Slashdot Mirror
UK Pressures the US To Takedown Extremist Videos
chrb writes "BBC News and the Telegraph are reporting that the British government has pressured the US government to take down privately hosted extremist web sites and videos, particularly on YouTube. The request follows the conviction of a 21-year-old woman who attempted to murder MP Stephen Timms after watching YouTube videos of radical American Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. YouTube hosts more than 5,000 videos featuring al-Awlaki, but has begun to remove them following the British government's complaints. The issue obviously raises First Amendment issues in the US, but Security minister Baroness Neville-Jones has said 'Those websites would categorically not be allowed in the UK. They incite cold-blooded murder and as such are surely contrary to the public good. If they were hosted in the UK then we would take them down but this is a global problem. Many of these websites are hosted in America and we look forward to working even more closely with you to take down this hateful material.'"
It depends. Not all speech is protected:
# Obscenity
# Fighting words
# Defamation (includes libel, slander)
# Child pornography
# Perjury
# Blackmail
# Incitement to imminent lawless action
# True threats
# Solicitations to commit crimes# Obscenity
# Fighting words
# Defamation (includes libel, slander)
# Child pornography
# Perjury
# Blackmail
# Incitement to imminent lawless action
# True threats
# Solicitations to commit crimes
Source: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/Speech/faqs.aspx?id=15822
Britian asked Google to take down the videos. Google can do what it wants with it's site.
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech because the US government isn't making them.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
that it's alright for elected officials to protect their positions from being challenged through democratic processes like anything on the internet/media to "protect the social good"?
maybe I'm just a little crazy, but that screams of a corrupt government to me.
To be fair, the elected official in question had his 'position as a living person' challenged by a nutter who came to his constituency office and stabbed him with a knife. He was not "challenged through democratic processes". Over in the UK we have these things called elections to do that. I don't really think that this move is necessarily a good idea, but to say it is corrupt for people to be upset over the case is ridiculous. Also, he is (now) an opposition MP, and is not part of the government.
Obviously, you are unfamiliar with the case of Miller v California, which laid down the rules for obscenity. And, for the record, the Supreme Court CAN interpret the constitution as they like.
To qualify as obscenity, it has to meet all three of the following requirements: it has to, by the standards of the community, appeal to the prurient interest; it must depict patently offensive sexual behavior; it must lack any and all artistic and scientific value.
Apparently you can't read.
The UK government wants the US government to pull this sort of thing off the net.
Google can do what they like, but the US Govt. has rules it must follow in that regard, and they are nothing like the UK's rules (which are more like suggestions for them anyway).
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
That'd be Article 3, Section 2:
Unless you'd care to argue that a court charged with applying the Constitution to all cases before it somehow precludes the court from interpreting the laws as written and applying them to the case under review?
"They used to say "the sun never sets on the Brittish [sic] empire". Now there's no empire hance no K in UK. I never did understand the united (what with the troubles and such) part either so it's just as well they did away with that."
It's called the Commonwealth of Nations, which is a free association of independent states, sixteen of which retain the British monarch as the head of state. Read about it some day. The K in Kingdom has no relationship other than historical to the old British Empire, but it is still applicable to the Commonwealth and to all British territories.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Explain to me where the First Amendment says it only applies to "people"? It says simply that the Government shall make no law, it doesn't say which entities those laws must or must not be limited to.
By your own strict "as it's written" argument, all laws being passed by the government that restrict speech - any speech, by any entity - are unconstitutional, which means that corporations should also be exempted from any government restriction, as well.
Or, when you said that "all speech is protected, there are no exceptions in the constitution," did you really mean to say, "I think the First Amendment should mean what I want it to mean, in the specific circumstances I think it should apply in?"
Note that the crusades are ancient history, and we as a people have grown to overcome the barbaric ways still perpetuated by the Islam religion.** Also note that the crusades were provoked by previous attacks from the muslim nations. Yes, that's right. They were NOT unprovoked acts of spreading Christianity, but a retort to constant attacks from the "barbarics" of the time. Don't ignore details to suit your argument because you just look like a fool.
** If you still associate modern Christianity to that time, you should realistically only be comparing it to the Catholics.
The United, in United Kingdom, primarily refers to the union of the two once separate kingdoms of England and Scotland. Specifically it refers to the personal union of the crowns of these two kingdoms in one person, or really the replacement of this previous arrangement with something less complicated--Kind of.
Prior to the creation of the UK, a single person (e.g. Charles I) was simply simultaneously the King of Scotland and the King of England. This distinction lead to interesting legal paradoxes and scenarios that only English legal theory could contrive. The best example is in 1640, where Charles I as king of England actually went to war with his other kingdom of Scotland, and when he was eventually forced to make peace (with Scotland) actually traveled to Scotland (while still at war), was formally received as king and arranged a peace treaty and afterwards played a few rounds of golf with the Scottish nobles; and I am not making this up. The creation of the UK was in part an attempt to clean up this kind of dissonance.
The whole theory behind the UK grew in part from Henry VIII's earlier act of establishing himself as the King of Ireland and creating a personal union between the Kingdoms of Ireland and England. (In fact, there are earlier examples of this kind of thing in regard to the Principality of Wales). So the UK always did include the Kingdom of Ireland as well. I don't think that Kingdom exists independently any more though as I'm not sure if there is a Kingdom of Northern Ireland specifically.
Note in all this that though the Kingdom's were united, the actual countries were not (except insofar as a new country was brought into existence using them). Scotland still exists as a separate country from England, even though they still have the same Parliament (kind of) and the same King.
The end result of this long legal and historical process is that the British are very, very, particular about titles, formalities and the legal powers and functions which arise and derive form them. When you hear Anglo-Saxon's discussing who can legally do what and where in these kinds of discussion, it's because of the work of generations of British scholars who gave their lives to try to make sense of the constitutional framework they had inherited. It's also worth noting that for those same reasons, in most other countries these discussions tend to be rather pointless(e.g. In the US, you have Gitmo, and in Ireland you have really no laws at all). The trouble with Anglo-Saxon legal systems is that most Anglo-Saxon societies aren't actually English.
May the Maths Be with you!