That's irrelevant to the claim that the "total available service" is less than 5000W. It isn't particularly unusual (in some climates) to be running a vacuum cleaner and two or three electric heaters at the same time, never mind the cumulative effect of the smaller gadgets.
Presumably I can estimate the total available service for my house by adding up the fuses; working from memory this comes to about 20kW, give or take.
On the other hand, based on my power bill, my average consumption is indeed something on the order of 500-1000W. On the other hand I have gas water heating.
I'm not sure I understand the problem they've solved. They say you can already get the hydrogen out of water efficiently with platinum; OK, there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere, so why can't we burn the hydrogen with that?
I'm guessing that the oxygen remains dissolved in the water, and that when the concentration gets too high the hydrogen can no longer be removed efficiently. Can anyone confirm this guess, or provide the real reason?
I don't think so. I just chose a vacuum cleaner at random from a retailer web site and it uses 2000W. Mainstream electric heaters run from 1500W to 2400W.
Incidentally, it seems to me the real underlying issue here is in the existence of a MBR in the first place. The PC BIOS should understand hard disk partitions and boot directly from the appropriate partition.
Looked at this way, this issue is just one of many resulting from the world hanging on so desperately to a hardware platform standard nearly 27 years old!
(Of course, enabling TPM-controlled booting could and arguably should have changed this behaviour, so in that respect you can legitimately blame TPM.)
If you are running BitLocker, [...], then you are S.O.L.
You (presumably) can't run BitLocker with a third-party boot loader in the first place, so that situation simply doesn't apply.
As for needing to restore the Vista boot-loader before installing the service pack, I'm not sure what else the service pack could do without introducing unpleasant complications. For example, if it just ignored the third-party boot loader, what would happen if the user later restored the now out-of-date Vista Gold boot-loader? (I don't know, but I'd prefer not to have to find out!)
Anecdotal, I know, but my own experience bears this out. I honestly suspect that a high proportion of average folks do assume that if a web site offers something it must be legal... heck, if it weren't, the site would have been shut down already, right?
(Actually this was usually in the context of TV shows rather than movies, but whatever.)
You know, after a night's sleep I realised I was approaching this debate from entirely the wrong direction. The question I should have been asking is whether you, personally, would choose to lie about a rival in order to, say, gain a business advantage. If not, why not?
And the court will only let you keep your job if the firing was for a very bad reason.
Sorry, wasn't clear enough; I was referring to the New Zealand employment court (and associated legislation) which requires your boss to provide a very good reason why he fired you. Incompetence, by the way, is not considered a good enough reason in the absence of a good record trail and at least one clearly stated warning beforehand that your job is at risk.
(I know, sounds dreadful from the US perspective, doesn't it? To be honest, I only mentioned it in the first place to try to wind you up a bit - sorry about that!)
And how about the marriage question? Divorcing someone is a great way to ruin their life, so government really ought to put a stop to that.
Refusing to allow someone to divorce is a much better way to ruin their life, so the balance of harm is in favour of allowing divorce. There's also a freedom of association issue here.
And what if it is defamatory?
Then keep your mouth shut!:-)
As far as I know this is only true in situations where people are trapped with their abusers, such as in the glorified prisons we call primary and secondary schools.
... or in your job or business, your apartment building, or in extreme cases perhaps your entire nation.
Character and will is something you can build.
In the general case, I disagree with this. You have to have the right genes too, just as exercise and practice alone will not necessary allow you to become competent at any given sport.
[Richard Feynman wrote a book] called "What do you care what other people think?"
I don't think he meant that he would be OK with people thinking he was a child abuser. Again, this is a matter of degree. People thinking you're being silly is one thing, people thinking you're a criminal is another. (If anyone else is still reading this, that is a very good book, BTW.)
I own my own home,
Lucky you. Many people don't.
[...] or they're a bunch of weak-minded assholes
Haven't you looked outside lately?:-)
Do you remember the slashdot story about the guy whose credit card was used to buy child porn?
Not at all. But that would be covered adequately under theft laws.
The impact on his life of the accusation wasn't. But this wasn't exactly a normal defamation case, as it was the police making the accusation.
I'm going to need a cite for this if you're going to claim that verbal attacks are inherently harmful.
Not all verbal attacks are harmful, just as not all physical attacks are. But they certainly can be, though usually only if repetitive and ongoing. No I don't have a citation, I'm not a walking encyclopedia, but the studies were related to the impact of stress on health.
Fair enough. What about perjury and fraud? A strict interpretation of absolute free speech would make these legal too.
A fine question, and it's a complicated topic.
Agreed. I'm glad to see you're not totally obsessive about the free speech thing, and at least we can agree on something!:-)
If you don't like that, how about the scenario where your boss fires you,
That's why we have an employment court.
Replace "people" with "politicians" and you start to see where the trouble lies.
As long as it isn't defamatory, you won't have a problem... in a free society. And if you don't have a free society you won't have real freedom of speech anyway.
"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me."
That's simply not true, even when taken in context. It's been shown that verbal bullying can cause genuine physical harm. Humans are social creatures by instinct, after all.
It's easy, just have a strong will and a strong character.
That's very nice for you; do please remember this wasn't a choice. Saying that because you wouldn't care makes it OK is just like a bully saying that he wouldn't care if someone hit him, so that makes it OK for him to hit someone else.
This kind of thing doesn't bother me because I don't give a crap what most people think about me.
Antisocial much? Besides, you may not care what they think about you, but you'd care if they started refusing to sell you food, kicked you out of your apartment, fired you, etc.
Do you remember the slashdot story about the guy whose credit card was used to buy child porn?
It's completely different. Physical attacks are inherently harmful, verbal attacks are not.
Nonsense.
As for anti-dumping regulations, these only apply in rare cases (foreign companies, monopolies) and in any case I think that they're wrong too.
Fair enough. What about perjury and fraud? A strict interpretation of absolute free speech would make these legal too.
You can ruin someone's life by, say, selling a better product for less money and driving them to bankruptcy through entirely legitimate means.
That's different; gambling with bankruptcy on a business venture is a choice, and in any case there's no fraud or other wrongdoing involved in this scenario.
I forgot to mention that in some cases people are in fact legally protected again someone "selling a better product for less money", e.g., regulations against dumping.
Are you honestly asserting that it would be fair if anyone could ruin your life and you weren't allowed to do anything about it?
Yep. "Ruin your life" is not something that I think the legal system should protect against in the general case. You can ruin someone's life by, say, selling a better product for less money and driving them to bankruptcy through entirely legitimate means.
That's different; gambling with bankruptcy on a business venture is a choice, and in any case there's no fraud or other wrongdoing involved in this scenario.
This is exactly the opposite of what I think. The ability to say what you want is fundamental to a free society,
I fail to see how not being allowed to slander people comprises a harmful limitation on your freedom, any more than not being allowed to hit them does. It would seem to be just another case of hurt feelings due to an unreasonable (and irrational) expectation.
and if your life is set up such that someone can destroy it with mere words then that's your own fault.
Blame the victim? I fail to see how anyone could avoid being vulnerable to defamation, short of living on a mountaintop somewhere. And, again, this sort of excuse is no different from someone saying that "if you're too weak to hit back then that's your own fault".
If land were just sitting there with nobody owning it then I could be persuaded to agree with you, but the fact is that most land in most countries belongs to someone now. If you take that away from them then it's no better than taking anything else they own.
Confiscation of land someone has already been granted ownership of is an entirely different issue. Note, however, that in most cases ownership of land was only granted subject to certain provisos, e.g., that the government retains sovereignty and the right of eminent domain. Without these provisos the land would have been much more expensive or perhaps not available at any price.
As for your "fairness" thing, no, you just used a different word with the same meaning. It has no more significance than before. You're just using fairness as a mechanism to explain that you think freedom from slander is more important than freedom of speech.
If you're going to break the concept of fairness down into each individual way people can hurt one another, you're going to have to make a very long list.
Are you honestly asserting that it would be fair if anyone could ruin your life and you weren't allowed to do anything about it?
[...] I think that it is much more unfair to be legally penalized for something I say than it is for a slanderer to go unpunished.
The problem is, anybody could use that sort of excuse; no doubt the average bully thinks it would be much more unfair to penalize him for hitting someone than it would be for assault to go unpunished.
Fairness is about weighing alternate harms. Defamation laws, like laws against assault, cause little harm beyond perhaps hurt feelings; defamation itself can cause enormous harm.
Doesn't sound daft to me. "Harry J is a member of Al Quaeda." shouldn't be libelous because it is so vague as to be meaningless.
Since this statement is false, if it were made in a context with the potential to cause harm, it's libelous and should be prosecutable.
Granted it's a poor example, though. Consider instead, "John Doe sexually abused my five year old daughter". Still impossible to disprove.
The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, but the burden of proof still rests on the accuser, not the defendant.
I don't think I understand the distinction you're making here. If neither the accuser nor the defendant have any evidence as to the truthfulness of the statements in question, a balance of probabilities standard would have to fall in favour of the accuser... because if the defendant made the statements without any evidence, they could only be true by an unlikely coincidence. (Of course I'm excluding here the case where the defendant claims to have personally witnessed the events in question.)
Any state which forbids the ownership of private property is evil.
Would this include, say, the pre-European Amerinds? In any case, I disagree; people aren't automatically entitled to pick a piece of land and say that nobody else can use it. Who decides who gets a particular piece of land?
Note that other sorts of ownership are different. If you make something, it's rightfully yours and you are entitled to sell it for pay, or, if you make it under contract or as part of employment you're entitled to be paid for your work. Nobody made the land; it was just there.
"Justice" is what you get when right prevails over wrong. The strength of the right to free speech is part of what determines what is right and wrong. The right to justice is essentially outside all others, because the relative strengths of all the others simply determines what justice is.
Hmmm. If I used the word "fairness" instead of "justice" would that change your interpretation of what I'm saying? I don't believe that allowing a slanderer to get away with it is fair to the victim, and I think addressing that unfairness is more important than protecting the free speech of the slanderer.
Whether a right is inherent or not all depends on your perspective, it's just a pointless matter of philosophy.
I'm not sure I agree; an inherent right is distinguished by the characteristic that everyone is entitled to it, regardless of the cultural context. Conversely, a culture that denies people an inherent right is in the wrong. I would assume you believe that China is wrong to deny free speech to its citizens, in which case (by my definition) you believe free speech to be an inherent right.
Conversely, I would imagine there are some things you would believe to be right in your culture but not necessarily universally. Perhaps not.
You're right that my argument about free speech is absolutist, and that's because I believe it's an absolute right which should come before all others.
Another pointless matter of philosophy?:-)
If somebody says something that causes you to lose money then that's the business of the people who ceased to be your customers, and not the business of the government.
I guess the difference is that I consider the right to justice to be more important than the right to free speech. As you say, that's a matter of perspective, and ultimately it's up to each society to make these decisions for itself. Justice and fair play are perhaps as much a tradition here in New Zealand as free speech is in the US.
Granted there's a line you draw. Slander, when harmful, lies on the other side - IMO. I don't think your position is unreasonable, BTW, just wrong.:-) As for absolutist arguments, which of us is claiming that any limitation on free speech is unacceptable?:-)
Walking on the grass, incidentally, comes under the heading of trespass; walking on your own grass is fine. Eating fudge doesn't cause harm to anyone else, either. When lying becomes fraud it should certainly be criminal. Giving someone the finger should perhaps be punishable if it is unprovoked and causes harm; this would come under the general heading of harassment/bullying.
I'll grant that speech that offends, upsets, or causes anger is not necessarily bad. In many cases the real cause of the offense, upset, or anger is the listener's irrational prejudices anyway.
Defamation does more than this, however; it causes or is likely to cause harm, whether financial or social. I don't see this as any less serious than the harm caused by trespass... in fact, trespass often doesn't cause any concrete harm at all; it may, however, offend, upset, or anger the property owner! Yes, on the whole I think the analogy holds.
Out of curiosity, and not because it is particularly relevant to the debate, do you also disapprove of sexual harassment laws?
Private ownership of land isn't an inherent right, by the way; it's a privilege granted because it is in the best interest of society to do so. Land, after all, is a natural resource, so strictly speaking it should belong to everyone; of course this isn't feasible, so we separate the concepts of sovereignty and freehold, and the government retains the right to assert eminent domain if necessary.
I've just thought of an analogy that might help you understand my position better.
Free speech is indeed fundamental to a free society,
but equally so is freedom of movement. However, our right to move around freely does not extend to trespass.
Defamation laws are to freedom of speech as trespass laws are to freedom of movement.
It's a free society. A fundamental aspect of a free society is free speech.
Free speech isn't an all-or-nothing proposition.
Let me put it more simply: slander is a bad thing. We're entitled to stop other people from doing bad things to us. If the government won't let us do this ourselves, they have a moral obligation to do it for us.
If you don't believe the government should stop people from doing bad things to other people, why have a government at all? What use are they?
does that mean it should be illegal to be an asshole?
Possibly. Depends on what you mean by "asshole" exactly.
The person can be jailed for contempt of court. The length of the jailing can be specified and/or limited by law and it can be at the discretion of the court, which can set a length of "until he complies with the order".
Good luck with the lawsuit against the boss; if the slanderer has made the allegations public (and convincing enough) there's a good chance the jury will believe him too!
The right of free speech ends where it becomes force or fraud. If it is false to say that I am a member of al Qaeda (and it is), then knowingly spreading such a rumor is fraud.
So, directly analogous to this case, where the defendant's web site is allegedly false?
Slashdot Mirror
"Overrated" is not a valid choice when a post hasn't been moderated yet!
And if anyone considers my question invalid, would they care to explain why rather than just censoring it?
That's irrelevant to the claim that the "total available service" is less than 5000W. It isn't particularly unusual (in some climates) to be running a vacuum cleaner and two or three electric heaters at the same time, never mind the cumulative effect of the smaller gadgets.
Presumably I can estimate the total available service for my house by adding up the fuses; working from memory this comes to about 20kW, give or take.
On the other hand, based on my power bill, my average consumption is indeed something on the order of 500-1000W. On the other hand I have gas water heating.
I'm not sure I understand the problem they've solved. They say you can already get the hydrogen out of water efficiently with platinum; OK, there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere, so why can't we burn the hydrogen with that?
I'm guessing that the oxygen remains dissolved in the water, and that when the concentration gets too high the hydrogen can no longer be removed efficiently. Can anyone confirm this guess, or provide the real reason?
I don't think so. I just chose a vacuum cleaner at random from a retailer web site and it uses 2000W. Mainstream electric heaters run from 1500W to 2400W.
Incidentally, it seems to me the real underlying issue here is in the existence of a MBR in the first place. The PC BIOS should understand hard disk partitions and boot directly from the appropriate partition.
Looked at this way, this issue is just one of many resulting from the world hanging on so desperately to a hardware platform standard nearly 27 years old!
(Of course, enabling TPM-controlled booting could and arguably should have changed this behaviour, so in that respect you can legitimately blame TPM.)
If you are running BitLocker, [...], then you are S.O.L.
You (presumably) can't run BitLocker with a third-party boot loader in the first place, so that situation simply doesn't apply.
As for needing to restore the Vista boot-loader before installing the service pack, I'm not sure what else the service pack could do without introducing unpleasant complications. For example, if it just ignored the third-party boot loader, what would happen if the user later restored the now out-of-date Vista Gold boot-loader? (I don't know, but I'd prefer not to have to find out!)
Most machines allow you to disable the TPM chip in the BIOS. In fact, the better ones have it disabled by default.
Anecdotal, I know, but my own experience bears this out. I honestly suspect that a high proportion of average folks do assume that if a web site offers something it must be legal ... heck, if it weren't, the site would have been shut down already, right?
(Actually this was usually in the context of TV shows rather than movies, but whatever.)
Skyglobe, right?
You know, after a night's sleep I realised I was approaching this debate from entirely the wrong direction. The question I should have been asking is whether you, personally, would choose to lie about a rival in order to, say, gain a business advantage. If not, why not?
And the court will only let you keep your job if the firing was for a very bad reason.
Sorry, wasn't clear enough; I was referring to the New Zealand employment court (and associated legislation) which requires your boss to provide a very good reason why he fired you. Incompetence, by the way, is not considered a good enough reason in the absence of a good record trail and at least one clearly stated warning beforehand that your job is at risk.
(I know, sounds dreadful from the US perspective, doesn't it? To be honest, I only mentioned it in the first place to try to wind you up a bit - sorry about that!)
And how about the marriage question? Divorcing someone is a great way to ruin their life, so government really ought to put a stop to that.Refusing to allow someone to divorce is a much better way to ruin their life, so the balance of harm is in favour of allowing divorce. There's also a freedom of association issue here.
And what if it is defamatory?Then keep your mouth shut! :-)
As far as I know this is only true in situations where people are trapped with their abusers, such as in the glorified prisons we call primary and secondary schools.... or in your job or business, your apartment building, or in extreme cases perhaps your entire nation.
Character and will is something you can build.In the general case, I disagree with this. You have to have the right genes too, just as exercise and practice alone will not necessary allow you to become competent at any given sport.
[Richard Feynman wrote a book] called "What do you care what other people think?"I don't think he meant that he would be OK with people thinking he was a child abuser. Again, this is a matter of degree. People thinking you're being silly is one thing, people thinking you're a criminal is another. (If anyone else is still reading this, that is a very good book, BTW.)
I own my own home,Lucky you. Many people don't.
[...] or they're a bunch of weak-minded assholesHaven't you looked outside lately? :-)
Do you remember the slashdot story about the guy whose credit card was used to buy child porn?Not at all. But that would be covered adequately under theft laws.
The impact on his life of the accusation wasn't. But this wasn't exactly a normal defamation case, as it was the police making the accusation.
I'm going to need a cite for this if you're going to claim that verbal attacks are inherently harmful.Not all verbal attacks are harmful, just as not all physical attacks are. But they certainly can be, though usually only if repetitive and ongoing. No I don't have a citation, I'm not a walking encyclopedia, but the studies were related to the impact of stress on health.
Fair enough. What about perjury and fraud? A strict interpretation of absolute free speech would make these legal too.A fine question, and it's a complicated topic.
Agreed. I'm glad to see you're not totally obsessive about the free speech thing, and at least we can agree on something! :-)
That's why we have an employment court.
Replace "people" with "politicians" and you start to see where the trouble lies.As long as it isn't defamatory, you won't have a problem ... in a free society. And if you don't have a free society you won't have real freedom of speech anyway.
"Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me."That's simply not true, even when taken in context. It's been shown that verbal bullying can cause genuine physical harm. Humans are social creatures by instinct, after all.
It's easy, just have a strong will and a strong character.That's very nice for you; do please remember this wasn't a choice. Saying that because you wouldn't care makes it OK is just like a bully saying that he wouldn't care if someone hit him, so that makes it OK for him to hit someone else.
This kind of thing doesn't bother me because I don't give a crap what most people think about me.Antisocial much? Besides, you may not care what they think about you, but you'd care if they started refusing to sell you food, kicked you out of your apartment, fired you, etc.
Do you remember the slashdot story about the guy whose credit card was used to buy child porn?
It's completely different. Physical attacks are inherently harmful, verbal attacks are not.Nonsense.
As for anti-dumping regulations, these only apply in rare cases (foreign companies, monopolies) and in any case I think that they're wrong too.Fair enough. What about perjury and fraud? A strict interpretation of absolute free speech would make these legal too.
That's different; gambling with bankruptcy on a business venture is a choice, and in any case there's no fraud or other wrongdoing involved in this scenario.
I forgot to mention that in some cases people are in fact legally protected again someone "selling a better product for less money", e.g., regulations against dumping.
Yep. "Ruin your life" is not something that I think the legal system should protect against in the general case. You can ruin someone's life by, say, selling a better product for less money and driving them to bankruptcy through entirely legitimate means.
That's different; gambling with bankruptcy on a business venture is a choice, and in any case there's no fraud or other wrongdoing involved in this scenario.
This is exactly the opposite of what I think. The ability to say what you want is fundamental to a free society,I fail to see how not being allowed to slander people comprises a harmful limitation on your freedom, any more than not being allowed to hit them does. It would seem to be just another case of hurt feelings due to an unreasonable (and irrational) expectation.
and if your life is set up such that someone can destroy it with mere words then that's your own fault.Blame the victim? I fail to see how anyone could avoid being vulnerable to defamation, short of living on a mountaintop somewhere. And, again, this sort of excuse is no different from someone saying that "if you're too weak to hit back then that's your own fault".
Confiscation of land someone has already been granted ownership of is an entirely different issue. Note, however, that in most cases ownership of land was only granted subject to certain provisos, e.g., that the government retains sovereignty and the right of eminent domain. Without these provisos the land would have been much more expensive or perhaps not available at any price.
As for your "fairness" thing, no, you just used a different word with the same meaning. It has no more significance than before. You're just using fairness as a mechanism to explain that you think freedom from slander is more important than freedom of speech.If you're going to break the concept of fairness down into each individual way people can hurt one another, you're going to have to make a very long list.
Are you honestly asserting that it would be fair if anyone could ruin your life and you weren't allowed to do anything about it?
[...] I think that it is much more unfair to be legally penalized for something I say than it is for a slanderer to go unpunished.The problem is, anybody could use that sort of excuse; no doubt the average bully thinks it would be much more unfair to penalize him for hitting someone than it would be for assault to go unpunished.
Fairness is about weighing alternate harms. Defamation laws, like laws against assault, cause little harm beyond perhaps hurt feelings; defamation itself can cause enormous harm.
Since this statement is false, if it were made in a context with the potential to cause harm, it's libelous and should be prosecutable.
Granted it's a poor example, though. Consider instead, "John Doe sexually abused my five year old daughter". Still impossible to disprove.
The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, but the burden of proof still rests on the accuser, not the defendant.I don't think I understand the distinction you're making here. If neither the accuser nor the defendant have any evidence as to the truthfulness of the statements in question, a balance of probabilities standard would have to fall in favour of the accuser ... because if the defendant made the statements without any evidence, they could only be true by an unlikely coincidence. (Of course I'm excluding here the case where the defendant claims to have personally witnessed the events in question.)
Would this include, say, the pre-European Amerinds? In any case, I disagree; people aren't automatically entitled to pick a piece of land and say that nobody else can use it. Who decides who gets a particular piece of land?
Note that other sorts of ownership are different. If you make something, it's rightfully yours and you are entitled to sell it for pay, or, if you make it under contract or as part of employment you're entitled to be paid for your work. Nobody made the land; it was just there.
"Justice" is what you get when right prevails over wrong. The strength of the right to free speech is part of what determines what is right and wrong. The right to justice is essentially outside all others, because the relative strengths of all the others simply determines what justice is.Hmmm. If I used the word "fairness" instead of "justice" would that change your interpretation of what I'm saying? I don't believe that allowing a slanderer to get away with it is fair to the victim, and I think addressing that unfairness is more important than protecting the free speech of the slanderer.
I'm not sure I agree; an inherent right is distinguished by the characteristic that everyone is entitled to it, regardless of the cultural context. Conversely, a culture that denies people an inherent right is in the wrong. I would assume you believe that China is wrong to deny free speech to its citizens, in which case (by my definition) you believe free speech to be an inherent right.
Conversely, I would imagine there are some things you would believe to be right in your culture but not necessarily universally. Perhaps not.
You're right that my argument about free speech is absolutist, and that's because I believe it's an absolute right which should come before all others.Another pointless matter of philosophy? :-)
If somebody says something that causes you to lose money then that's the business of the people who ceased to be your customers, and not the business of the government.I guess the difference is that I consider the right to justice to be more important than the right to free speech. As you say, that's a matter of perspective, and ultimately it's up to each society to make these decisions for itself. Justice and fair play are perhaps as much a tradition here in New Zealand as free speech is in the US.
Granted there's a line you draw. Slander, when harmful, lies on the other side - IMO. I don't think your position is unreasonable, BTW, just wrong. :-) As for absolutist arguments, which of us is claiming that any limitation on free speech is unacceptable? :-)
Walking on the grass, incidentally, comes under the heading of trespass; walking on your own grass is fine. Eating fudge doesn't cause harm to anyone else, either. When lying becomes fraud it should certainly be criminal. Giving someone the finger should perhaps be punishable if it is unprovoked and causes harm; this would come under the general heading of harassment/bullying.
I'll grant that speech that offends, upsets, or causes anger is not necessarily bad. In many cases the real cause of the offense, upset, or anger is the listener's irrational prejudices anyway.
Defamation does more than this, however; it causes or is likely to cause harm, whether financial or social. I don't see this as any less serious than the harm caused by trespass ... in fact, trespass often doesn't cause any concrete harm at all; it may, however, offend, upset, or anger the property owner! Yes, on the whole I think the analogy holds.
Out of curiosity, and not because it is particularly relevant to the debate, do you also disapprove of sexual harassment laws?
Private ownership of land isn't an inherent right, by the way; it's a privilege granted because it is in the best interest of society to do so. Land, after all, is a natural resource, so strictly speaking it should belong to everyone; of course this isn't feasible, so we separate the concepts of sovereignty and freehold, and the government retains the right to assert eminent domain if necessary.
I've just thought of an analogy that might help you understand my position better.
Free speech is indeed fundamental to a free society, but equally so is freedom of movement. However, our right to move around freely does not extend to trespass. Defamation laws are to freedom of speech as trespass laws are to freedom of movement.
Free speech isn't an all-or-nothing proposition.
Let me put it more simply: slander is a bad thing. We're entitled to stop other people from doing bad things to us. If the government won't let us do this ourselves, they have a moral obligation to do it for us.
If you don't believe the government should stop people from doing bad things to other people, why have a government at all? What use are they?
does that mean it should be illegal to be an asshole?Possibly. Depends on what you mean by "asshole" exactly.
In other words, exactly like this case?
Again, it's the government that says we're not allowed to shoot slanderers; that makes it their responsibility to deal with them instead.
Good luck with the lawsuit against the boss; if the slanderer has made the allegations public (and convincing enough) there's a good chance the jury will believe him too!
So, directly analogous to this case, where the defendant's web site is allegedly false?