.
I'm totally against censorship, but i dont like hate sites, or kiddie porn sites, and i'm sure alot of other technically gifted people dont like them either
So anyone hosting a site like that wont have to worry about the government censoring them they should worry about the hackers who constantly hack them, the carnivore like tools constantly monitoring them.
Think of it like this, if Usama bin laden had a site, theres no rule saying he cant host a site, but if he hosts one you better believe people would be monitoring every thing he does.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
On the internet at least.
Meaning warez files are legal,
mp3s are legally traded, source code legally shared
true freedom of information.
However some people will abuse this so there should be strict rules to follow. Like no profiting from it, meaning hate groups cannot accept donations.
Meaning napster like companies cannot earn a profit off of other peoples mp3s.
Meaning warez people cannot earn profits off of other peoples files.
Free information is one thing, but there should be rules.
Anyone should be able to say or share any information, but there needs to be rules.
If the people in europe believe hate sites are bad, while its not right to totally censor, they do have a right to make it difficult to host a hate site, by setting rules in place that make hosting a hate sitee difficult
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Try threatening the president.
Fact is hate sites should be monitored, any site which threatens anyone should be taken down.
Non violent hate sites can stay up but they should all be monitored.
kiddie porn sites too, people who subscribe to these kiddie porn sites should be arrested, and kiddie porn sites which profit should be illegal, but you cannot legally stop the free trade of information on the internet.
So that means you cannot stop mp3s, hate sites or kiddie porn, this all must be legal to have true freedom, it should be legal, but there should be concequences if you try to profit from it, or if you get caught downloading it.
Napster should be legal, but hey if you use napster ot pirate mp3s, thats your problem, and if you use morpheus to get kiddie porn, and someone monitors you and reports you, that is your problem.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
To all you proponents of - "free speech will fix everything because the truth will win out" - that are replying to this post in droves
Consider how many 10's of thousands of people there are round the world right now who look at Bin Laden as a hero! Heck, there are even some that think Sept 11th was a Zionist plot. I actually saw a guy in a Pakistani studio trying to argue this point on live TV !
Are these people being won over by free speech? Are they putting aside their hatred and downing their weapons because constructive dialogue with the USA is turning their hearts? No, they are not !! Why? because they WANT to hear the message of those that demonise the USA.
Freedom of speech is not some magic bullet that will fix all the problems of the world. And in cases where it obviously isn't working, like in some parts or Europe, legislation is required to stem some of the flow of poison directed at the minds of our children.
I totally agree with at-b in his article.
Before anybody reacts to this post, please accept that I am a passionate libertarian and believe whole heartedly in free speech. However I also recognise the dangers of the kind of material that european countries seek to prohibit. Probably unlike the relatively free and civilised US of A, European countries have very serious problems with Hate crimes and rascist literature. In france far right groups get between 5 and 10 % of the vote in national elections and currently have control of several town halls in southern france. In germany Neo - Nazi groups regularly parade and cause trouble. There have been several recent rascist murders linked to these groups. The internet unfortunately has become aa breeding ground for rascist thugs. It has allowed geographically disparate and previously powerless groups to join forces, thus resulting in supranational fascist groups exchanging their foul and objectional material. Against the context of europe having fought a war over fascism, then the remergence of the far right groups across europe becomes extremely troubling for many european leaders. This is why european governments are clamping down on rasicism and far right groups on the internet. Fascists everywhere are as much a threat to our way of life as Islamic fundamentalists or the anarchist groups of the 1970's.
Modern definition of an expert: Someone who comes from far away with a powerpoint presentation.
Hi,
this is a quote from the German "Grundgesetz" (constitution) (see below for translation):
"Artikel 5
(1) Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten und sich aus allgemein zugänglichen Quellen ungehindert zu unterrichten. Die Pressefreiheit und die Freiheit der Berichterstattung durch Rundfunk und Film werden gewährleistet. Eine Zensur findet nicht statt.
(2) Diese Rechte finden ihre Schranken in den Vorschriften der allgemeinen Gesetze, den gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Schutze der Jugend und in dem Recht der persönlichen Ehre."
And this is my (unofficial, of course) translation:
"Paragraph 5
(1) Everybody has got the right to voice his opinion freely in the form of voice, writing and pictures and to access any freely accessible sources to educate himself.
Freedom of press and freedom of reporting(?) on radio and TV are granted. No censorship is done.
(2) Those rights are limited by the general law, the law for protection of minors and the right of personal honour."
So if I understand the 1st amendment of the US constitution correctly, the precedence is turned around. In Germany the common law overrides any freedom of speech.
So, yes, your 1st amendment might be unique, even though I seem to recall that the British have something similar.
twm
The wrong concept of freedom is 'do whatever you want to do'.
This is the one used by the 1st ammendment, 'say whatever you want to say'.
In the US, the 'do whatever you want to do' is certainly not applied always, you are not allowed to kill people, for instance, substantially reducing your freedom. The reason is that killing others, harms.
In Europe, the same limit is applied. If it harms others, then it is not allowed. And this is also used for speech.
I agree that saying 'All the (your_choice_here) should be killed because they are the root of the problems in our country' is not as bad as effectively killing them, but hate speech, I believe, helps very much in creating the situation that leads to killing. That's why in some countries, it is not allowed.
Now I'll give you an example: do you think that Osama Bin Laden's hate speech, broadcasted all over the muslim countries has an influence on the latest terrorists attacks?
My opinion is that it has a lot of influence. To me, that man should not have the freedom to say what it says because using his speech (only words!) can convince a lot of confused people that yes, the US is the devil. He is not _literally_ pulling the trigger but his speech does.
There is little difference between your #1 and #2 examples as you're setting up a straw man. The actual examples should really be:
#1 I kill you because I don't like you
#2 I kill you because your black and I don't like blacks
In that case there most certainly is a big difference, and if you can't see it then that's more than a little disturbing, even though the end result (a killing) is the same. Hate crime, as practised by Hitler et. al, is impersonal. It's about treating a whole class of people as subhuman, or insuperior, then killing or attacking them merely because they fit within that group they're created.
Hate speech is all about defining these groups as subhuman (or as lesser beings) to justify almost any atrocity against them as they just aren't like us. It's very much like slander or libel aimed against a whole group of people, with the express aim of supporting people's violent treatment of that group.
If you compare the hate literature that these groups are putting out with the propaganda the Nazis put out, you'll see it is almost indistinguishable. The only difference being the Nazis completely controlled the distribution of information.
'the council hopes that all signatories of the main convention, including the United States, will respect the protocol, and will agree to remove such material if it originates within their borders and is aimed at an audience in another country'
Why is it that the Europeans always try to impose the logic and thinking on other countries? as long as they keep their rules and laws within' themselves for themselves, I don't have a problem, but dictating their terms about what is or should be illegal frankly pisses me off.
hmm, as long as public opinion corrects a perceived morally questionable war that might be so, but how about the opposite ?
If the public opinion is "heated up" to engage in a morally questionalbe war, would you still think that the rage road behaviour of the press's propaganda, broadcasted with the ease of the internet into any citizen's mind and living room, is still the best way to " control and influence" that war through free and open debate ?
The issue is that propaganda broadcasted over the open internet easily PREVENTS free and open debate, believe it or not.
It's a fallacy to believe that the openess of the internet automatically guarantees a balanced distribution of propaganda for and against a certain cause. TV broadcasts also don't automatically produce balanced distribution of ALL possible view points, just because they are free to do so.
You have to calculate that the average person has a preset mind of a lot of issues and looks only for the information which supports his views.
If you already have a mind-set of a racist or hater, this person will NOT search for balanced information and discussion, it will search for the most effective propaganda there is to support his views. He then will go and harrass anybody around, who doesn't think the same way as he does. If it doesn't find such propaganda, he will engage in producing it.
It's the person, who is consumed with hate, who runs over a discussion of peaceful people and chase them away. You can observe all over the internet that if hate- and flamewar is not moderated out by "a benevolent dictator", the forum usually is taken over by the loudest propaganda minister. Everybody else leaves disgusted.
I think you just forget how a man's brain and psyche works in all of it.
doesn't prevent people from hating. It just tries do limit uncontrolled broadcast of speech, which has proven to incite hate ACTS.
And that has become an issue since the internet came about. It is very easy to incite hate acts with hate speech world wide, just because of the ease of distribution and broadcast, not because of the content itself.
How exactly does one establish claer limits for hate speech?
What is acceptable and what is not?
Wanted : A Signature.
Ha. I'm a swede (Sweden is a member of the EU). And we, as all the Nordic countries, do have free speech protection and protection of the press. In addition, we have a requirement for governmental transparency; all govermental documents not deemed critical for the security of our country, must be accessible to the public. We _are_ screeming bloody murder about these things! Just we are but 8 million people, so no one listens to us...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
While i'm also against racism and see the good intentions, i think this legislation will be used to squash legitimate critics and opposition. Probably scientology, who are very much criticised all over the Web, and often from sites which rely on the protection of their countries to be safe from lawsuits is already drawing up threat letters. Scientology didn't have any scruples to liken their case to the Holocaust the Jews experienced in the 3rd Reich, when they were not recognized as a religion in Germany, but as a business organisation. Soon they'll probably have a field day threatening with lawsuits to get any 'hate speech' against their organisation off the net.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I've got a good idea
How about the European parliment passes a law saying that we all have to be nice to each other!
That should solve all our problems!
Anyway, what ever happend to Voltaires "I disprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it"
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
You are naive. I am waiting for the day when Eurpean countries will receive a stream of immigrants of people out of the U.S., because they were discriminated within the U.S.
Just because you haven't lived through and in a country, where you have become victim of discrimination, doesn't mean it can't happen.
And the 1rst amendment won't protect you from that being happening. Or did the first amendment protect blacks from being enslaved ? Ever thought about something else being the reason, why slaves or other people in the past didn't leave the U.S. when they became victims of hate crimes ?
Why didn't the 1rst amendment help there ?
Right here, right now, teenagers are being seduced into neo-fascist ideological groups every day.
Right here, right now teenagers are laughing at the pompus little pricks waving swastickas
In France alone, there are local governments which have started banning books and newspapers that oppose them
Is that banning books that oppose the local government?
Yes I know you made a typo, but that is exactly the point!
Question: Who gave YOU or anybody else the right to tell me what I can and can't read, can and can't say?
I supose you would also like a government that tells us what time to get up in the morning and when to go to the toilet
Maybe a governmnet that bans 1984/Farenheit 451 as subversive books?
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
The fact that this post was moded down as a troll makes me think somebody has never heard of SARCASM!
Now kids, which large nation do we know of that has a complete inablity to understand irony and sarcasm?
Answers on the back of a 20quid note to my home address please
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Another thing that bugs me... How do you define the Internet? If I have two boxes that are "connected" the the Net, using external IPs, and transfer "hate speech" between them over LAN, am I on the Net? The whole thing with the net is that it's not so clearcut... And don't tell me that they're going to regulate what I send over my own network! When the packets get into someone else's network, I can see them objecting if they wish, but suppose I have run a small ISP? It all gets rather confusing...
Just some food for thought...
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Any writing is good, so long as it is not boring
I disprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
There is no difference with free speech.
Proponents of free speech often draw a line in the sand. However, a favorite quote of mine comes from the movie "The American President". Check it out, because most of this next statement comes directly from the movie, and from history itself.
You say you value free speech, and want it protected? Lets see you protect someone's right to speak, whose very ideas conflict so greatly with your own, as to make your blood boil in rage. THATS free speech. THAT's an inherant freedom, as adopted the United States founding fathers.
The simple fact is that banning "free speech" on issues that the majority is against is only going to strengthen yougnsters resolve to be a part of that group. Look at child psychology, especially during the impressionable years of 12-18.
Children, by nature, become rebellious against THINGS. This rebellion is a deep seated psychological desire for that child to separate themselves from their parents, AKA, strike out on their own. Seeing as most parents are law abiding, non-critical people, their children will undoubtedly side with the side of ANARCHY for a time. If said anarchy takes the form of a socially unacceptable behaviour, then so much the better, in their eyes. If, however, society embraces someone's freedom to have such views, then having them will not be as much of a rebellion in their eyes.
I'm not advocating the acceptance of hate crimes, I'm only stating that making speech, or views a crime, makes those ideas more desirable to the very children you are trying to "protect."
Punish the crimes severely. Award zero quarter for participation in such crimes, regardless of how small. That way, you preserve the idea of free speech, while driving the crimes themselves underground.
In the end, you will never prevent anyone from having one idea or another. However, you can regulate a societies actions based on negative re-inforcement for certain acts. How Europe chooses to deal with this issue is really not of my concern. But, trying to make a claim that it's "For the Children" is laughable, because the Children will undoubtedly flock towards that which the parents dislike the most, in an effort to "rebel".
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Just how is an idea like that liberal? It restricts.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Certainly Free Speech to you is not free at all. You are thinking free of all responsibility.
That is not the case. With freedoms come enourmous responsibilities. You can get punished in many ways around the law for offensive speech. That is a better way to do it. Let free speech be out there, you face the personal consequences for your actions and statements, nto enforcing a no hate zone... because I remember in ancient times the only place where free speech wasn't available, was in the presence of a king or his troops.
Dear God! I live in a country where ignorant masses have free speech (GASP)!!! Help! Get me to a country like France, that gave us the idea of Liberty from Tyranny (TM) and then abandoned it because it was no longer convenient to their causes. I mean, Americans only repaid the Liberty debt in full in WWII, doing something for freedom that a prepared army in their homeland couldn't do.
Or send me to England! Where they are so eccentric with their laws that they don't know which way is up! Where people pass their House of Lords seats to their heirs, who have no responsibility to their constituents!
Or how about anywhere else in Europe?! Where I can live to see how organized and positive force they are... when I have to watch what I say and change currencies every three meters!
Pardon me while I gag. These nations invent important laws and freedoms and then they abandon them. It is pathetic to see anyone tell me that legally America is wrong for allowing freedoms.
I find it offensive and a travesty of justice that my life would be worth less (under such a new set of laws) than a minority or someone with an "alternative" lifestyle
Well your life is "worth less" than a police officer, fireman, mailman, etc, already. We've always had separate "classes" of victims, some more important than others.
But this doesn't have anything to do with the inherent worth of the victime -- it has to do with society's judgement of how unacceptable the motivation is.
If you kill a man who's sleeping with your wife, you've got a pretty good chance of getting a light sentence. If you kill a cop in the line of duty, you've got a really good chance of getting the death penalty. They might be the same person, same skin color, but the reason you kill them is different. And if you kill him for being black, it won't be as bad as if you'd killed him for being a cop, but much worse than if you'd killed him for cutting you off in traffic.
Some talk show I listen to, the guy was reading a newspaper clipping about a guy
With all due respect to this unimpeachable source, there is a distinct possibility that this is either being grossly misreporte, misinterpreted, or never happened in this manner.
I'm reminded of the story of the crook who cuts himself breaking into a persons house and sues the homeowner -- people bring it up all the time when complaining about the crazy legal system. Certainly its a terrible story, but it also has never happened, its an urban legend.
That said, there are a dozen different scenarios that could explain the set of facts you presented. Perhaps the man is being SUED by the assailant, which has nothing to do with the police. He'll lose, of course, but everyone in this country has the right to sue. Perhaps the victim's husband yelled the epithet not during the attack, but three days later outside the courthouse, in the context of a threat. Being the victim doesn't give you carte blanche to threaten people.
There are many other circumstances in which these two people could have this factual interaction in which the person yelling does not look particularly sympathetic. Until you see the complete story you're just as likely to come to the wrong conclusion as the right one.
Case in point, that damn McDonald's coffee case that everyone points to as an example of how stupid our court system is. But anyone who read more than the first paragraph of the story knows that in fact the case was handled as it should have been, and that the woman also didn't get that huge financial windfall that everyone reported.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
He was talking about the KKK, and Aryan Nation wackos, and other gropus like that. In reference to the KKK marching in New York, he suggested that when the KKK comes to town, *everyone* should dress up in white robes and hoods, people of all races and sexual orientations. And to play "kiss tag" with the Grand Wizards, for instance a black drag queen running up to the main idiot and pulling off his hood to give him a peck on the cheek. Turn it into a big party. Suddenly, the KKK doesn't want to come to town any more.
There was another suggestion, this one dealing with LA and an Aryan dating service online. He wanted to start dating all the Aryan women and slowly turning them around, starting with the music of Charlie Parker and John Lee Hooker.
Great stuff, and he says it far better than I can... My point is this: if there's speech you don't like, refute it, ridicule it, parody it, or come up with a more intelligent argument. Don't hide behind the government and expect it to protect you from these evil things.
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
So would it be illegal to report on racist speech (for instance, this U.S. State Department site about bin Laden and his anti-Jewish, anti-American, anti-Israeli, etc. remarks)? Where do you draw the line between reporting and supporting?
So who grants the rights in that case? Do they exist in themselves in a sort of political vacuum? Please don't tell me that the rights are some inalienable part of the human nature. If that were so, how come the concept of free speech, etc had not existed until a few hundred years ago (the Enlightment).
The freedoms are a part of our outlook on the human condition and are upheld through the laws.
Perhaps it is too much to say that they exist because of the laws, rather they exist because fo certain ideas which are embodied in the law.
Well here you go, then:n al ized_in_idaho.htm
http://www.iconservative.com/speech_being_crimi
He's not being sued, he got charged with some sort of "crime". And since it's a felony, the punishment is apparently five full years in the state penitentiary. I wish I could say it was urban legend.
Re: the McDonald's story, I remember that NPR revealed the aftermath this August, I think, along with some other well-remember cases.
Re: the urban legend about the sueing criminal, I do remember a story (on television, I think) of a storeowner who was repeatedly getting break-ins by (I think) a rooftop window. He decided to wire it up with electricity as a deterrent. A would-be criminal wound up dead because it was more than just a deterrent; it was deadly. But this is a lot different, and the storeowner should be held accountable, at least for negligence.
So, yeah, it is "funny" but it is also indistinguishable from reality...
Seastead this.
intent does matter _to_a_degree_
if I shoot you because I hated you for years vs
I shoot you because I was dumb enough to clean a
loaded gun, the first it probably 1st degree murder
while the second is manslaughter...
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Does this mean we can't legally write viruses for outlook and IIS anymore? Since source code is speech,.. I guess virii would be hate code.
The American Nazi Party was a joke. The Klu Klux Klan is moribund. McCarthyism ended up with McCarthy out of power. The Communist Party of the United States limped along for decades as a fringe group. (They're still there! "Workers of the World, Log In") David Duke and Stormfront are pushing white separatism, while the Nation of Islam is pushing black separatism. None of these have ever been a threat to the country. None of them are taken seriously. None are popular enough to get any political power or elect more than the rare public official now and then. They just don't matter.
Europe has a different history. Their nut groups have, on occasion, grown big enough to start major wars. So it's clear why Europe worries more.
But it won't work. Efforts to shut the nuts up won't be totally effective. If censored, they get to act like martyrs and continue to distribute their stuff anyway. Censorship in a reasonably open society doesn't work. Making it work requires heavy repression. Remember Falun Gong? So censorship is a first step to worse things, first merely to keep the censors from looking stupid, and later from real fear.
Actually, here's a better distinction. Child pornography can safely be banned because the production of child pornography necessarily entails the abuse of, and harm to, children. Racist speech does not require harm to racial, ethnic, or religious minorities as a precondition of its being produced. That's the difference.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Hate speech is hateful, but it is speech none the less.
>>>supressing the hatemongerers has IMO become necessary
Tell me, do you *honestly* believe that censoring them will make it go away?
To me, that's like saying "If I close my eyes, you can't see me."..or if you don't like that one, "If I look the other way/throw a tarp over it/hide it, it doesn't exist."
http://pebkac.net
Segregation is our past. The KKK, well, you have a better point there, but I don't think it's anywhere near the problem that Europe has with their extremism. I may be uninformed, but let me just say this: if the KKK is all we've got, we're doing pretty good. I mean, they don't seem to do much. Yeah, they advocate an unpopular belief, but beyond the occasional rally, you don't hear much from them. Does anybody suspect that the KKK is mailing Anthrax, or that if they had the capability, they would? These guys are in a different league altogether. They adopt sections of highway, they don't go trying to hurt people. And my point in this post is that their very limited role is, at least in part, due to our free society, where Americans can say, "I disagree with what you're saying, but I support your right to say it." But maybe it's just me.
Synergy is your friend
The day I see that group "made fun of" by South Park and Howard Stern is the day I'll agree with you. Let's face it, white Christian heterosexual non-handicapped American males aren't exactly the butt of all jokes in popular American media yet, so most people aren't really concerned, with the exception of people like you.
Uhh, ok... If you don't think South Park makes fun of heterosexual, non-handicapped "American" (I assume he means white) males (you can extend it to females), you must not watch very often... Or did you miss the part where Kenny's family is white trash, Cartman's a racist retard with a tramp mom, Stan's parents are victims of labotomy, the bus lady is an insane skank, and the myriad of other temporary characters that are deficient? Perhaps it's only you that doesn't see the fair share of criticism...
You can't swear on broadcast TV, nor can you show nipple or genitals of the lower region... The FCC will fine you a good one if you do... If you think these decisions are made by networks, then you're only right in that they decided to make their product capable of being broadcast, instead of requiring cable...
Don't worry, given enough time we'll get rid of those stupid laws, too...
Hear that FCC? I'm coming for you...
The idea is liberal in that its proponents are of the title liberal...
One could ask, how are gun laws (pushed by 'liberals') liberal, too... Then of course, you could ask how a lot of restraining 'liberal' positions fit into a philosophy with such a name, but then you'll come to realize that being 'liberal' simply means the Government should be unrestricted in mucking with your life...
Don't criminalize speech. Expose it. That's how we got rid of organizations like the Klan here in America, which still exists but is so hated and ostracized in this country that they no longer say or do anything publicly. The reason they don't have a public influence isn't that they aren't allowed to--they can have all the parades and get on TV as much as they want--but because they choose not to exercise their rights, knowing that they will be publicly ridiculed and attacked for it, and lose even more influence.
The perfect example of this is the march that Klansmen and Aryan Nation type white supremacists were supposed to have in Washington, D.C. a couple years ago. A white supremacist leader called for a public protest and march in D.C., to show the country that they could do the same thing black people did in the Million Man March and such. It got a lot of newspaper and newscast coverage for weeks before the event; he got on TV, calling for all white people to come join him in a show of strength against the "niggers" and Jews who have "taken over" the government. He got so much publicity, that he expected thousands of people to show up from all over the country. The D.C. police even hired extra workers from nearby police departments to come in that day to help keep the peace between these thousands of white supremacists and the people who would show up againts them.
Guess what? Less than 20 people came to this "demonstration," most of whom were this guy's friends. Nobody came. Despite coverage for weeks ahead of time of this white supremacist leader calling for all white people with his ideas to show up that day, nobody came. In contrast, there were far more peple who showed up to protest *against* the white supremacist march, than the under 20 who showed up for it. In the end, the guys who showed up left very soon after they got there, realizing that they just looked stupid and made people realize that so few people have these racist views.
The lesson there is that giving these morons enough rope to hang themselves publicly does more to discourage their racism than banning it ever would. Things grow in the underground. Things are given a mystiue and aura which draws people to them, when they are verboten. Pick up any rock and you'll find all sorts of nasty little creatures congregating in the darkness. Yet expose the same patch of ground to the penetrating sunlight, and nothing dares linger there, knowing it will be exposed and vulnerable.
This is how the white supremacist groups were driven out of public view in the U.S.--not by censorship, but by letting them make fools of themselves in public. In the 1980s and early 1990s, we had some very boisterous and exploitive talk shows in this country--Geraldo, Sally Jessy, Donahue, etc. Some of the shows still exist, but they have toned themselves down over the years and become more "respectble," not trying to shock as much as they used to. But back then, white supremacists, Klansmen and Aryan Nations skinheads would be on these shows about every week. Some of the shows would have them "confronted" by strong blacks or jews--and some broke out in violence on the stage, like the famous show where Geraldo Rivera got his nose broken.
Now, the upshot of all this open coverage is that people saw these white supremacists for what they truly were--ignorant, inbred, uneducated fools. They were laughed at and scorned, and used for entertainment as we mocked them in public on these talk shows. None of them ever had a good reason for their beliefs, and almost all of them were buffoons. After that, who would want to join them? Who would want to be mocked and scorned as they were? No one. And so, all the coverage they got worked against them. Klan membership fell. Aryan Nations membership fell. And except for occasional rallies in very uneducated redneck backwaters, and very occasional people who come on talk shows and get ridiculed in public, none of these groups ever shows itself in public any more.
There are still racially motivated killings here, like the black man who was dragge behind a truck in Texas a couple years ago. But they are much more rare then they were in the 1970s and 1980s, before we started ridiculing racists in public with their own words. And we can never completely eliminate hate and the crimes that come from it--it is as impossible as eliminating murder, rape, or any crime. But we have a much smaller problem with it than people in Germany do, where such ideas and speech is hidden away and given a mystique it does not deserve.
You see, in the U.S. I can go into any bookstore and buy a copy of *Mein Kampf*. I own a copy myself, not because I am a racist, but because I wantd to know how evil and foolish Hitler really was, from his own words. And yet, we have no great swell of neo-Nazism--because we expose neo-Nazis publicly for the fools they are. In the late 80s there was an upswing in neo-Nazi organizations in the U.S. The cure was letting them make fools of themselves in public on those talk shows I mentioned, and ever since they have no longer been growing in percentage. They are seen by almost everyone as uneducated idiots.
Germany has done the opposite, which is why they have a real danger today from neo-Nazis. You drive them underground instead of exposing them, which gives them power. It has an allure for some German young people, like a secret fraternity would. Some are interested only because of this mystique, this forbiddenness, and that draws them in. As you know, many teenagers will do something only because they're told not to. These groups also provide friendships and togetherness that is attractive to young people. But if you exposed them in public like we did and do in the U.S., they would not be attractive. Who would want friendship and togetherness with people who are made fun of and ridiculed and thought stupid and laughed at? Instead of mocking them, you fear them. That is why they have strength in Germany and France, but not in the U.S. The Klan used to be in the U.S. just like the Nazis in Germany--but while Germany faces increasing neo-Nazism, the U.S. does not face increasing Klan membership. The difference, once again, is that we expose it to the light of truth, while Germany hides it under a dark rock and allows it to grow.
Also, Germany is foolish for allowing so many immigrants to work there while there's so much unemployment. It is a recipe for disaster when you have so many Turks and other non-citizens (some are citizens, but most are not) working while so many citizens go unemployed. This immigration is allowed in Germany to please the rich, who would rather import skilled foreigners than invest in teaching skills to German youth. That is deplorable, and that feeds the fascism which seems to be the only faction truly devoted to keeping German jobs and German money for Germans. If Germany were to stop allowing so much immigration, and force employers to train young Germans to be skilled workers at a living wage instead of importing foreigners to work at a lesser wage, then that would take much of the force out of neo-Nazism. In a way, I can't blame many of the young people who are seduced by neo-Nazism in Germany and to some extent France--their own governments do not care enough about them to protect their jobs from lower-waged foreigners, so naturally they come to resent those foreigners. The U.S. allows even more immigration, but the difference is that even now in our recession, we don't have such high unemployment rates as you do in Germany and some other countries in the area. If your governments do not wake up and take care of your citizens and giving them the opportunity to work instead of importing cheaper foreign labor, you deserve the backlash you're getting. The foreigners don't deserve the hate crimes, but your governments do deserve the threat to their survival, since they are catering to the wealthy business owners and the foreign immigrants instead of to the average citizens.
Food for thought.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I agree with all the posts saying such censorship is wrong, and for a number of very good reasons. One that seems to have been missed is that it gives these minority groups something else to latch onto and rebel against (the fascist government are trying to suppress the real truth, etc). The people that get drawn into these hate groups are people lost and attracted to a cause (and instead of getting sucked in by bible bashers they got some neo-nazi group). Making their freedom of expression taboo will only make it far more exciting for them.
Not only that, but how are they going to maintain a social perspective? If they can express their views and can see the public holds them in disdain then this has some psychological effect. If they can only talk amongst fellow supporters then this hate will only feed on itself with no checks.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
(Ludicrous typo in my first reply, inverting the sense of my argument. s/have the self-restraint/lack the self-restraint/g)
> [the poster agrees with] 1. Banning propaganda solely intended to cause the breakdown and destruction of a democratic system, and spreading of hate [and claims this is different than] 2. Banning things you disagree with.
Question 1 for the poster:
A lot of folks have made jokes in recent times to the effect that "1984 is not a HOWTO document!".
Ought we to ban Orwell's 1984 a manual for what to do to institute a police state (because it can certainly be used as such, especially the appendix on the design of Newspeak), or ought we to encourage its dissemination as a manual describing what citizens should be on the lookout for?
Question 2 for the poster:
The arguments used for banning Mein Kampf because "other people might be seduced into fascism" sound a lot like the arguments for banning pr0n because "other people might decide sex for pleasure instead of procreation is fun", or banning strong crypto because "[terroists|pedophiles|drugdealers] could abuse it", or to ban disclosure of security holes because h4x0rz could abuse it.
How come the book-burners never say "I want this information banned because I lack the self-restraint necessary to use this information responsibly?"
It's always someone else who can't be trusted, isn't it?
A Modest Proposal:
I propose the jailing of those who would limit my access to information, because in their hearts they see themselves as my master. They do not deserve this power. They cannot be trusted with it. Their ideas ought to be the ones suppressed in a free and democratic society.
What is your point? The usurpation of rights in the US by the federal government has no bearing on the legitimacy of the aforementioned "Canadian Charter". First of all slander is a civil matter, not a criminal one. The Bill of Rights and Constitution of the United States deals explicitly with the relationship the government has with the people. That relationship being defined by granting the government explicit powers.
Sorry, but you're confused there. The fact that it is a civil matter has no bearing on it. Slander and libel are laws applied by the government (judicial branch) with penalties enforced by the government (executive branch). The fact that they are enforced at the request of private citizens does not change that in the least. They are subject to the constitution just like any other laws. They are Acts of government, just like any other laws. Criminal or civil is irrelevant to this.
Everybody knows that those who would take our rights are all from Rightstakania, that despised little lump of shit country in Eurasia. Everybody knows that Rightstakanasians are a bunch of stupid, short, smelly little people. We have plenty of evidence to show that they are geneticly inferior. Why do we listen to them?
I say all Rightstakanasians should be forced to wear some kind of identification. Then, we can make sure that they only live in certain parts of the city. Eventually, we can execute them all so that the rest of us will never have to worry about our rights being taken away ever again.
This makes much more sense than persecutin niggers, chinks, spics, hebes or any other of them thar "hated groups". After all, those people wash dishes, make good food, dig ditches, and tell jokes. All the Rightstakanasians ever do is sit on useless government bodies and make a lot of noise. Nobody will miss them.
So, come on Rightsians! Are you with me?! I know a lot of people will be shocked by what I just said, but I felt like I had to stand up for my Rightsian rights before the Rightstakanasians took them away.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There is a difference between one's ability to speak and the right to do so.
It comes down to the threat to society. If you kill me because you hate me, then you've killed the person you want to kill and should be punished. If you kill me because of some characteristic shared by many many other people, then you need to be punished and then kept in jail longer as a prevention.
The thing I dislike about hate crime laws is that I feel they may be applied in some cases where there is no actual hate crime; e.g. they beat up the guy because he was a dick and talking shit, not because he was black/gay/muslim/whatever.
-no broken link
He's not being sued, he got charged with some sort of "crime". And since it's a felony, the punishment is apparently five full years in the state penitentiary. I wish I could say it was urban legend.
Inyeresting, and thanks for the link. I'm curious how clear-cut the assault on the woman was, given the reaction in this case -- the husband "threatened" the ref by saying he was gonna kick his butt, so a lot of this would hinge on whether or not it was really a case of self-defense. It should be an interesting case when it reaches court and gets better documentation with witnesses and such -- right now it seems to be the story told only by these two victims in which the whole world is picking on them, which makes me suspicious. But given the facts as stated, its clearly an application of the law that wouldn't be upheld, so long as they are able to fight it long enough.
"Fighting words" are one of the few classes of speech that can be legally restricted, so the question would be whether or not the person uttering them was acting in self-defense or was provoking the fight in the first place.
I do remember a story (on television, I think) of a storeowner who was repeatedly getting break-ins by (I think) a rooftop window. He decided to wire it up with electricity as a deterrent. A would-be criminal wound up dead because it was more than just a deterrent; it was deadly.
Yes, there is a law against booby-traps. I found this out when trying to figure out how to protect my car which is frequently broken into.
The idea isn't that the criminal doesn't deserve it -- its that an innocent bystander or emergency worker could fall prey to it. Imagine a fireman trying to come in through a window that had been electrified. Oops! One of those times where I realized how many considerations have to go into lawmaking.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Wow, what a relief. I feel really protected by those limitations of free speech. Your quality of life is mind boggling. I guess I would actually get the message to kill CowboyNeal by the call: "Someone should please kill CowboyNeal" quite nicely and would do so with more confidence, if a couple of thousand webpages and ten thousand of banner adds would distribute the same message. It kind of tells me that it is ok to kill CowboyNeal.
How many more double standards do have to deny that the broadcast of the "someone please kill CowboyNeal" message will have NO influence on people wanting to act on it, but to assume that for example the messages of any advertisement which is asking "someone to buy Red Hat 7.2 Professional Server" HAS and influence ? Does that mean that all the marketing wisdom of ads will automagically not work anymore, just because the message distributed is one of hate ?
Why is it, that if it comes to hate speech and porn, the distribution of images and messages have supposedly NO consequence on your behaviour, but when it comes to drinking budwiser, driving VW and being a hero for the army, the broadcast of those messages HAVE a consequence on your behaviour ?
Any answer to that one ?
What is it that makes us think that it is the responisbility of others to shield us from what they view is wrong?
How is it that instead of letting people decide what the line between good and bad is, we decide what is unacceptable and stifle them?
This is censorship, it is one group deciding what everyone else's good/bad line should be. It isn't their place to decide that.
It is the responsibility of people to decide what is right or wrong, we shouldn't let one thing justify another. Having one group decide what that is just allows them to decide that webpages for programing are wrong because they spread hacking.
You Don't have to burn books to destroy a culture, you just have to get people to stop reading them. Ray Bradbury
Why can 'hate' be used as an aggrivating factor to raise the sentance of a crime (in the US, anyhow dunno about other places)? If the person had a financial motive, for example, is it less of a crime?
I don't want to sound too doom and gloom, but I have the fear that this war may already be lost. The seeds are planted, people have accepted the idea of limiting the freedoms they've spent centuries trying to gain, just on the promise that they can be protected (a promise that continues to go unfulfilled).
You can't win as long as people believe in the false premise that restricting legitimate freedom will create saftey. I hate to be so cliche, to be repetitive, but the core of it is still that.
Bleh.
I never did understand those jokes anyway, because all the Polish folks I ever knew very well at all were very, very smart people. Wasn't Mandelbrot Polish, too?
They originated at the time of a (the first?) major wave of Polish immigration to the US. They came over here mainly without speaking English. Due to this, they worked all the crap jobs (see Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle") and couldn't communicate well with English speakers. This left them open to jokes about how "stupid" they were.
Benoit Mandelbrot was French.
Yes, but at least as an Australian, you have the right to express your disgust as an exercise of 'political communication.' Now if you also happen to own a metropolitan daily, you can really make yourself heard.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
That is a fact. It can be proven or disproven.
*pedantry mode on*
If it's a fact, then it can only be proven.
A statement can be proven or disproven
*pedantry mode off*
The article in the NYT gives me the distinct impression the USA is fighting the EU tooth and nail to protect racist speech. Seems a funny position to take, to me. What is so fine about racism and racist slander? What is the opinion of black Americans think about this?
Sounds like there are some echoes of an ugly past here.
Inez{R}.
Well no actually, the fact that people in politics can make racist utterances probably reflects that there is a level of free speech in Australian political life. You (and I) just happen to disagree, but that's the whole point of free speech, surely. Besides which, it is unclear just how racist Howard actually is, he would run down his grandmother and reverse over her again if he saw a vote in it. Remember, apart from the pandering to the racist element, this election also saw the most shame faced pork barreling, or more accurately vote buying, in Australian electoral history. Research shows lots of new babies in a number of marginal seats ... OK we'll give all parents with 1st babies born since July $2,500 if we are elected. Well my baby was born in January, so he didn't get my vote!
Australia is probably a bad example, because unlike the US, there is no explicit constitutional right to free speech. The High Court has discovered an implied right to discuss matters political, in the very fact that the Constitution sets up an representative democracy. And although there is perhaps a presumption in its favour, there certainly is no overarching right to free speech in Australian law.
I'm getting really bored with constant assertions that the USA saved Europe from Hitler.
/ statistics.htm>
Check these stats before you think that the USA alone was responsible for winning World War II.
<http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline
Country Total Deaths % of prewar Military Civilian
population
USSR 20,600,000 10.4% 13,600,000 7,000,000
USA 500,000 0.4% 500,000
I'm no fan of Uncle Joe, but I'd suggest that the battle of Stalingrad was a more important turning point than D-day in the war against fascism. Moreover, if the Germans hadn't been distracted by their preparations for operation Barbarossa, it's quite likely that the UK would have been successfully invaded and the US would not have had a platform to launch a successful attack on mainland Europe. We can play all sorts of 'what if' games after that...
I'm not going to deny that American industrial muscle was significant in the outcome, but don't think that 'Band of Brothers' represents the whole picture.
I never said i agreed with it, Actually i want free sharing of information on the internet and support freenet.
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