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International Online Debate On Freedom of Expression
JL Fandiari writes "The Internet Rights Forum, a french non-profit organization, has just opened an international discussion forum on 'Freedom of Expression in the Information Society.'(http://www.foruminternet.org/en/ for the English version).
This forum is co-moderated by three professors of Law : an Amerian (Burton Caine), a Canadian (Pierre Trudel), a Belgian (Etienne Montero), a Senegalian lawyer (Mr Elhadj Mame Gning) and is coordinated by Lionel Thoumyre (the author of Juriscom.net).
Their contributions are regularly translated into French or English. This amazing experiment has been initiated to prepare a symposium organized by the French national Commission for UNESCO on 15 and 16 November in Paris on the same theme.
Their say the content of the discussion forum will be synthesized in a report to be presented to the participants and the speakers of the symposium. This symposium is placed within the perspective of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 in Geneva.
Be sure to answer the contribution of Burton Caine, professor at the Temple University School of Law, that starts by asking 'Who are we?'"
I'm sure that they'd have an opinion about Free Speech rights in many countries where such rights would do the most good in promoting good governance. Yet, though I've read about them in The Economist, I've not heard of them elsewhere. Is anyone out there a member? Where does Transparency International get funding and is it a good cause (I don't know either way, I just hear good stuff about their activities).
It seems to me a debate about free speech has to hit on the following issues:
I'm sure my list is meager and could be added to, but perhaps it's a starting point for discussions on the nature of speech. Did I miss any?
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Hmmm, apparently this forum is hosted primarily in France. So, what will they do when a skinhead or neo-nazi brings up their right to free expression?
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Let's cut to the chase, here.
Is money speech?
There's been a flurry of campaign finance reform attempts in the past year or two, driven by popular opinion. The current method of fighting it seems to be to describe campaign contributions as 'speaking' to the candidate, and therefor any attempts to limit those contributions are curtailing 'freedom of speech.' Sounds to me rather like claiming First Ammendment protection for bribary.
In Vermont we have a campaign finance reform law that has had its implementation 'delayed' by court action while things are figured out. In Tuesday's Primary one of the more contested races featured a candidate outspending his rivals by a large margin. He was criticized for this, and reminded of the pending law. His response, the 'money is speech' argument.
Perhaps the best counter to this strategy would be to extend OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) 'protection' to elected officials. Then assert that the 'speech' of excessive campaign contributions is so loud as to threaten the hearing of the candidate. Cap the decibels.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Interesting summary, and I agree.
Some speech/expression should be permitted, and some not.
"Obscene" or hardcore pornography is defined in a US Supreme court case search the name Miller V. California 1973. im too lazy to search it for you heres my summary:
Miller v. California (1972)
I. Issue before the court
Is the sale and distribution of obscene materials by mail protected under the First Amendment's freedom of speech guarantee? What is defined as obscene and what standards are there? Can state courts define limits on the First Amendment?
II. Facts of the Case
Miller, after conducting a mass mailing campaign to advertise the sale of "adult" material, was convicted of violating a California statute prohibiting the distribution of obscene material. Some unwilling recipients of Miller's brochures complained to the police, initiating the legal proceedings. Miller was convicted, but he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He argued that state, rather than national, standards violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
III. Decision (1973)
The Court held that obscene materials did not enjoy First Amendment protection. The Court modified the test for obscenity established in Roth v. United States and Memoirs v. Massachusetts, holding that "the basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. . . (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." The Court rejected the "utterly without redeeming social value" test of the Memoirs decision. A jury may measure factual issues of prurient appeal and patent offensiveness by the standard that prevails in the forum community without using a "national standard."
IV. Reasoning
Sex and nudity may not be exploited without limit by films or pictures exhibited or sold in places of public accommodation any more than live sex and nudity can be exhibited or sold without limit in such public places. At a minimum, prurient, patently offensive depiction or description of sexual conduct must have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to merit First Amendment protection. For example, medical books for the education of physicians and related personnel necessarily use graphic illustrations and descriptions of human anatomy. In resolving the inevitably sensitive questions of fact and law, we must continue to rely on the jury system, accompanied by the safeguards that judges, rules of evidence, presumption of innocence, and other protective features provide, as we do with rape, murder, and a host of other offenses against society and its individual members.