Slashdot Mirror
Three Years in Prison for Posting Hatespeak
Vainglorious Coward writes "In the UK, a man has been sentenced to three years in prison for posting inflammatory messages to a website. Pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred on a site dedicated to the memory of a murdered black teenager, the 30-year old accused stated that he was not racist, and had intended to stir up an argument on the website, but did not believe in what he had written. The defending lawyer described her client as 'isolated and living in a fantasy world, spending hours on his computer in his room where his persona could be as he made it, good or bad.'"
"Hitler started with an idea, slavery started with an idea, so it is good that this was stopped in time."
*Shudder*
Eerie resemblance to "thoughtcrime"...
So please take it from me, crushing race hate is worth losing some smaller liberties.
No! It isn't!
Everybody has a cause for which they believe it is worth the loss of 'smaller' liberties. But for whatever liberties we have (that do not infringe on the liberties of others), they are NEVER worth giving up.
The most important goal in any modern country should be to insure civil liberties. This is so that we can protect ourselves from the government, the entity who has the largest ability to harm us. World War II certainly was catastrophic (over 60 million casualities by some estimations), but it will be nothing compared to the suffering in the future if our population of over 6 billion becomes subject to police states. For each civil liberty that we give up, we get a step closer to that future.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't made up my mind on this particular case; I realize that some speech is considered a direct violation of people's natural rights. However, if a speech fails to rise to that threshold (and it is a very high threshold), than it ought to be free, and no number of casualities past or present should change that.
Be careful what you say; true liberties are NEVER worth giving up.
Rubbish. Millions of people, famous and average, have said, openly and freely, that he is a bad president. They were not punished for it. Thousands of people have suggested that he should be impeached, openly and freely, and they have not been punished for it. Some people have even said that he should be murdered, and despite the fact that that would probably get you in trouble if you were talking about someone else, they were not punished for it.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
That's incitement to murder, hardly a category of protected speech.
Just calling for violence doesn't automatically exempt speech from protection - SCOTUS ruled in 1969 that "[f]reedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
One can hardly argue that a posting on a web forum is an incitement to imminent lawless action - if he had been speaking at a rally of armed white supremacists who were already whipped into a race-hate frenzy, his ass would be hanging out in the breeze, but in this situation he would be untouched in the US. I doubt there would even be an investigation. One of the few good things left about this country - I don't agree with his beliefs; I find them downright repugnant, but I believe he has every right to express them and certainly don't think he's crossed the line in this case.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
ah, but that's what the purpose of a metamod system is. If an individual truly IS a fanatic with an agenda, he/she will find themselves unable to moderate for much longer. Plus, if mods are browsing at -1 as they should be insightful comments unfairly modded down should be modded back up in short order.