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Legal Threat Demands Techdirt Shut Down
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this month, the US approved a new law to fight against so-called 'libel tourism,' the practice of suing US companies in foreign jurisdictions (quite frequently, the UK) which do not have the same level of free speech protections. The new law, the SPEECH Act, may now get put to the test, as lawyers for a guy named Jeffrey Morris in the UK, who was upset about some comments on a 2004 blog post on Techdirt, have demanded the entire site shut down due to those unidentified comments."
Just don't write fiction about child molestation and you're fine, even the US has its limits on free speech.
Truth is a legal defense in the US, I'm not sure if it is in the UK.
the truth is often ugly and difficult for people to come to grips with. in fact, because of the cognitive dissonance, many would prefer to accept or tell themselves placid lies, rather than face an ugly truth which upsets their beliefs and point of view
the truly intellectually honest person, who is willing to challenge their beliefs, is unfortunately rare: they are investing a lot of time and energy into an endeavour with little payoff and a lot of pain. meanwhile, those who wall themselves off from truth and maintain pleasant lies have a pleasurable, effort free life
so you wind up with these people who are so closed minded, they will only live in their walled cognitive garden of placid lies, and anyone that faintly smells of ugly truth must be attacked and cast out immediately, to preserve the status quo of current belief, lest you have to face the difficult and painful task of rebuilding your belief system. propaganda outlets like fox news helps maintain that walled garden of denial for many people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US exported a huge amount of our manufacturing might to the developing world, tens of millions of jobs, basically for free, when there was no need and we would have made out better keeping those jobs.
We don't require balanced or equal tariffs, and have some of the lowest import tariffs in the world.
And xenophobic? Please name your nation and your "anchor baby" instant citizenship law. Oh ya, that's right, the US is the ONLY nation to have such a liberal law, where anyone who can make it across the border then pop out a kid gets the kid automatic citizenship. We let in more outsiders to come here and work than any other nation, by raw numbers, no one else comes even close. Although technically illegal, it has been just plain non enforced except at a joke level for decades now. Ten percent of our population are now so called "illegals", with another five percent being "legal", that's 15% of our modern population. What is the status with your nation? What percentage are immigrants? What are your tariff figures on trade? How rqcially mixed is your nation, how many different languages spoken there, how many different colors of people, how many different religions exist? Go ahead, name your nation so we can compare.
And copyrights and movies and music...if you stuck to your own "superior" nation's movies and music, then it wouldn't matter, would it? Why do you want to watch or listen to inferior and copyright restricted US products?
Name your nation so we can drill down deeper and find out some more exact little data points to compare.
Financial "products", again, name your nation and we will determine if your central bankers are as deep into it as US bankers are..chances are..this is correct.
Dictators? Name your nation, we'll see who you trade with, who you allow tourism with.
Really? You object to being required to be able to prove that what you said is true if it causes someone damage?
That might be alright. Unfortunately, the way the law works in merry old England is that truth is not necessarily a defence against libel - you can prove that what you said is true, and still be found liable.
Also, it's not the "proving to be true" that's the issue - it's the stupidly high cost of legally demonstrating that truth.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face