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Germany Wants Facebook To Obey Its Rules About Holocaust Denial
Bruce66423 writes: In a classic example of the conflict of cultures bought about by the internet, Germany is trying to get Facebook to obey its rules about banning holocaust denial posts. From the linked Jerusalem Post article:
[Justice Minister Heiko] Maas, who has accused Facebook of doing too little to thwart racist and hate posts on its social media platform, said that Germany has zero tolerance for such expression and expects the US-based company to be more vigilant. "One thing is clear: if Facebook wants to do business in Germany, then it must abide by German laws," Maas told Reuters. "It doesn't matter that we, because of historical reasons, have a stricter interpretation of freedom of speech than the United States does." "Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred are crimes in Germany and it doesn't matter if they're posted on Facebook or uttered out in the public on the market square," he added. ... "There's no scope for misplaced tolerance towards internet users who spread racist propaganda. That's especially the case in light of our German history."
I'm pretty sure Germany's had laws about denial of the holocaust since well before modern internet culture was around.
I thought it was an unconditional surrender.
"There's no scope for misplaced tolerance towards internet users who spread racist propaganda. That's especially the case in light of our German history."
Perhaps a more important lesson "in light of our German history" is learning that dictators require the power to silence opposition...especially political opposition. They can't wield it if it doesn't exist. Now it does. History gives no confidence it won't ultimately be misused. Your own country, along with ancient Greece and Rome, are prime examples of nominal free democracies that gave up "emergency powers" to someone who never gave it back.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The reason Germany has these laws is as a form of oppression. After WW2, the Allies wanted Germany to join their side against the USSR, but they needed to make sure the Nazis didn't rise again. This oppressive speech law, and others, were the way that was accomplished. It is a clear attempt to oppress the country's freedom of self-determination.
Don't be mistaken and think that these laws are a model of free speech.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
True: Germany has limited freedom of speech for centuries. It didn't prevent the Nazi rise to power, and it arguably contributed to it.
Perhaps it's time for Germany to actually change its "interpretation of freedom of speech" instead of clinging on to what hasn't worked historically.
I just read: "There's no scope for misplaced tolerance towards group a".
I have mixed feelings...
as german (and rest of the world) facebookers are concerned. therefore it should be no problem to hold them responsible under EU law. the thing is - if that was really a concern to germany, they would already have done it. looks more like lip-service to the israelis.
Maas requests that Facebook obeys the law and deletes posts containing hate speech and calls for violence. Such shit is even illegal in the US. However, FB is unwilling to comply. They have no problem filtering naked breasts out (which would in most cases be no problem in Germany, but are a problem in the US for no apparent reason). BTW the hate speech going on in FB in Germany is written by Germans and in read by Germans and it is illegal in Germany, so it would be sufficient if FB would employ people able to read German and delete those posts. However, a company with $4 mrd. revenue is unable to do that? Really?
Maas' statement is to be seen in the light of recent events. Following a larger-than-usual wave of refugees, there has been a major outbreak of racist uproar in (mostly eastern) Germany, not only on the Net, but on the streets, too, with groups of neonazi extremists allied with so-called "concerned citizens" demonstrating, shouting hate and sometimes throwing stones or bottles in front of refugee hostels, and a new arson attack on a refugee hostel every other day (most of them, until now, having been empty at the time of the crime, with no refugees being hurt yet, but I fear that's just a matter of time). German government seems to very, very slowly notice that this comes as a result of a development both their domestic and foreign policies over the last 25 years have some responsibility for.
(a) it is too late for that now. If you have a time machine, go back shot Hitler and the other Nazis in 1932 and before. We would all be very happy if you could do that.
(b) holocaust denial is part of typical Nazi hat speech. So it is only an example of hate speech and not the only kind of fascistic hate speech. And it should be obvious to everybody that such crimes must be punished and that such post must be deleted, but flipping FB is unable to comply because it is in German. For such a rich company this is a pretty lame excuse.
Do you think that hate speech should not be removed from FB? Interesting.
if Facebook wants to do business in Germany, then it must abide by German laws.
Does "do business" mean sell advertising or does it mean allowing citizens of Germany to access it's pages. I can see how Germany could legally control allowing foreign companies from doing business in Germany (selling advertising in this case), but I don't see how Germany could prevent its citizens from accessing the whole internet (Facebook in this case), unless it wants to try to be like China or North Korea. I can see trying to restrict the monetary flow in or out of a country, but trying to restrict the information flow seems both wrong and futile.
Lets all start making posts denying the existence of Germany. Is that also against German law?
So, someone writes something that could be construed as hate speech in Germany, which is a crime, right?
Some other person, in Germany, instructs their browser to download that hate speech.
Who is guilty of the crime of hate speech? The person who wrote it legally, or the person who brought it into Germany illegally?
Let that one simmer for a while.
Remember, servers don't PUSH pages, they are REQUESTED, so Facebook is certainly not guilty here.
I'll go get some popcorn...
(albeit without death resulting, for now)
For now? What exactly is your implication? I don't really think we have to worry about Germany killing a few billion Facebook users.
Do you think that hate speech should not be removed from FB? Interesting.
It all depends on who decides on what is "hate speech". There's a fine line between censoring hate speech and suppressing free speech. I'd rather have hate speech uncensored and called out for public commentary, than to have suppression of speech based on some internet censor's arbitrary and subjective morality system.
This is what happens when extraterritoriality expands unchecked. If you are not a citizen of Germany, you did not consent to be governed by the German government. Their laws should not apply to you. If they want to rule you they should give you citizenship along with all the rights of a German citizen and have you consent to that arrangement.
Of course the USA is no different. In 2009, Gary Kaplan, the boss of London-based gambling company BetOnSports, fell foul of a US law that bans Americans from placing bets online even on websites outside the US. He was jailed for four years. In 2006, three British former NatWest bankers were extradited to the US to face fraud charges, in a case that frieked out the British business community. At the time, the bankers said their crimes had taken place in the UK and the victim was a UK bank hence they wanted to be tried in Britain.
Of course to some degree you need jurisdiction preventing piracy at sea and so international treaties are needed in this case that allow countries to consent to having their citizens tried in another country.
Here, perhaps Facebook could block content using IP addresses, but in the case of the EU 'Right to be forgotten', the European Commission wants Google's search results censored throughout the world. That is absurd! And claiming that "It doesn't matter that we, because of historical reasons, have a stricter interpretation of freedom of speech than the United States does" is a legitimate legal argument for limiting free speech means that for all practical purposes the first amendment is gutted. China could ban the Wikipedia page on Taiwan and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent mass killings by the Chinese army. Christian sites could be banned by Islamic regimes. Anything to do with psychology or science that offends any regime would be censored. We would be back in the dark ages.
I think there is another point. Some rights are inalienable - meaning they are incapable of being alienated and surrendered. Free speech is one of those rights. The fact that the EU fails to recognize this fact, does not change it. Indeed this concept was hinted at during shortly after founding of the UN when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was unanimously agreed. The preamble states:
Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.
Define hate speech.
A devout Christian thinks homosexuality is an abomination and posts some passionate stuff about it.
An atheist posts some passionate stuff against religion - and targets one, like Judaism.
And I have seen things here on Slashdot that could be considered hate speech by the overly sensitive. Look at the posts for any article about diversity in tech here on Slashdot.
If you do not like what someone says ; ignore it, argue against it or make fun of it (Mel Brooks is a God in that domain) - but NEVER ban it because it gives the 'haters" more power. People like banned things.
Think of Germany's situation after WWII. They had a bunch of war criminals and could prosecute and punish them. Those were the people running camps, the soldiers guarding camps, anyone who explicitly knew what was happening and helped it happen.
But every single person in the country knew the Nazis had been rounding up jews and killing anyone who helped hide them. Many had to realize that millions of jews had disappeared and there weren't anywhere near enough soldiers left in country to guard and take care of them. Many knew that some jews were being used as slave labor. So basically, an unknown but large percentage of the country didn't outright commit war crimes but did collaborate with the Nazis to some degree.
You can't prosecute 25% of your country. So they just said "We aren't going to pretend this didn't happen. it's illegal to deny it happened. But we aren't going to let it happen again either -- it's illegal to try and spread racial hate through speech." It was a compromise to prevent having to throw 20% of the country in jail. It's not crazy, it's just very foreign to American concepts.
This is really the question that applies...
Should corporations (a.k.a "moral persons") have more rights than national citizens? Should they be allowed to ignore laws they don't like and replace them with "our corporate policies"? Or, should there be a new international framework to regulate internet communication, rather than trust self-regulation?
Managers of Facebook consider holocaust deniers to have higher morals than women breast-feeding. This is a typical example of what self-regulation will bring.
Facebook managers should face the same legal consequences than the publisher of a German newspaper publishing the same posts. Unless, of course, the answer to the initial question is Yes, in which case there is no reason to forbid sales of drugs through Internet...
OK, if you have a law, than how about you take legal action against the people saying things you don't like then, Maas. Why should other people in other countries do your job for you?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"Define hate speech."
That's the problem. France has pre-Charlie laws making it illegal to criticize Islam. Can they reach oiut over the Internet and censor American comics? How about our profusion of ads for greasy fast food? Thailand still makes lèse-majeste, criticizing the king, a crime.
Let each country have fun trying to program a firewall to keep its own version of the bad stuff out.
We are better off knowing about the haters than to have them seething behind our backs.
Or better yet, have them click some sort of agreement where they agree they're not german. Just some sort of legal mechanism to move the jurisdiction of the site even more clearly out of their legal authority.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There have been a ton of complaints about blood-libel pages and Facebook says they fall under their free-speech policies.
Bark less. Wag more.
I think it should be up to FB what content they allow and don't allow on their site. It shouldn't be up to the government of a country that has time and again failed at democracy and that still idolizes authoritarianism.
if FB wants to remove it, that's their prerogative. If you don't want to see it, you can quit using FB, and that's your prerogative, too. Forcing FB or anyone else to remove anything just because you don't want to see it, is NOT your prerogative.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What? I'm saying, if users are breaking your laws, go after the users.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
We Germans will not accept that the victims are further humiliated by the denial of the holocaust.
Speaking as one of the people that the Nazis would have killed if they'd had the chance: fuck you. You don't honor the victims of the holocaust by outlawing any kind of speech. When nazis lie about their crimes, you speak up and report the truth.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
*Raises hand* I don't know what hate speech is, but I'm not in favor of laws censoring speech, and that includes Holocaust denial. My grandmother had a number on her arm. Many people on my mother's side of the family were killed in the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is disgusting and these people spouting this denial are in the very best case reprehensible fucktards. That doesn't mean they don't have a right to spout their reprehensible fucktardery.
As a native German, I have to say that 99% of the responses I read here are so WAY OFF reality, I'm absolutely stunned.
Just a few short comments for those of you who care to be educated:
- Maas politely invited Facebook to have a discussion on that topic. Nothing more, no laws or courts involved.
- Mentioning Nazi topics is not at all prohibited in Germany. On the contrary, the topic is extensively discussed in history school books, every-night TV documentations, exhibitions, public memorials in every city and town (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein), and our schoolchildrens' education on the topic is probably the most extensive in the world. A visit to a former concentration camp is mandatory for everyone in high school.
- The book "Mein Kampf" is not at all prohibited and may be sold if it includes academic historians' comments.
- What _is_ prohibited is showing certain Nazi symbols (e.g. swastika) or using Nazi expressions (e.g. "Sieg Heil!" or "Mit Deutschem Gruss!") in a supportive context. This very sentence, for example, is perfectly legal in Germany, because my context is explanatory, not supportive.
- Of course there is protection of free speech in Germany. And that freedom ends exactly where freedom of others starts. What is prohibited is public speech that aims at depriving minorities (religious, ethnical, etc.) from constitutional rights, or calls for criminal acts. If can't personally find this to infringe on my freedom.
If I were in his shoes, I'd do the math and figure out that deleting any Nazi FB pages and telling them to fuck off was good for business. I would ALSO tell the german government to go fuck themselves, since the freedom of speech is not negotiable.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The Nazi government was really keen on restricting speech. How did that work out?
We'll see how this works out
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Plus, if you let them spout on Facebook, they're easy as hell to keep track of. A simple regexp can do it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can they be more specific about what they want banned? Do they not want people to be able to see the info on facebook within Germany? Or do they not want people to be able to post it on facebook from within Germany? or something else?
Without knowing exactly what they are asking for we can't properly tell them how what they are asking for is impossible.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Here in the U.S., you cannot just say anything that you want without consequences. Hate speech, threats, and bullying are illegal here.
I agree with the rest of what you wrote, but one correction - Of those three, only credible threats actually break the law (with a few temporary state-by-state exceptions for cyberbullying).
Hate speech absolutely does not violate US law. Inciting to violence against them, sometimes (again, if credible); Ranting until you go horse about the evils of Muslims or gays or Canadians, no. You have every right to hate whatever groups you want and talk about it every chance you get - Hell, you can even do it while running for president!
Several states have passed anti-bullying laws, but not federally, and individual state supreme courts (e.g., New York) have already started overturning them as unconstitutional, and only a matter of time until the USSC does the same.
- Of course there is protection of free speech in Germany. And that freedom ends exactly where freedom of others starts. What is prohibited is public speech that aims at depriving minorities (religious, ethnical, etc.) from constitutional rights, or calls for criminal acts. If can't personally find this to infringe on my freedom.
I find it useful to allow people to speak such offensive things. This makes it easier to identify the assholes.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Hate can be promoted by speech, in fact it's difficult to create the sort of widespread hatred that Hitler did without speech.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
They're weeds. You need to cut them down and drive them out.
No, you need to expose them. You need to let them spew whatever drivel they want out in public, and then publicly refute them. If you make their words illegal, then you drive them underground to persuade others in private, giving them an excuse never to expose their lies to the sunlight of public refutation.
And people certainly do like banned things; it makes them feel that they're learning some secret information that the powers that be have ulterior motives for concealing.
When you are discussing what should and shouldn't be, what *is* is not especially relevant.
So fraud should be legally protected. After all, lying speech to harm others should be protected.
Learn to love Alaska
Asking Facebook to follow German law while operating in Germany is somehow forcing "billions of Facebook users" to his ideology?
Yes, because Facebook doesn't exist only in Germany or only in the US.
If I, as a US citizen, want to deny the holocaust on Facebook, FB then has two choices - Remove the offending comment entirely, or at least block it from viewers in Germany. Either of those infringe on my right to express whatever brand of bigotry I may subscribe to despite living in an entirely different country that doesn't feel the need to outlaw critical thinking. I might not get arrested for it, but I would have had my voice silenced as a result of Germany's stupidity.
FWIW, I don't count as a holocaust denier. I arrived at that conclusion through rational consideration of the evidence, however, not because my government told me what to think - And in fact, the latter would make me less likely to believe it; any time the government really wants you to believe something, that raises the bar for the actual evidence a hell of a lot higher.
If Facebook doesn't like Germany's laws, they can quit offering their service in Germany. That's their prerogative.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And then people will hear it in secret places, in the dark corners and hidden holes where there is no one to shine a light and call out the bullshit. And thus does evil grow.
Germany is perfectly correct that someone cannot stand up in a public square in Germany and state Holocaust denials. In Germany. This does not translate to a Spaniard making a video and posting it on YouTube where German citizens can view it.
That's the problem being faced now. The laws apply within a country's borders and they're trying to figure out how to apply them to technology that crosses their borders. In the previous example the Spaniard is doing nothing illegal. The German citizen may be by viewing the video - that would take a lawyer to answer.
Facebook is a social media platform. There is no one simple solution since there are millions of people posting their personal opinions at any given time. And lots of pictures of food but that's not as much of a problem. Germany is telling Facebook that it's their responsibility to enforce German laws across their entire user base. This is not practical nor is it right.
Sure. Close the Facebook offices in Germany. Don't allow German-based companies to advertise on Facebook. Fine. That's 'not doing business' with Germany. But they can't do much more than that unless Germany blocks all of Facebook. And we all know how well that works.
Germany needs to understand the difference here. They can't tell a Spaniard that laws in Germany apply to them just because they have something on the internet that Germans can view. It isn't going to happen and they need to focus on what they can control rather than what they cannot.
...NO ONE will sympatise with you. You won't be a martyr but osterised. And rightly so.
Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, there is a population of actual neo-Nazis in Germany, responsible for all sorts of violence up to this day. Meanwhile, in countries where they can have their little marches and we can all attend to laugh at them, their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing.
You can keep attesting that suppressing speech gets positive results, but the facts don't seem to support your argument. In forums hosted in the US like Slashdot, we'll not outlaw your stupid authoritarian arguments, but we will laugh at them. No amount of capital letters in your arguments can force us to accept them.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
the problem is CONTEXT
If what you are saying is in the wrong place and you are seen as drumming up violence then there are actual laws to charge you with.
Example if you said all members of NOTWHITE race need to be rounded up and taken to "work camps" where they belong and you were known to have a fleet of vans then you could be arrested for HATESPEECH in my area.
For the last generation or so laws that target Holocaust denial are almost entirely about targeting critics of Israel.
I've read that 97% of the inhabitants of Gaza are antisemites. Authoritative poll.
The thing I least love about Slashdot is the instant mod-up of unsupported assertions. The defining quality of the geek to my way of thinking is fact-based decision-making.
No. Commercial issues are distinct. But in general saying "This Foo is from the Ming dynasty" when it isn't should not be and is not illegal by itself. Selling it under false pretenses is correctly illegal. Notice that what is happening here involves not just speech but money changing hands.
Certainly, I don't think hate speech should be forcibly removed from Facebook. That's a bad idea (that said, I'm happy to let the Germans manage their own affairs).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How did I insult you? I think that suppression of speech is unreasonable and will never give positive results. If your argument is one of censorship, then it is an stupid argument. But there's no need to take this debate so personally. I'm not angry at all; I'm laughing... it's funny that I have to defend free speech.
The best way to fight stupid ideas, like Nazism and censorship laws, is to argue with them. Using force in place of open debate, like both the Nazis and the modern German state does, so clearly doesn't get the desired results. Also, the fact that censorship is the law in Germany doesn't make it a valid position. I'm free to argue against your dumb laws and you're free to argue back... Or you can just act offended. I don't really care either way. :)
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Given their history, I have no problem with them wanting to clamp down on Holocaust deniers. However they seem to think that there is just some magic button they can press over at Facebook to prevent such content from being seen by German users. This is not the case. It would take human censors reviewing every German post to do it. From Facebooks perspective it would be cheaper and easier to just pull the plug on German users completely and not allow anyone from a German IP address to access Facebook at all. Unless Germany wants to foot the bill for the manpower to police Facebook posts from Germany-based accounts. In any event I can't see how they'd expect to censor all Holocaust-denying posts, even ones from non-German IP addresses; that would be enforcing their laws on citizens of other countries.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Someone who puts out some "speech" or someone with a receptive nervous system to take this message in and goes gaga with it?
I think the receptive part in this game owns the problem because it keeps it going.
Seems to be a basic behavioral circuit in humans and to make laws managing this in some way or another leads to repression and makes the repressed impulse stronger.
Hey, Germany, does denial of the Armenian holocaust count?
If so then WTF is anyone considering Turkey for EU membership?
If not then WTF double standards anyone?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
if Facebook wants to do business in Germany,
And if it doesn't, then what?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Define hate speech.
A devout Christian thinks homosexuality is an abomination and posts some passionate stuff about it.
An atheist posts some passionate stuff against religion - and targets one, like Judaism.
And I have seen things here on Slashdot that could be considered hate speech by the overly sensitive. Look at the posts for any article about diversity in tech here on Slashdot.
If you do not like what someone says ; ignore it, argue against it or make fun of it (Mel Brooks is a God in that domain) - but NEVER ban it because it gives the 'haters" more power. People like banned things.
You worthless piece of shit should be send to the gas chamber.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
France has pre-Charlie laws making it illegal to criticize Islam
No it doesn't
Watch this Heartland Institute video
"Forcing FB or anyone else to remove anything just because you don't want to see it, is NOT your prerogative."
No, it certainly isn't.
On the other hand, it certainly *IS* the prerogative of any sovereign country's legislative body to set the rules that any company must abide by in order to do any kind of business or even set presence within its jurisdiction.
"... has time and again failed at democracy and that still idolizes authoritarianism."
Right, like the time that the highest court in the country, that had been stacked by the previous right wing governments, decided the election against the popular vote.
Where districts are constantly gerrymandered to engineer the desired voting results.
Voter roles are getting purged and the identification requirements made ever more difficult to ensure only the right people get to vote.
Lines for polling stations wind around city blocks in the "wrong" part of town.
A recent impartial study concluded that the system is not democratic but constitutes an oligarchy, and a former president concurred that this is indeed the case.
Oh, wait a second, ...
> Do you think that hate speech should not be removed from FB? Interesting.
I don't think that there's any such thing as "hate speech". I think that's a term created to ban speech, long in a line of reasons to ban speech.
Now, Germany doesn't have a first amendment- its equivalent calls out from the start that it has restrictions. It's also in line with the European model- "this clause GRANTS people the ability to do X"- versus the American model of "the government can NEVER pass a law stopping X", and as such comes from the idea that the government is handing out rights to begin with.
Whose Internet?
Define hate speech.
You worthless piece of shit should be send to the gas chamber.
Wow, the GP gave a list of grey areas and you posted some clear hate speech to try to refute him. The GP's point was that its hard to make these grey area determinations and doing so on an internet/country wide scale is practically impossible. Even harder to write code to do this instead of having an army of culturally sensitive SJW warriors making those determinations (which they would still mess up regularly). That whooshing sound was the GP's point going over your head.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
FUCK YOU!
First you help Hitler try to exterminate the jews, and now you engage in yet another bout of fascism...
Hate speech absolutely does not violate US law. Inciting to violence against them, sometimes (again, if credible); Ranting until you go horse about the evils of Muslims or gays or Canadians, no. You have every right to hate whatever groups you want and talk about it every chance you get - Hell, you can even do it while running for president!
It depends on what you mean by "does not violate US law." If you mean, "You can't be convicted for a crime on the basis of hateful speech ALONE," then you're sort of correct.
But hate speech is commonly used to enhance sentences for other crimes by converting them into "hate crimes." So, there can be clear legal consequences to hate speech, depending on the circumstances -- including ending up in prison for significantly longer.
Now, we can argue semantics here about how hate crime laws work. But the basic fact is that IF you use hate speech, it can cause you to serve significant prison time. Generally, you also need a related crime to trigger such a penalty, but it's effectively an extra penalty for the motivation behind a hate crime, which is often supported by evidence of hateful speech.
Bottom line: hate speech doesn't violate US law unless you use it while violating another US law. In that latter case, it most definitely can trigger significant criminal penalties, above and beyond what would normally be appropriate for a given offense.
This is not about "free oppinion" but about "redefining the past to prepare future crimes".
In germany you are free to promote national socialism as long as you do not deny its past flaws. This way a fascist has a harder time to prepare future crimes.
In the US you are free to promote pedophelia as long as you do not deny its past flaws. This way a pedophile has a harder time to prepare future crimes.
There is also the Markus Nessler parable:
One day some stranger starts following you while shouting "you stole my money, my jacket and my shoes!"
He continues to do so for some days then starts shouting "someone help me to get back my money, my jacket and my shoes!"
A couple of days later people start demanding from you to give back that mans money, jacket and shoes.
And some days later the man with help from some people takes away your money, your jacket and your shoes by force.
And everyone will say "you had it coming, he asked you for days to give back his money, his jacket and his shoes".
And that is the difference between "free speech" and "redefining the past to prepare future crimes". And thats the reason why you can shut up people by court order. Even in the US.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Your "tu quoque" is pretty much irrelevant.
Since you bring it up, though, let's look at a few of your points:
This is a bizarre complaint, given Germany's utterly intransparent and baroque system of holding elections. The system is so bad that the German constitutional court declared it undemocratic: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/...
I still prefer that over the German system of simply giving half the parliamentary seats directly to parties to do with as they see fit. You're welcome to disagree.
Voting identification requirements in the US are still a lot weaker than in Germany, so I frankly don't get on what basis you think that this is a problem.
Compared to what? Certainly not Germany, a country that is run by a small elite of the wealthy, old aristocrats, and intellectuals. They are so good at indoctrinating you that you don't even notice it how much they have you by the balls, and you are so disconnected from your history that you don't even recognize how old a lot of these power structures are.
Aristocrats? Seriously?
How about the one who would have been emperor, lovingly know as "Pinkelprinz".
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I give you that, if Germany is just yet another oligarchy they are much more skillful at hiding it.
sh1tbook is a place for useless cr4p . nobody cares
juegos para pc
Well then they are also subject to German law, if German law says so. For example, if I, as an Australian, was to go overseas and commit a crime as defined in Australia, I could still be charged. We (Australia) use this law all the time to prosecute people who go on child-sex safaris in South East Asia (as we should) or who join ISIS, for example. Are you seriously suggesting that just because you take a holiday you should also take a holiday from the law?
That's what all the Americans assert. The Europeans attribute more work to CERN and ITU than the Americans do.
Learn to love Alaska
What in my post condemned free speech? I was just pointing out that jcr was anti-democracy.
Learn to love Alaska
You know people see jcr at the top of your post. I don't get people that sign their posts also at the bottom.
-jcr
Yeah, seriously. As just one of the more prominent examples, there was Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Try doing some digging on the backgrounds of German politicians, and the people on the committees who draft laws. It's fascinating.
Doesn't take a lot of skill, given the way the German educational system and German media are set up. Most Germans know next to nothing about the people who govern them, or about the people with money and power in the country, while being subjected to a constant diet of anti-American and anti-free market rhetoric.
I find hate speech on facebook useful. It shows me who is no longer my friend and can be unfollowed.
Nobody is forcing anyone to follow racists and bigots on facebook, You can simply block them and go on with your life.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, you mean the guy who got completely disgraced due to his plagiarized Ph.D. thesis? Who was booted out as defense secretary? The guy who had to accept third rate EU admin jobs afterwards?
Yeah, that really makes your point very convincingly.
At least German laws aren't written by ALEC.
Find your stance absolutely comical. Kinda like when the US nowadays complains about torture in some other second rate countries.
Is the argument that evil, at any extreme, has the right to expression, in the name of free speech?
Does it follow then that you are willing to have the representatives from ISIS come to your local high schools and colleges and use their persuasive tactics to entice your neighbors and their children to massacre innocents in the name of some evil interpretation? Sleep well.
Why shouldn’t a country that has experienced an evil, magnitudes greater than ISIS, be allowed to determine what can, and what cannot, be said or distributed in its borders? [Remember, Americans think God gives them the right to pollute and police the world and everyone’s rights - it printed right on the dollar bill; “In God We Trust.”]
If you live in a country that interprets an eighteenth century individual ‘right', without taking 21st century technology into the equation, you are probably amongst the group that thinks some other 18th century ‘right’ also applies to 21st century weapons.
Fortunately only one country in the first world actually thinks that way. It’s also the same country with hundreds of religions that similarly interpret wisdom from preachers 2,000+ years ago as if nothing else has changed in the mean time. Those 'right thinking' people also control the dozens of states that allow Creationism to be taught as science, and they want their ‘rights' to have that interpretation included on national test standards. Twisted logic isn’t it?
Facebook operates and makes profit in many countries with limitations on information and the distribution of personal data. (China, Egypt, Dubai, Russia, India, EU etc.) they can and should respect German law in that country, or they should choose not to do business there. Easy. When Google couldn’t follow Chinese rules of censorship, they chose not to do business there. Today, Google’s principles have compromised the profit is more important than some ‘rights’.
There is no American ‘right’ to project its labyrinthine 18th century concepts into other countries where people consciously choose to limit the right of ISIS (or Nazis) to talk to their impressionable youth.
To paraphrase Zhou Enlai, "Let’s all check back in a hundred years and see if the American experiment continued to work.” No need for the rest of the world to follow them over a cliff.
Read your post. You may think you are arguing based on logic, but upon deeper investigation, it's all a bunch of emotional arguments. Think of how you were feeling when you wrote it. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's more than a little messed up, and the US does not follow Australia's example on this, with the sole example (afaik -- maybe not sole but if not there are VERY few others) of hiring overseas child prostitutes. If you go to Amsterdam and get high, the US won't lock you up when you come back.
And that's as it should be: applying laws to your citizens when they're not in your territory is a problematic concept. You can be a citizen of a country without even knowing it, for a recent example Ted Cruz was a dual Canadian citizen from birth until very recently when he renounced his citizenship, and he didn't know he was until some members of the press discovered it when he started campaigning for President.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
And people certainly do like banned things; it makes them feel that they're learning some secret information that the powers that be have ulterior motives for concealing.
That's so true.....think how many people got excited about the "establishment" suppressing the truth after the Lancet retracted that vaccine study paper....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I think you'll find the US does follow Australia (or vice versa) on this. Likewise, Australia does not prosecute you for smoking weed in Amsterdam - but the concept here is, it could chose to do so, should it wish; it's just simply not a priority or a concern. The law is the law. If Germany chooses to prosecute Germans who break German law, regardless of what that law is, then so be it. It's Germany's prerogative to do so. You can't say that the law says you can't say certain things in German, except on Facebook or where does it end.
The real argument here isn't whether or not German citizens should be above certain German laws, when on Facebook - of course they should not. Facebook is not some legal free-zone. The real argument is whether or not the law should exist - but once it does, it has to exist everywhere.
So we're going to make our own internet. With blackjack. And hookers. And...
Hey, now that I think about it, wasn't there something about the US wanting other countries to stop offering gambling? Pot, kettle, name calling...?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why is it different when it gets commercial? Because it offends the new global religion?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you wanted to avoid WW2, you should have shot Clemenceau, not Hitler.
Shooting Hitler would only mean that someone else will take his place. I shudder at the thought that this could have been someone competent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
i know there was no holocaust because i was not there to see it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No, Gumbercules. I don't now about Australia, but the vast majority of US criminal laws do not apply extraterritorially. It's not just that the US doesn't bother prosecuting people who use drugs outside of the US; they couldn't even if they wanted to. US law applies in US territory, and not elsewhere, except in certain limited cases.
One exception I'm aware of is that US citizens or permanent residents who have sex with child prostitutes in other countries can be tried in the US, and most likely treason or similar crimes would apply to US citizens overseas, but that's me speculating.
However, almost all other US laws apply only in the US. Extraterritorial laws are the rare exception and not the rule. If you smoke pot in Amsterdam, that's between you and Amsterdam. If you are 18 and get drunk in Puerto Rico (where it is legal), your home state won't go after you.
And, taken to the extreme, even serious crimes like murder are typically only crimes under the jurisdiction in which the murder occurs. If you go kill someone in Mexico, it's Mexico whose law you have violated and Mexico who will punish you. Now, if you go to the US after murdering someone in Mexico, the US will arrest you and send you to Mexico to face justice under Mexico's laws -- but only if Mexico asks. Extradition is not the same as extraterritorial application of law.
Here's a document with information on US extraterritorial application of law, considering it from constitutional, statutory, international law, and lots of other perspectives. Piracy (real piracy; guys on ships with guns or other "stateless vessels") is an extraterritorial application of law that had slipped my mind in my first comment. A few other cases seem to be things like, if you kill the President (or another high-ranking federal official) when he's in Japan, the US will have some beef with you even if Japan doesn't care. But these tend to be limited. Also, it's almost all federal criminal laws that apply extraterritorially; state criminal laws (which are the vast majority of criminal laws in the US) almost never do.
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mi...
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
So commercial speech isn't protected. Glad to know you oppose free speech, and we are just discussing where to draw the line.
Learn to love Alaska
Whilst I can appreciate Germany wants to stamp out the neo-nazi rhetoric, at the same time they go way too far, For example if you say that actually only 5.5 million Jews were gassed rather than 6 million then they will throw the book at you and it's a minimum sentence of 3 months and up to 5 years. It should be a civil matter not a criminal matter, imprisonment for at the minimum 'insulting' some group is insane.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
This is untrue only a third are coming from the Balkan. One third from Syria, Afghanistan and Irak, and the rest from somewhere else.
Here in German the official numbers and their interpretation from the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF) (engl. Federal bureau of migration and refugees)
http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/...
No it is not. The thing is you are not allows to write hate speech on walls and on the Internet. And you are not allowed to encourage people to commit crimes.
They do. And FB is also slow in that area.
There is overwhelming evidence of the Holocaust. So if you want prove, you have it. However, Holocaust deniers around the globe just reject any evidence, because they don't like it.
The FB posts in question, however, are not so often refer to the Holocaust, they applaud drowning refugees in Mediterranean See, and the applaud the dead refugees in a truck in Austria. Such behaviour is cruel and inhumane. It is not funny to call dead refugees in a truck "Gammelfleischproblem" (rotten meat problem).
The Internet on German soil has to follow the rules and regulations there. If you provide a service in a foreign country and that is what FB does then they have to obey the laws there.
Certainly not Germany, a country that is run by a small elite of the wealthy, old aristocrats, and intellectuals.
Oh well, at least representation by 3 disparate groups is better than representation by just one which is common in some other parts of the world. Also: inellectuals? You say it like you have a problem with people who use their brain and actually think. Well, that would explain an awful lot.
Anyway, I agree with you. Being ruled by an opaque ruling elite is not socially just. It's good of you to keep arguing against it. Keep up the good fight!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
How can you make a comment that is already debunked in the summary posted above?
If you do business in country X, then you need to abide by the laws of country X.
What's so difficult about that? If FB doesn't like it, they are free to do no business in Germany. Nobody forces them to offer their services in Germany.
And yes, forcing FB to remove something is very much what countries can and should do. We can certainly find some country on the planet that doesn't have laws against explicit beastiary porn, maybe some failed african state that simply never thought about such vile things and thus didn't write it down. Post such things to FB from there and point the US minister of justice to it. You think he would say "well, it's legal in where it was posted from, so we should respect freedom of speech"?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Your point?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Have you ever been intellectually honest? You live in America (or claimed to). Your very existence is because of hate speech, propaganda, traitors, and terrorism. Your laws are in place because people broke the law, with speech, and spoke out against the king.
A country has the right to control its people, certainly. It has no right to control other people. Unless FB is serving up content from German soil then, no, they do not have control over them. They can block Facebook all they want. They can make using Facebook illegal for all I care. They can make Facebook remove any servers from their country if they want.
Man, I can't believe I'm forced to defend Facebook. Twice, in one day, I've had to say something in defense of really bad people. I think this is probably because there are just too many people who are unwilling to be honest.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
To be fair, quite expressly, you do NOT have a right to broadcast or express your beliefs IF they block it from viewers only in Germany. You do not have that right. You currently have that freedom but it is not a right. You, in your country, probably have the right to say it. You do not even have a right to use Facebook - you have permission. We could say that you don't even have the right in the first place - Facebook has every right to delete any comment they want to delete.
Personally, I think they should delete them all because we're ending up with tech geared towards the lowest common denominator but that's a different subject entirely.
But no... You can't really say that you have a right to post anything, of any type, in another country - you have the right to post it to the internet, or at least permission, but not the right to not have it blocked by someone else. They're well within their rights to block your speech, if they want, at either the Facebook or country level.
Your rights end at the end of your nose.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
All hail jcr, Emperor of the World.
Wow, what a zinger. I have imperialist ambitions because I don't want to put a gun to your head to shut you up.
Logic is a completely alien concept to you, isn't it?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I was just pointing out that jcr was anti-democracy.
Democracies can become tyrannies just like any other form of government. That's why we have a bill of right in the USA.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google. Fuck American mega corporations who think that American law and the lawlessness of the Internet give them the right to trample over every other culture on the planet earth. Get the fuck out of here, abide by the laws of the land and if you can't/won't, then you can't do buisness there. My Gawd, do you think you have an inalienable right to do commerce with anyone anywhere notwithstanding the culture, values and opinions of the constitutuents to whom you are trying to do buisness with?.
only small children like banned things: Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
Yes, he was a rising star of German politics. The fact that he was revealed to be a cheating gas bag tells you that it was is family connections, not his skill and intellect, that caused him to succeed.
I think it does.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So what if someone denies that there is holocaust denial? Is that also illegal in Germany?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The swastika is not a "Nazi symbol" any more than a pyramid or eye is a "US symbol". It is one of many similar symbols used in religions throughout the world. In India, for instance (a coworker from there informed me), they use it both "forwards" and "backwards", e.g. "SS" and "ZZ", as power symbols.
It's amusing that "Mein Kampf" is legal to be sold only if it contains revisionist remarks! That'd be like the US government making the Bible illegal to sell, if it didn't contain the US government's "explanatory remarks" -- laughable and ridiculous. Definitely not amusing for those forced to live under such restrictions, though.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I agree, some of my argument is ‘appeal to emotion’ and written as an emotional response. (I am not Spock.)
As humans, I believe many of our responses to evil, be it murder, child molestation, slavery, genocide, rape, prisoner abuse, certain government actions, violations of our perceived ‘rights' - are all emotional. There are people who, based on their emotional beliefs, make logical arguments for those actions (think ISIS, Stalin and Abu Ghraib - not to say that the last is anywhere near the evil magnitude of the first two examples).
Also, as people, cultures or countries, we determine which rights (i.e. laws) we grant to ourselves and how extremely we interpret their interaction. Fortunately, those change over time, we select new rights and sunset old ones (e.g. the right to treat people as property, aka slavery, also in the Constitution), but it would be hard to argue that emotions weren't involved. The 'logic' seems to follow whatever people emotionally determine to implement as rights (e.g. freedom from a king). Some people and countries are more collectivist, some more individual rights oriented, some religious, some believe in government driven economies, some prefer less government influence, some don't like their history denied, others edit their history liberally - all believe they are logical and often for 'the good of the epeople'.
So reducing it to emotional questions, demonstrates to me the ridiculousness of trying to impose America's version of rights into other environments and conversely the reverse:
Does ISIS have the right to come to your local schools and spread their message in the name of Free Speech? Should somebody from Syria lecture you about their ‘rights.'
Does Baidu have the right to publish results in the US that include misleading statements about corporations and stocks that have been pre-censored by it's government to encourage people to invest or subsidize Chinese industries? Should the US government require that type of information be removed or blocked? [BTW, I don’t think Baidu is wrong or evil, they are providing a service within the confines of their culture and legal system.]
In the end, who determines where the rights of one country intersect the rights of another? Don’t forget your ‘right to privacy’ from some foreign (or domestic) power.
Does ISIS have the right to come to your local schools and spread their message in the name of Free Speech? Should somebody from Syria lecture you about their ‘rights.'
Ok, let's consider this a Reductio ad absurdum.
Nah, that's not how freedom of speech works. You have the right to speak, but you don't have the right to make anyone listen.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
http://whatreallyhappened.com/...
Define hate speech.
You worthless piece of shit should be send to the gas chamber.
Wow, the GP gave a list of grey areas and you posted some clear hate speech to try to refute him.
No, I posted hate speech to test his words. Looks like you at least are as much a free speech hater has him. Burn in hell, Nazi scum.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
There is a difference between restricting free speech and committing a crime. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no danger is not free speech. Likewise, denying horrific acts for the sole purpose of inciting hate is not free speech but a crime. And before requesting that someone does a sexual act on themselves you should be happy that there are still many Germans who do not forget. How easy would it be for many today to claim they had nothing to do with the Holocaust because they were not even born when it happened? I was born decades after the Holocaust and I see it as my duty to not only set the record straight as you request, but go beyond that and actively engage (neo)nazis and holocaust deniers. Back in the 30s the generation of my grandparents totally missed doing that (with too few exceptions). Will it fix what happened? It surely does not, but we can at least try our hardest to not have anything like that ever happen again. I wish others had that sense of collective guilt.
Others are not that conscious in their decisions but are quite gullible and fall for this talk. Nobody is forcing anyone, yes, but that doesn't mean that it is perfectly fine to provide the brown mob an unrestricted platform to spew their (illegal by all means) crap.
Hitler was democratically elected
He wasn't. He was appointed by Paul von Hindenburg
This isn't a matter of taste, but a matter of adhering to law. There's no doubt about it and FB has the duty to curb criminal activities on their platform. In this case FB apparently had no interest so those who are in charge of upholding the law had to remind them of this.
Try thinking. Why not have a facebook.com and a facebook.de, and the de has the censorship applied as per German law, and those accessing it from within Germany are expected (or forced) to access the latter?
You are presuming that I'm supporting a censorship of the entire Internet by a single country because you have a small mind. We aren't all as dumb as you.
Try responding to what was said, rather than jumping ahead steps and guessing wrong, arguing with your own strawmen. It makes you look like an idiot.
Unless FB is serving up content from German soil then, no, they do not have control over them.
Does FB take money from German companies? That alone would be sufficient for Germany to exert some influence. And if Germany doesn't like that, they can go to the EU courts, and try to enforce Germany's laws over any Facebook operations anywhere in the EU. I'm not an EU lawyer, so I have no idea how successful that'd be, but I've heard of similar cases int he EU.
Learn to love Alaska
I have imperialist ambitions because I don't want to put a gun to your head to shut you up.
No you have imperialist ambitions because you want to put a gun to my head to prevent my vote, if it doesn't agree with your opinion. You hate democracy because it doesn't always give the result you prefer.
Learn to love Alaska
You're high. If an American company sends money to a business in Sweden we don't get to freedom the hell out of them because business.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You are stupid.
Facebook is an American company
There is no such thing as "american company". Did you miss the whole Globalization thing?
they should remove all servers from Germany and let them do the work
omg, you are so stupid it hurts. Doing business is not putting your servers there. It is making contracts (advertisement, FBs business model) with companies there, it is having users (it's product) there.
For all intents and purposes, FB produces in Germany and sells in Germany. That is what "doing business" means, not some stupid hardware.
Think about how much work it is to abide by EVERY law in EVERY nation
Poor multinational corporation. It's so much work to comply with all those laws. Nah, let's not do it, too complicated.
Simple answer: If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you want to run a world-wide company, yes there is going to be a little bit of work involved. Don't like it? Don't run a world-wide business. So simple.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Compared to what? Certainly not Germany, a country that is run by a small elite of the wealthy, old aristocrats, and intellectuals. They are so good at indoctrinating you that you don't even notice it how much they have you by the balls, and you are so disconnected from your history that you don't even recognize how old a lot of these power structures are."
Sounds unpleasantly like the UK.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Seems like a pretty simple problem to solve, if you ask me.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So the US has never told US companies what they can do with regards to sending money to Cuba?
Learn to love Alaska
So The USA has never told American companies which foreign nations they can deal with and how? Like, Cuba, Vietnam, or North Korea? The US has never filed for extradition for Kim Dotcom for violating US law while never having set foot in the US? Good to know the US respects international boundaries, and those events never happened. Though you may want to go correct reality. It seems to disagree with you.
Learn to love Alaska
Again, the comparison to the Bible is apt. Do you think that "context is important" with respect to the Bible, and that the government should enforce its sale only if it includes said government-approved contextually-added comments? (Analogies are important, even if this one isn't car-related.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Have you ever watched that guy in a talk show or giving an interview?
Of course you didn't.
He plagiarized his Ph.D. for a quick win, which tells you all you need to know about his morals, but he was anything but talent-less. He was also comparatively young and good looking, with instant name recognition (although no relation to The Gutenberg).
The CSU is devoid of political talent. Of course he was a rising star.
Exactly how are you going to do that? You have forgotten what the Internet is.
They already are. Every religion gets a pass.
He was competent until he got too far into the meth. I wonder if the "ice" problem would diminish if people knew it was Hitler's drug of choice.
The who? That group that high school kids pretend to belong to for 1-3 years before realizing how stupid it is to try to belong to a **prison gang** while not in prison? Neo-Nazis don't tend to bother killing people already in prison.
Insulting? Angry? I was under the impression that German students learn English in their schools at a higher level than American students do in American schools. Clearly, you've fallen through the cracks if you got either of those from what he wrote.
Rather, I'm pretty sure his point was that Germany can have their laws, and they can keep them in Germany. If it has to be this way - Facebook out of Germany, Germany out of Facebook. No big loss.
Your system of censorship is already like the national socialism you had. Instead of requiring everyone to hate Jews, you require everyone to love Jews. How about you stop requiring arbitrary opinions and just let people decide for themselves?
How do you incite hate by denying anything? Anyone denying anything should make the listener curious, and do their own research into the subject. If that's not happening, your education system is failing them. In fact, I'd argue it fails everyone. It seems their either fall for the rhetoric and propaganda of the government, or that of the hate groups. Both should be questioned, often. To suggest that it is somehow naturally a crime, without question, is insane, at best.
Your duty? If you want to put that on yourself, that's your choice. Avoiding making the mistakes of generations before you, fine. Assuming guilt for actions committed decades before you were born? That's dipping your toe in the crazy pool...
That's grasping at straws when the real point is Facebook deciding to emulate American ideals, or cow to Germany. No, you don't have any "rights" on Facebook, it's a private entity. The users are free to leave for a service that suits them. Once you restrict too many things from being posted, everyone will leave for that competitor.
Can you link us to a news article or court document for a case where a US citizen, posting something on a US based internet service, while located in the US, was extradited and tried in German court?
This whole FB thing is about German FB users posting illegal stuff in Germany in German the only US element is the service provider.
Okay, Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred are crimes. Fine, whatever. But Facebook isn't the police. It isn't their job to keep people from getting in legal trouble. If someone is trying to break the law in Germany, let them so the police can arrest them. You don't tell a heroin dealer "Shh! You'll get in trouble!", you call the cops.
Actually weren't something like 10 million or more killed in the camps? Last I noticed, Jews did not deny that others died in the camps, too.
Yes, ISIS should have the right to spread their propaganda.
it's effectively an extra penalty for the motivation behind a hate crime, which is often supported by evidence of hateful speech.
Note the important distinction here. The extra penalty is for motivation, not for speech. Speech itself is not illegal.
In a similar vein, firearms are generally not illegal in USA, but committing a crime with a firearm will often trigger additional laws that increase the sentence.
If I, as a US citizen, want to deny the holocaust on Facebook, FB then has two choices - Remove the offending comment entirely, or at least block it from viewers in Germany. Either of those infringe on my right to express whatever brand of bigotry I may subscribe to despite living in an entirely different country that doesn't feel the need to outlaw critical thinking.
How does them hiding that comment from users in Germany infringes on your right to express yourself?
Of course there is protection of free speech in Germany. And that freedom ends exactly where freedom of others starts. What is prohibited is public speech that aims at depriving minorities (religious, ethnical, etc.) from constitutional rights, or calls for criminal acts. If can't personally find this to infringe on my freedom.
Can you explain which ones of those goals have required id Software to strip all swastikas out of Wolfenstein in order to be able to publish it in Germany? Were they trying to deprive some minorities of their rights? Which ones were it?
They're offering their service on the Internet, and that's their prerogative. If Germany finds Internet to be too free and unrestricted to their liking, they can build their own national network that is tightly regulated, and firewall all gateways to the outside world (like DPRK and, to a lesser extent, China).
All hail jcr, Emperor of the World.
Wow, what a zinger. I have imperialist ambitions because I don't want to put a gun to your head to shut you up.
Logic is a completely alien concept to you, isn't it?
-jcr
You are an imperialist if you believe that the rights of US corporations like facebook or google to make money should over-ride the laws of democratic countries.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I was just pointing out that jcr was anti-democracy.
Democracies can become tyrannies just like any other form of government. That's why we have a bill of right in the USA.
-jcr
A bill of rights is irrelevant if your government decides it's inconvenient.
During the McCarthy witchhunts, many people's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (not to mention the ability to earn a living) were completely trampled on.
And, no, the fact that the US didn't actually purge thousands of people by firing squad (unlike the USSR) does not excuse this.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I find hate speech on facebook useful. It shows me who is no longer my friend and can be unfollowed.
Nobody is forcing anyone to follow racists and bigots on facebook, You can simply block them and go on with your life.
Similarly, none of the stuff posted by ISIS has any effect on impressionable young people, and they're just exercising their freedom of expression by travelling to Syria to behead prisoners. We should probably encourage schools to play their videos, since they can only have positive educational value.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If I, as a US citizen, want to deny the holocaust on Facebook, FB then has two choices - Remove the offending comment entirely, or at least block it from viewers in Germany. Either of those infringe on my right to express whatever brand of bigotry I may subscribe to despite living in an entirely different country that doesn't feel the need to outlaw critical thinking. I might not get arrested for it, but I would have had my voice silenced as a result of Germany's stupidity.
You do not have a right to force facebook to broadcat your views to countries where those views are illegal.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The best way to fight stupid ideas, like Nazism and censorship laws, is to argue with them.
It's not just a case of fighting stupid ideas. Actual Nazis (or neo-Nazis) actually do things like murder immigrants by burning down their houses. No one's freedom of speech extends to encouraging or facilitating direct criminal acts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Okay -- but it's still, now, less than "6 million" due to simple math (or, are you arguing that the entire reduction was solely from "non-Jewish deaths"? That'd be a new one to me). They tried to show 6 million died during WWI as well. They have a prophecy in their Talmud saying Israel won't fully be restored to the Jews until 6 million of them die in a fire -- which is why they so needed those delousing showers to be killing ovens. They want to jump the gun on their own prophecy! It's no wonder there are so many anecdotes about them being greedy.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
No. Commercial speech is in general protected- the line it crosses to being non-protected is when money changes hands under false pretenses. At that point, it isn't a speech issue, but is fraud.
So, solicitation for murder should be legal, so long as you haven't actually paid for the murder, as to that point, all you've done is speak to someone. And conspiracy to commit murder should be legal as well, as conspiracy is just speech, right?
We'd have to re-write a whol lot of laws to get to your standard, and I think that many people (perhaps even most) would disagree with making harmful speech legal.
What about slander, harassment and those other kinds of harmful speech currently illegal?
Learn to love Alaska
No. Commercial issues are distinct. But in general saying "This Foo is from the Ming dynasty" when it isn't should not be and is not illegal by itself. Selling it under false pretenses is correctly illegal. Notice that what is happening here involves not just speech but money changing hands.
So selling books that deny the holocaust should be forbidden. Yeah, makes sense.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Denying that systematic murder happens means downplaying and ignoring the crimes. In all cases so far that is not out of lack of knowledge, but purely intentional and fueled by hate. I think it is not just my duty, it is everyone's duty. This happened and we all are in charge to not make it happen again. Sadly, we do a lousy job at it and it is sad, that we even have to discuss the necessity for this. As far as guilt is concerned, I may not be guilty for the actions that happened, but I am guilty if I do not speak up against hate, discrimination, and yes, holocaust deniers and those who think that denying the holocaust is OK.