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Appeals Court Finds "Nuremberg Files" Site Unlawful
Greplaw writes "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this evening that an anti-abortion website that featured "wanted" posters of various abortion doctors constituted a "true threat." The website, called The Nuremberg Files, is therefore not protected by the First Amendment and is illegal under a 1994 law prohibiting threats against abortion doctors. The full opinion of the court is available on Findlaw. This case marks one of the first times that a website has been ruled to constitute such a threat." Our previous story has the background on the case. The District Court found the website was an unlawful threat; a three-judge panel of the Appeals court found that it wasn't; and now the entire Appeals court has found, by a 6-5 vote, that it was indeed unlawful. The case could be appealed to the Supreme Court next. The accepted definition of a threat unprotected by the First Amendment is one which "on its face and in the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution", and there is considerable dissent among the judges over whether a website can or cannot meet that standard.
How is this conversation going to go?
:)
Shall we go around on the censorship thing or just do the whole entire pro-life VS pro-choice thing.
I'm game for either.
Pro-choice, because there are too many damn people already!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Publishing public information: Okay
Publishing same information with encouragement to kill the people on the list: Not Okay
Understanding the Pro-Life movement's basic argument and agreeing with it are totally understandable. Understanding the steps to get from "life begins at conception" and "life should be protected" to "kill abortionists" requires understanding huge leaps in logic.
I have been pwned because my
For those who aren't to familiar with it all
b orts.ht ml
:)
Heres the old site archived in a sense:
http://www.lancasterlife.com/atrocity/
Heres the newer site:
http://www.christiangallery.com/atrocity/a
One of the more disturbing/interesting(guess it depends on your views) about the above site is how they list all the abortion doctors they have info on... black for alive...greyed for MAIMED.. and strike-through for killed(they call it fatality)...
And my friends wonder why i think religion is such a big joke...
P.S. learn how to copy & paste
..is NOT free speech. And by advocating I don't mean simply saying "Oh, so and so is evil and should die." Advocating is going on to provide details like where the victim to be lives, what their schedule is like, etc.
But hey, the people posting it are innocent of any crime if they dont actualy do the killing!!
MY ASS.
This seems to me to be another issue where people have decided that the fact that something is on the web makes it different from other mass media. It may (or may not, given the state of most search engines today) be a more effective means of dessiminating information, but it's goal is the same as that of print magazines or tv or annoying "lose 30 lbs in 30 days" messages: getting information to a large number of people.
What the judges should be asking themselves is not 'does something on the web constitute a threat' but rather 'if they put this on a billboard in times square, would it constitute a threat'.
Narrative
Hopefully it could be shown in court that the vast majority of /. readers are not likely to perform such an act, regardless of how inflammatory the statement maybe. In the case of bloody-minded anti-abortionists, however, this is obviously not the case.
My point is this: In previous rulings concerning this exception to the first amendment, it has been the case that the audience could be observed to be a volatile mass and thus likely to be swayed by hateful and threatening speech. Regarding websites, this issue becomes murky and threatens to turn any ruling either way into the dreaded first step down a slippery slope. I should expect my example above illustrates how this could be used to control expression in any number of forums.
sig-free as of 28 July 02!
Read the opinion carefully. While any ruling on 1st amendment rights deserves careful review, this one, on the whole, strikes a balance in favor of liberties.
Let's consider what's going on here. The web site in question created "wild west" style posts of abortion doctors, and updated lists of those doctors that had been assassinated. (There are a number of criminal cases where physicians were attacked--even killed--because their name appears on hit lists.)
Now, we enjoy a right a free speech. But we do not have a right to threaten the safety of other individuals. When threats are made against individuals, the balance of interests between individual expression and individual safety shifts to the threatened.
Now, let's be clear about this. The hit lists were not mere trash talking in a chat room. They were not even generalized expressions of rage about doctors who perform abortions. Instead, they were lists created with the express, explicit purpose of organizing others to harm physicians. This is not my interpretation of the site mirrors I visited. This is also the opinion of most of the 9th circuit. Now, only a bare majority of the court felt the threat was sufficiently immediate to tip the balance for individual safety. But most of the court sided with the opinion that the site was designed to promote violence against doctors.
We should be cautious about restrictions on freedom of expression. And it seems that this is exactly what has taken place here: A serious, careful, factually detailed analysis for the circumstances of this case. There are no categorical rulings about web pages. This is not even a "technology" story, except for the fact that the hit list was online. (The same ruling might have obtained if the lists were merely on paper and sufficiently circulated.)
So, while I'm don't enjoy opinions that side against the big 1st A, I have to realize that our liberty in expression must, like all liberties, reach a limit when it bumps up against other rights and interests. I have to side with personal freedom and liberty.
As a closing note, I don't like abortion either. And I also don't like capital punsihment. But we should not let passion excuse us from the political process. Murder is wrong. If we disagree with a person's practice and work, we have a system of laws to change, or live by if we fail in this endeavor.
In my mind, the site's talk of trying these individuals in legitimate courts does no more to mitigate the list of names crossing out those who have been killed than a disclaimer saying "don't download these programs unless you already own a licence" protects a warez site. Regardless of what precisely is said, it's clear what is meant. I'm sure I'm not the only person to come away with the understanding that to the site's author, more crossed-out names are better. Keeping in mind the history of anti-abortion terrorism, the real intent of this site doesn't seem very ambiguous.
Besides, these people could never be put on trial anyway, at least not in the United States. That would be "ex post facto" - making something illegal after it's already been done - and that is unconstitutional.
And even worse, the site names doctors that don't even do abortions! I personally know one of the doctors listed, and he has never performed an abortion in his entire career. All he's ever done is told women where they could go if they wanted one. And for this, he's somehow made his way onto the anti-abortionists shitlist.
A website cannot immediately threaten someone? That would be a dangerous precedent to set.
I imagine that could be (ab)used by organized crime to put out hits on people. "Your honor, it's been shown that a website cannot immediately threaten someone. I didn't order that person killed, I just posted it on my website".
Besides, that's not the precedent anyways. "Immediately threaten" hah, someone made that crap up.
All that's necessary is for the victim to feel that their life is now in danger. I don't know about the rest of you, but if someone put up my picture on a kill-list, I'd feel like I was in real and immediate danger.
This makes me so angry that someone would abuse the right to speech to the point where there is no choice but to suspend it. It only takes a few reasonably well organized sociopaths to ruin freedom.
Before you flame, I'm not saying that the court killed free speech (yes I read it), only that it makes me sad that any speech should be so inflamitory that the courts can justify shutting it down.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Check it out for yourself. Cells. Caution not for the weak of heart.
It is too bad that the fundies have seized hold of this issue and bundled it with their twisted worldview.
The real question is when do you call your "bundle of cells" a human being. I believe that long before a baby is born they should be given the same basic human rights you and i enjoy. Just because a fetus cannot speak for themselves does not mean that they are inanimate objects that can be flushed down the toilet without regard.
Well, I think that this is one of the lesser attacks on the first amendment. I am not sure I agree that it should be illegal, but I certainly can understand people thinking it is a "clear and present threat" or whatever the wording is.
But I think the real issue is to not treat online publication any different than other forms. If someone took out an add in a national newspaper and published personally identifying information of abortion clinic doctors, along with claims that they deserved to be killed for crimes against humanity, I think it would be considered an immediate and clear threat to those doctors. On the other hand, if the newspaper ad would not be considered illegal, then neither should the website.
The whole thing makes me uneasy. I don't want to silence anyones opinion, but I think that they can freely express their opinions without directly threatening people. At the same time, most of the information found there could be looked up in a phone directory by anyone really wanting the information anyway, which makes banning publishing it on the internet seem a little silly. That aspect is kind of like the "they think terrorists can't type" thing with cryptography. I really believe that anyone who is "dedicated" (or insane) enough to their cause to go shooting people in the name of being pro-life is probably going to be able to find out the address of the doctors at their local abortion clinic.
So either change the chant to "diploid human life is sacred" or change the chant entirely.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Woman's body, woman's choice. There is nothing I have seen, read, or be taught that shows me abortion is wrong.
In opposition to the latter part of your statement, I do think it's wrong. But that's my personal opinion, which is nicely trumped by the first part of your statement, leaving me pro choice as you are.
That's why it's pro-choice, not pro-abortion as we are often mislabeled by the pro-life crowd.
That's so easy to say, and I've said it many times in my life. But if you look at it, it's not as clear as you state. Let's examine two possibilities and see how they measure up against common sense.
Theory 1: There exists some "thing" that created the universe and the life within it.
Theory 2: At some point in time a universe appeared from nowhere, full of matter and energy. Over billions of years, clumps of debris formed into clouds, stars, planets, etc. On at least one planet, random atoms came together in complex formations to create molecular machines. From these, cellular organisms sprang forth with limited reactive abilities. These in turn grouped together to create very complex life forms, culminating in the self-aware human beings we know and love today.
The more I let my mind ponder each theory in turn, the more the second one sounds like a great science fiction story. There are so many random occurances resulting in complex patterns.
The first theory, however, starts to seem dodgy when one attempts to personify the "thing" by calling it the "creator." Images of an old man with a long white beard and robe sitting in the clouds is obviously quite silly, but it's what people tend to think of and thus dismiss the theory out-of-hand.
Worse things happen still when power and politics come into play. Seeing the violence some people commit in the name of religion and a creator made it easy for me to dismiss the possibility, for I assumed anyone willing to do so must be completely wrong. It wasn't until I looked for myself at the arguments that I was able to separate spirituality from religion.
And damnit, I sure can't wait to find out the answer! ;)
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
From my memory of the last time the Nuremberg List was posted on Slashdot, I predict that there will be at least two dozen posts talking about how the Nuremberg trials after the end of World War II were retroactive. They weren't. The surviving leaders of Germany and Japan (and the other Axis countries) were tried for violations international laws Germany had signed well before WWII.
The Geneva Conventions in question were first ratified in 1864 and later modified in 1906. They dealt with the treatment of the sick and wounded. Additions were made to the conventions in 1929 concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. There were more modifications made in 1949, but by then the trials were long done.
The Hague Conventions were first ratified in 1899 and modified in 1907. They dealt with certain kinds of weapons (such as chemical weapons) and outlined the treatment of both prisoners of war and civillians.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, ratified in 1928, outlawed war as a tool of national policy (ie. aggression).
There were also a few other laws that were brought up (such as the naval law against false flags and such), but these were the big ones.
As can be seen, all of these treaties were drawn up well before the start of World War II. More importantly, Germany signed on to each and every one of these treaties, bringing themselves under their jurisdiction. This is similar to the way that Milosveic is being brought to trial for violations of the Dayton Accords (to name one) he signed on to years earlier.
Of course, the people who maintain the Nuremberg List are those kinds of people that, if you begin to understand their "logic," you should seek professional help...
The accepted definition of a threat unprotected by the First Amendment is one which "on its face and in the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution", and there is considerable dissent among the judges over whether a website can or cannot meet that standard.
Of course a web site can meet that standard: (16 pt type) KILL THIS MAN (picture) (name and address) (why he should die) (suggested assassination methods, where to buy sniper rifles, car bombs, etc).
It is illegal to say "Kill this man", when it's clear that you really mean it, and it's still illegal if you direct this message to the general public (through a web site, a broadcast, or a speech) rather than a specific person.
The question is whether this particular web site meets this standard, because it does not explicitly tell anyone to kill the abortionists it identifies. It's a borderline case. It's pretty clear that the authors of the web site hope someone will do something bad to the persons named, but it may not even say abortionists should be killed (or even harassed) - it just attracts those who do believe that. IMO that is the web site authors' intention, but if they were careful about what got recorded in e-mail or print, that may be impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Think about the principles here in a less emotional case. How about a web site that says "Commodity traders are scumbags who ought to be shot", and "John Doe is a commodity trader". It leaves it up to the reader to complete that syllogism. Is this protected speech? Is the author responsible if some unsuccessful investor reads the web site, then in fact shoots John Doe?
How about if the web site doesn't explicitly say anything against commodity traders, aside from a URL like "commodityfraud.com"? It just gives the traders' name, address and picture - and it is going to be found by people with a grudge against commodity traders.
I think the "nuremberg" web site lands somewhere between those cases. It is knowingly set up to be easily found by those who do want to kill abortionists, it makes it easy for them to find their victims, and it probably avoids directly telling them to kill but gives a certain amount of moral encouragement.
The Nuremberg files and sites like it are nothing more than the whiney rants of immature people who want to force the world to do things their way. In the USA, we call this "fascism." Intimidation through threats of violence is in NO WAY protected by the Constitution. Strictly speaking, our own government is only permitted to threaten force in the protection of everyone's rights (in which they too fall to the same human weaknesses of us all).
Lost in the noise of these temper tantrums are the real contributions made by those people who adopt babies that nobody else wants, or help to convince the parents of a young girl that she is not evil for becoming pregnant, and that she should not be thrown out on the streets. But then again, those people probably read the "Judge not, lest ye be judged" bits of the Bible a little more carefully than the foot soldiers in the "Army of God."