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EU Anti-Hate Laws On The Web
coupco writes "The European Union's Council of Europe passes a measure that would make hate speech on the web illegal, and subject to banning and filtering. A story on Wired News explains the How and Why."
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Who gets to decide what is considered "Hate Speech"?
Aside from the fact that this is an affront to free speech (Which I'm sure everyone else here will cover just fine), did anyone notice that they allow you to promote hatred against people based on sexual orientation or gender?
The quote nicely omits these. Now, provisions for that may be elsewhere in the amendment, but it belongs in that sentance; seperating it is poor writing.
Is the EU is telling its citizens who they can hate?
There's something very wrong here.
The 9th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is brilliant on this topic:
Jefferson refused to put his name to the Constitution until it had his 10 Amendments. One of them, the 9th, was to prevent the Government from explicitly listing the things you're allowed to do -- then using that as a way to restrict what you *can* do.
The language in the EU's law:
The people who wrote up the current legislation in Europe (and many US politicians, for that matter) fail to understand the lesson here:
It's useless trying make laws via ad-hoc enumeration.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
"Dammit toqer, look at all those nips driving up the road, they're going to take over!" my uncle vince said to me one day as we stood outside the family fruit stand.
"You know, I hear they eat cats and dogs!"
This is but a small sample of what I heard from the men in my family. Every derogetory racial slur you could imagine. Funny thing is, despite only being 4th gen american, the older men in the family were always trying to get people to drop the idea that we were "dago wop Guinni Italians" for the cowboy white bread image they were trying to portray..
It would have worked too, if my parents wouldnt have been such fuckups.
Around 12 or so, the problems with my parents escalated to the point where I had to spend as little time as possible around them. The other white kids didn't really want to hang out with the kid from a broken family (divorced)
My first mexican friend manny and his family helped me get through a lot of stuff, even though they lived in an apartment, and dad was dead, his mom was so supportive of letting him be who he wanted, something my parents never even considered.
My second education into non-white culture was with my surrogate japanese family. When my mom kicked me out at 16, my japanese friends and their family would let me take showers at their house, feed me, give me clean clothes to wear. I gained culinary insight with sushi, and learned eating raw fish with a sake bomb could be quite tasty..
Doesn't really have a lot to do with the article does it? I read the topic was on EU adopting anti hate laws for the web, well ok here's my insight into the article.
I think everyone has a right to their opinion, no matter how wrong it is. Despite all the bad opinions I learned early on, later in life I learned the truth about people for myself. I don't need parliment acting as the thought police for me.
It's human nature to question everything.. No matter how a person is brought up, eventually they'll find their own truth.
When are people ever going to learn that free speech must be absolute and sacrosanct, no matter how reprehensible the beliefs being espoused?
All viewpoints have something to offer, and none is totally correct; as humans, we are incapable of perceiving absolute Truth. That truth lies somewhere between the viewpoints, and by censoring any viewpoint -any viewpoint- we permanently cripple our ability to get closer to that Truth, whatever it may be.
Thoughts do not go away sinply because we forbid people to speak of them. The only valid way to stop hate has always been, and will always be, education, not legislation.
I advise reading the book "The Holocaust Industry" (written by a Jew), which details much of the seedier side of the Holocaust, including people who claim to have been in concentration camps - but who were later proven to have spent the war in Switzerland, of misdirection of funds intended for Holocaust victims.
One good example is that this law makes it illegal to suggest that less than 6,000,000 Jews were murdered, might it have been 5,999,999? Oops, you just broke the law.
There are many who think that the number was actually lower than 6 Million based on census information and other data at the time. Now, some would have you believe that even thinking that less than 6 million Jews might have died during WWII is disrespectful to the memory of those that died, but how much more disrespectful is it to censor the truth, to misuse funds intended for the families of the real victims, or to pretend that you suffered when you didn't?
That's not a "real" solution, that's a basis for a solution, not a solution itself.
Sorry, I didn't realize it was my job to solve all the world's problems this week.
So teach everyone, all the time?
Essentially, yes. Make it obvious, all the time, that hate is not acceptable behavior.
I don't get it. How can you tell whether someone's been "taught" or not?
We're not talking about getting a diploma. It's simply a concept. Different != bad.
Having a principle for a solution and having an actual solution are two very different things. And that's why we see laws like this.
Ah. "We must do something, and this is something, so we must do this". Sorry, it doesn't make it right.
You want specific ideas? OK. How about producing children's programming that carries the message different isn't bad but hate is? How about public service announcements carrying the same message to adults? How about speaking out against hatred instead of ignoring it?
I may not have the best solution but that doesn't mean I can't see that outlawing hate isn't a good one.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Guys, when you get extreme, there really is no difference. What is the difference between Fascism and Communism, as they have been implemented implemented? I would argue squat. In both cases, you have a lot of privileges located in the hands of the few. In both cases, the government runs industry. In both cases, you have massive militaries. In both cases, you have totalitarian regimes that control every aspect of life. In both you ultimately have dictators or very minute oligarchies, and in both you have an object for the mass populace to hate (Jews for fascists, bourgeoisie and aristocrats for communists). You want the best example of how close these two ideologies are, study China. They very clearly made the transition from Communism to Fascism awhile ago (if you really want to try to distinguish between the two) when they started trading freely with the rest of the world and devloping an actual economy, but that shouldn't be possible if the two ideologies are diametrically opposed.
It's easiest if you view politics as a circle: at the top, you have Communism and Fascism and other totalitarian regimes. As you move clockwise from that point, you move gradually to Feudalism, eventually to pure Capitalism. If you move counterclockwise, you go through pure Socialism to the Welfare State. In other words, going downwards in either direction increases the number of choices allotted to the individual as opposed to the state. As you progress further down from Welfare and from Capitalism, you eventually come down to the bottom and hit anarchy. I'm not saying that you need to ride the circle around to switch sides; I'd argue that, despite all of the flaws of the USA, we generally speaking alternate between the two sides of the middle, obviously without passing through either the top or the bottom as a result of each election. But I think this shows the positions of the parties much better.
So don't tell me that extreme right always yields to a military totalitarian state and going far left yields bliss. It doesn't. The two in their extreme forms are effectively the same. Our different perceptions of the two is merely proof that a rose, sadly, would not smell as sweet by any other name.