A lot of the idiosyncratic weirdness is due to the fallout from the Kennesaw incident with the state's voter registration system last year. Among other things, election worker passwords were publicly available. Lawsuits are still in motion, I believe, including one against the SOS, I think. The bill in a lot of respects is an attempt to close the barn door after the horses left a different barn altogether. WABE has a good timeline here:
We can maybe pin that down a little more. The Secretary of State suffered considerable embarrassment last year after the Kennesaw State "incident" wherein more than one un-contracted security researcher reported non-earthshaking problems with web-facing systems having to do with the State's voter registration system, which only got reported to him after the press got hold of it. We can't really blame the KSU people for keeping it under their hat, given the way the guy in Kemp's office who earlier accidentally sent out voter registration lists to newspapers in the state, the LoWV, and others got thrown under the bus for what was really an honest mistake, but which technically violated SOS IT protocol, but it seems Kemp is apparently the one who pushed for the original SB 315. We can blame them for not fixing the damn problem, though.
The "active defense" amendment is more unclear, and I haven't had time to track it down yet, but my bet is an IT/Security vendor, probably a State and/or Federal contractor, possibly, just possibly, an NSA cutout, given the hacktivity in Augusta, and GSU, and the attempt to tarnish the EFF by association, by way of hacktivity on a church website. Read between the lines of Ms. Smith's report: I'll just note that all this activity is centered around the the Augusta "cybersecurity corridor", which includes the Army Cyber Command, a large NSA SIGINT facility, the new State-owned Hull-McKnight Cyber Center at Augusta State, and various contractors. (I'm not sure if the cybersecurity dept of the CS school at the former Armstrong-Atlantic University in Savannah, now merged with GSU, is still extant, but if it has, it's probably in Statesboro now. Note to self, find out!) Anyway, all the hacked websites were managed by the same Augusta web design firm.
Inside job? Who knows, but it's kinda suspicious to me.
This bill is essentially having you walk through a crowded square, blindfolded, and if someone grabs your butt you're allowed to pull out a pair of uzis and start firing at random.
Reckless endangerment and possible manslaughter for what might even have been accidental, nope, not warranted. Now if someone tries to pen-test your butt, I hope that you can discriminate the real offender and that have good aim.:-)
Yes, I feel that is an accurate description of hacking back against a network of zombie machines owned, often unwittingly, by innocent people around the world.
Oh, I do get your point, but I think the real problem if this bill is signed is that it will be used as cover for deliberate network abuse and break-ins under merely the pretext of "active defense". "Oh, excuse me, I dropped my cell and grabbed your butt trying to catch it."
Mr. Kemp would tell you "make the DNC and a former administration pay for it.";-)
Look, Georgia Code 16-9-93, which SB 315 modifies, like a far greater percentage of Georgia law than anyone cares to admit, is completely boneheaded to start with. (Not that US law is really any better, and in some cases much worse). Computer security by fiat is a totally asinine concept. It exists simply to pass the buck for suits and good 'ol boys, (sigh, yes, of all genders, races, ethnicities, creeds, etc, not just the Sons of Eugene Talmadge and the Cackling Hen Auxiliary) . The medium is not the message. Extract any actual crimes, ie. theft of confidential information, trade secrets, malicious damage, denial of service, election tampering, so on, and deal with them in the code appropriately, though I'm sure they're mostly already covered. Junk the rest of it. Leave security where it belongs, with IT management, system administrators and network operators, and users, not legislators, lawyers, cops, prosecutors, and clueless reporting.
As for SB 315, I don't have any a priori objection to a little tactical offensive defense, if truly warranted. You better know what the fsck you're doing, though, and if you know what the fsck you're doing with your systems, you will rarely have the need. and if you do actually need it, that knowledge will more than likely fly right over your head. So you should likely be thanking anyone who points it out to you, not shooting the messenger. Look, they're YOUR computers, not the State's. YOU take responsibility for them, or least stop whining about welfare deadbeats looking for gubment cheese. Please.
IANL, but SB 315 looks like bad law regardless. Vague, and seeming to say, "Well, if it's for business, why, that's alright. Go right ahead" Oh, so if you portscan that network in Ukraine that's been running distributed SSH attacks on your hosts for months, just out of idle curiosity, that's sure to trip a wire somewhere. Are you then guilty of "unauthorized access"? After all, the way I read it, I'm in violation even if the target is in another jurisdiction. If so, on all counts, damn the law, I say. Or setup a new corp. A co-op for security researchers, say. Leave no opening for prosecutorial discretion. Use the damned system against itself.
Finally, do you clowns pwning, or claming to pwn, Augusta, GSU, etc. realize you are only being used to scare up support for this idiotic bill? If you don't, please get a damn clue. If you do, well. here's a big FU.
The pledge really bears commenting on, point by point:
> Net Neutrality > I will support legislation and measures that ensure the protection of net neutrality principles and that remove any registration or other restrictive > requirements on the provisioning of Internet content or services.
Now, this is a fine-sounding statement, and it's something that even the top execs at the biggest ISPs could support sincerely, without so much as a twinge of conscience, or concern for the next stockholder's meeting. It is also meaningless without a concrete definition. The FCC attempt in 2015 to define net neutrality was less about ensuring competition and free access than entrenching monopolies, mediating corporate turf wars, advancing censorship, and establishing a new bureaucracy for the new era upon us wherein everything, including POTS, is digital. If that's really what anyone wants, get Congress to have the balls to make it law instead of passing the buck. It could, of course, be that this pledge is intended to filter up to that level and provide our selfless, noble legislators with the cover they need to regulate content, ie. speech, or to import concepts like "social credit" to promote political hygiene, but it still doesn't define anything in any way that anyone could be held to.
> Ethical Campaign Donations > I will never accept campaign contributions from any company or individual that has lobbied for the removal of net neutrality regulations or for > restrictions on municipalities to create broadband networks.
Oh, this is choice. Conflating ethics with politics. Why not add "I will never pander to a constituency" while you're at it. By the way, do you really think Big Telecom, Big Cable, or Big Content, were any of them actually AGAINST "Net Neutrality". Well, think again. At most, their bases are covered both ways.
> Municipal Broadband > I will support legislation and measures to create publicly-owned and managed municipal fiber networks, built to serve the residents and businesses > of my community.
Why, who could be against serving residents and businesses of the community? That is the main excuse...er, reason, for our municipal charter, to begin with. Why, we could even support legislation and measures to eventually ensure that all housing and all food production is publicly owned and managed too, while we're at it.
Look, if you really want socialism, please just do a Bernie and come out and say it. On the other hand, you want the city to be a business, why not be honest, issue voting shares, and be done with the pretense of government as opposed to management of a corporate monopoly. It might be easier to follow the money at least, and maybe get dividends from all the tax-farming.
> Government Transparency > I will support legislation and measures that promote the availability of government data to residents, as well as the usage of open formats and open > standards in government.
This sounds good, and it should be common sense, but realize that the same manager or purchasing agent that owes his or her job to industry trade councils behind the municipal government associations and suchlike that provide template ordinances for such things, recommended bidding practices, IT guidance, etc. is not particularly likely to go beyond them, and especially not against them, if it impedes getting their job done, whatever the high-sounding, but essentially meaningless platitudes that are espoused. And like all politicians, mayors and council members are past masters at saying one thing but doing another.
Or is this a setup for the template providers to circulate an official approved policy on this matter, that otherwise might be a hard sell, like the model zoning ordinances that expand city rights on private property? I really do wonder.
> Open Access To Knowledge > I will advocate for freedom of communication and access to knowledge, and I will support initiatives to ensure that publicl
There would sufficiently little incentive enough to preclude the use of bots to spread news, fake, real, or otherwise if it weren't for the prevailing ad-based revenue model of web publishing that panders to fear, greed, desire, and lowest common denominators in the attempt to push buttons to generate a profit or gain an electoral victory, regardless of cost. This is a broader problem than whether it's fake or not, or by whose standards. I'm afraid the MIT study, however informative, will likely be used to further the agenda for more centralized control of web publishing, totally at odds both with web history and freedom of speech. I'll bet my bottom dollar some Senate or Congressional staffer is preparing a bill right now. Yeah, they got yer network neutrality for you. The network will be so controlled you won't care any more. Click that bait. Yeah. Forget the 1st Amendment. MIght as well move to China.
...if you take control of the money away from central banks and put it back in the hands of the people, individually and collectively. Hey, I like robots; I think everybody ought to own at least 1 or 2.;-)
"PKB", I think, is the term you are looking for here.
Obviously, all private funding for science should be required to be funneled throught Lessig's superpac to be vetted and pasteurized for social responsibility, political correctness, and overall greenness. I nominate Hugh for the job.;-)
Funding is less of an issue to me than the allegations of fraud on both sides of this "debate".
No, ultimately, it's so you will be able to put one Android phone in 7 bars on Tybee and 1 in a mortuary in Port Wentworth and end up with an 8-line distributed Cnet Amiga cluster to play spot the Fed on.;-) Bonus karma if it's FTSC compliant.
Thanks and a tip 'o the hat to Don Murray and the old Night Owl BBS crowd.
Yeah, they'll shoot if threatened. Liberals will imagine, foster, and sieze on threats, and demand that somebody with guns take those dangerous threats away. Much more, um, manly.
Speaking of gender, this is old, but given His Sagacity's grand, new, and, oh-so-reassuring government-run Brain Mapping moonrace, here's one for the ladies:
"Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising spectres of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force."....oh, wait. Wrong tense, anyway.
Is Greenpeace itself handling its own funding with more transparency and, um, forthrightness than it was 10 years ago? Much less it's activism, which often makes me wonder if it's less engaged in saving the planet than in alarmist market manipulation.
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts,...
---Bill S., 1600
Not a sparrow shall fall...
---Matthew 10:29
Now if only one could get a copy of the script in advance....
jbd
"Whoa, kind of feel like God!"
---"Cereal Killer" in Hackers I
Seriously, Detroit could have mass-produced an automotive turbine-electric 40 years ago. Dr. Porsche was designing them at least by the '20s.
Next, while there are still tertiary wastewater treatment plants which just burn off the methane they produce, we will read about some 15 yo whiz kid getting kudos, grants and carbon credits for his "why has no one thought of that?" biomass digester for producing fuel gasses Oh, wait...
Let's dispense with the "shouting fire" strawman for once and for all. 1st, some context. Justice Holmes opinion on *falsely* shouting fire in a crowded theater was intended as an example of dangerous speech which serves no [presumed, see the theater scene in "Torn Curtain" for possible counter scenario] useful purpose. Bear in mind Holmes was writing a majority opinion *against* a pampleteer, Schenk, who was dstributing flyers against the draft during WW1. While you may or may not consider Schenk to be a scurrilous traitor, this does illuminate Holmes's motivation here, as he was using the "fire" example as a direct comparison to Schenk's speech. Subseqently, this decision was overturned, as well.
In the real world, anyone fool enough to falsely shout fire in a crowded theater for no good reason, if he weren't torn limb from limb by the mob, would be subject to all kinds of tort and criminal actions, from reckless endangerment to involuntary manslaughter, or even murder. Even if you want to argue that the speech should, somehow, be anticipated and proscribed by fiat, you'd still have to establish malicious or criminal intent, for which you have all kinds of existing law, with far more fitting penalties, as I just mentioned.
This old canard has no real bearing whatsoever on 1st amendment debates. It should have been retired long ago, but it has an emotional appeal which speech stiflers just can't get enough of.
"You do not have the right to speak in a way that harms people"
Bullshit. You know how hard it is to win a libel or slander judgement in the U.S.? There is no law against bearing false witness, except under oath. And then you have to prove it.
Or what about the truth, when it hurts? Careful with that broad brush, Doc. The ends don't justify the unintended consequences. (or are they?)
Yes, speech, or the publication of thought, is an act, and some non-verbal acts are speech, too. But speech is a protected act in the U.S. "Congress shall make no law", etc. That's why the "fighting words" concept is still part of U.S. law, despite the nanny state wanting to reserve all violence, justified or not, to itself.
These clowns deserve to be horsewhipped by the nearest Jew, but silencing them, silencing speech a priori, and sticking everyone else's head up some collective politically correct ass is not only tyrannical, but myopic and dangerous. I'm sorry U.S. jurisdictions dropped the ball on this one. Obviously they are anticipating the U.S. hate crimes, cyberbullying, etc. bills.
Reed-Elsevier announced, beginning July 4th of this year, a new licensing structure for Lexis-Nexis articles cited as precedent in court cases. "We expect volume discounting to keep the cost per cite down to $10,000 per case, per judge, and per referencing attorney", a Reed spokesman said.
Hey, it could happen, given Judge Posner's reasoning.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of the idiosyncratic weirdness is due to the fallout from the Kennesaw incident with the state's voter registration system last year. Among other things, election worker passwords were publicly available. Lawsuits are still in motion, I believe, including one against the SOS, I think. The bill in a lot of respects is an attempt to close the barn door after the horses left a different barn altogether. WABE has a good timeline here:
https://www.wabe.org/two-georg...
Politico has some good info as well here:
https://www.politico.com/magaz...
Otherwise it's the usual shoot-the-messenger stuff governments all over are well known for.
Sorry, got distracted and didn't catch some bad html cut'n'paste while editing. Ms. Smith's article's URL:
https://www.csoonline.com/arti...
We can maybe pin that down a little more. The Secretary of State suffered considerable embarrassment last year after the Kennesaw State "incident" wherein more than one un-contracted security researcher reported non-earthshaking problems with web-facing systems having to do with the State's voter registration system, which only got reported to him after the press got hold of it. We can't really blame the KSU people for keeping it under their hat, given the way the guy in Kemp's office who earlier accidentally sent out voter registration lists to newspapers in the state, the LoWV, and others got thrown under the bus for what was really an honest mistake, but which technically violated SOS IT protocol, but it seems Kemp is apparently the one who pushed for the original SB 315. We can blame them for not fixing the damn problem, though.
The "active defense" amendment is more unclear, and I haven't had time to track it down yet, but my bet is an IT/Security vendor, probably a State and/or Federal contractor, possibly, just possibly, an NSA cutout, given the hacktivity in Augusta, and GSU, and the attempt to tarnish the EFF by association, by way of hacktivity on a church website. Read between the lines of Ms. Smith's report: I'll just note that all this activity is centered around the the Augusta "cybersecurity corridor", which includes the Army Cyber Command, a large NSA SIGINT facility, the new State-owned Hull-McKnight Cyber Center at Augusta State, and various contractors. (I'm not sure if the cybersecurity dept of the CS school at the former Armstrong-Atlantic University in Savannah, now merged with GSU, is still extant, but if it has, it's probably in Statesboro now. Note to self, find out!) Anyway, all the hacked websites were managed by the same Augusta web design firm.
Inside job? Who knows, but it's kinda suspicious to me.
This bill is essentially having you walk through a crowded square, blindfolded, and if someone grabs your butt you're allowed to pull out a pair of uzis and start firing at random.
Reckless endangerment and possible manslaughter for what might even have been accidental, nope, not warranted. Now if someone tries to pen-test your butt, I hope that you can discriminate the real offender and that have good aim. :-)
Yes, I feel that is an accurate description of hacking back against a network of zombie machines owned, often unwittingly, by innocent people around the world.
Oh, I do get your point, but I think the real problem if this bill is signed is that it will be used as cover for deliberate network abuse and break-ins under merely the pretext of "active defense". "Oh, excuse me, I dropped my cell and grabbed your butt trying to catch it."
Mr. Kemp would tell you "make the DNC and a former administration pay for it." ;-)
Look, Georgia Code 16-9-93, which SB 315 modifies, like a far greater percentage of Georgia law than anyone cares to admit, is completely boneheaded to start with. (Not that US law is really any better, and in some cases much worse). Computer security by fiat is a totally asinine concept. It exists simply to pass the buck for suits and good 'ol boys, (sigh, yes, of all genders, races, ethnicities, creeds, etc, not just the Sons of Eugene Talmadge and the Cackling Hen Auxiliary) . The medium is not the message. Extract any actual crimes, ie. theft of confidential information, trade secrets, malicious damage, denial of service, election tampering, so on, and deal with them in the code appropriately, though I'm sure they're mostly already covered. Junk the rest of it. Leave security where it belongs, with IT management, system administrators and network operators, and users, not legislators, lawyers, cops, prosecutors, and clueless reporting.
As for SB 315, I don't have any a priori objection to a little tactical offensive defense, if truly warranted. You better know what the fsck you're doing, though, and if you know what the fsck you're doing with your systems, you will rarely have the need. and if you do actually need it, that knowledge will more than likely fly right over your head. So you should likely be thanking anyone who points it out to you, not shooting the messenger. Look, they're YOUR computers, not the State's. YOU take responsibility for them, or least stop whining about welfare deadbeats looking for gubment cheese. Please.
IANL, but SB 315 looks like bad law regardless. Vague, and seeming to say, "Well, if it's for business, why, that's alright. Go right ahead" Oh, so if you portscan that network in Ukraine that's been running distributed SSH attacks on your hosts for months, just out of idle curiosity, that's sure to trip a wire somewhere. Are you then guilty of "unauthorized access"? After all, the way I read it, I'm in violation even if the target is in another jurisdiction. If so, on all counts, damn the law, I say. Or setup a new corp. A co-op for security researchers, say. Leave no opening for prosecutorial discretion. Use the damned system against itself.
Finally, do you clowns pwning, or claming to pwn, Augusta, GSU, etc. realize you are only being used to scare up support for this idiotic bill? If you don't, please get a damn clue. If you do, well. here's a big FU.
The pledge really bears commenting on, point by point:
> Net Neutrality
> I will support legislation and measures that ensure the protection of net neutrality principles and that remove any registration or other restrictive
> requirements on the provisioning of Internet content or services.
Now, this is a fine-sounding statement, and it's something that even the top execs at the biggest ISPs could support sincerely, without so much as a twinge of conscience, or concern for the next stockholder's meeting. It is also meaningless without a concrete definition. The FCC attempt in 2015 to define net neutrality was less about ensuring competition and free access than entrenching monopolies, mediating corporate turf wars, advancing censorship, and establishing a new bureaucracy for the new era upon us wherein everything, including POTS, is digital. If that's really what anyone wants, get Congress to have the balls to make it law instead of passing the buck. It could, of course, be that this pledge is intended to filter up to that level and provide our selfless, noble legislators with the cover they need to regulate content, ie. speech, or to import concepts like "social credit" to promote political hygiene, but it still doesn't define anything in any way that anyone could be held to.
> Ethical Campaign Donations
> I will never accept campaign contributions from any company or individual that has lobbied for the removal of net neutrality regulations or for
> restrictions on municipalities to create broadband networks.
Oh, this is choice. Conflating ethics with politics. Why not add "I will never pander to a constituency" while you're at it. By the way, do you really think Big Telecom, Big Cable, or Big Content, were any of them actually AGAINST "Net Neutrality". Well, think again. At most, their bases are covered both ways.
> Municipal Broadband
> I will support legislation and measures to create publicly-owned and managed municipal fiber networks, built to serve the residents and businesses
> of my community.
Why, who could be against serving residents and businesses of the community? That is the main excuse...er, reason, for our municipal charter, to begin with. Why, we could even support legislation and measures to eventually ensure that all housing and all food production is publicly owned and managed too, while we're at it.
Look, if you really want socialism, please just do a Bernie and come out and say it. On the other hand, you want the city to be a business, why not be honest, issue voting shares, and be done with the pretense of government as opposed to management of a corporate monopoly. It might be easier to follow the money at least, and maybe get dividends from all the tax-farming.
> Government Transparency
> I will support legislation and measures that promote the availability of government data to residents, as well as the usage of open formats and open
> standards in government.
This sounds good, and it should be common sense, but realize that the same manager or purchasing agent that owes his or her job to industry trade councils behind the municipal government associations and suchlike that provide template ordinances for such things, recommended bidding practices, IT guidance, etc. is not particularly likely to go beyond them, and especially not against them, if it impedes getting their job done, whatever the high-sounding, but essentially meaningless platitudes that are espoused. And like all politicians, mayors and council members are past masters at saying one thing but doing another.
Or is this a setup for the template providers to circulate an official approved policy on this matter, that otherwise might be a hard sell, like the model zoning ordinances that expand city rights on private property? I really do wonder.
> Open Access To Knowledge
> I will advocate for freedom of communication and access to knowledge, and I will support initiatives to ensure that publicl
There would sufficiently little incentive enough to preclude the use of bots to spread news, fake, real, or otherwise if it weren't for the prevailing ad-based revenue model of web publishing that panders to fear, greed, desire, and lowest common denominators in the attempt to push buttons to generate a profit or gain an electoral victory, regardless of cost. This is a broader problem than whether it's fake or not, or by whose standards. I'm afraid the MIT study, however informative, will likely be used to further the agenda for more centralized control of web publishing, totally at odds both with web history and freedom of speech. I'll bet my bottom dollar some Senate or Congressional staffer is preparing a bill right now. Yeah, they got yer network neutrality for you. The network will be so controlled you won't care any more. Click that bait. Yeah. Forget the 1st Amendment. MIght as well move to China.
.
...if you take control of the money away from central banks and put it back in the hands of the people, individually and collectively. Hey, I like robots; I think everybody ought to own at least 1 or 2. ;-)
Don Eyles walks us through the Lunar Module source code
"PKB", I think, is the term you are looking for here.
Obviously, all private funding for science should be required to be funneled throught Lessig's superpac to be vetted and pasteurized for social responsibility, political correctness, and overall greenness. I nominate Hugh for the job. ;-)
Funding is less of an issue to me than the allegations of fraud on both sides of this "debate".
Go to the home page. Scroll down to the bottom. You'll see it.
I'm assuming the Beta site is is sparse because it's, well, beta, and still pretty skeletal.
No, ultimately, it's so you will be able to put one Android phone in 7 bars on Tybee and 1 in a mortuary in Port Wentworth and end up with an 8-line distributed Cnet Amiga cluster to play spot the Fed on. ;-) Bonus karma if it's FTSC compliant.
Thanks and a tip 'o the hat to Don Murray and the old Night Owl BBS crowd.
Tsk. That's "shoulda", not "should of".
Never mind, found 'em.
Links?
Yeah, they'll shoot if threatened. Liberals will imagine, foster, and sieze on threats, and demand that somebody with guns take those dangerous threats away. Much more, um, manly.
Speaking of gender, this is old, but given His Sagacity's grand, new, and, oh-so-reassuring government-run Brain Mapping moonrace, here's one for the ladies:
Men Locate the Clitoris: The Female Erotic Brain Is Mapped | TIME.com :Contrast and compare (sic)
"Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising spectres of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force."....oh, wait. Wrong tense, anyway.
Why, that's crazy talk! An efficient, renewable energy source, plus essentially eliminate the nuke waste bogeyman? Are you mad???
So where's the Kickstarter?
Is Greenpeace itself handling its own funding with more transparency and, um, forthrightness than it was 10 years ago? Much less it's activism, which often makes me wonder if it's less engaged in saving the planet than in alarmist market manipulation.
Really, talk about PKB.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,...
---Bill S., 1600
Not a sparrow shall fall...
---Matthew 10:29
Now if only one could get a copy of the script in advance....
jbd
"Whoa, kind of feel like God!"
---"Cereal Killer" in Hackers I
ack. I was thinking of Porsche's diesel electric designs. Dunno if he did any turbine-electrics.
Ok, w/o the guns and missiles. Rats.
Seriously, Detroit could have mass-produced an automotive turbine-electric 40 years ago. Dr. Porsche was designing them at least by the '20s.
Next, while there are still tertiary wastewater treatment plants which just burn off the methane they produce, we will read about some 15 yo whiz kid getting kudos, grants and carbon credits for his "why has no one thought of that?" biomass digester for producing fuel gasses Oh, wait...
Now get off my lawn.
Let's dispense with the "shouting fire" strawman for once and for all. 1st, some context. Justice Holmes opinion on *falsely* shouting fire in a crowded theater was intended as an example of dangerous speech which serves no [presumed, see the theater scene in "Torn Curtain" for possible counter scenario] useful purpose. Bear in mind Holmes was writing a majority opinion *against* a pampleteer, Schenk, who was dstributing flyers against the draft during WW1. While you may or may not consider Schenk to be a scurrilous traitor, this does illuminate Holmes's motivation here, as he was using the "fire" example as a direct comparison to Schenk's speech. Subseqently, this decision was overturned, as well.
In the real world, anyone fool enough to falsely shout fire in a crowded theater for no good reason, if he weren't torn limb from limb by the mob, would be subject to all kinds of tort and criminal actions, from reckless endangerment to involuntary manslaughter, or even murder. Even if you want to argue that the speech should, somehow, be anticipated and proscribed by fiat, you'd still have to establish malicious or criminal intent, for which you have all kinds of existing law, with far more fitting penalties, as I just mentioned.
This old canard has no real bearing whatsoever on 1st amendment debates. It should have been retired long ago, but it has an emotional appeal which speech stiflers just can't get enough of.
"You do not have the right to speak in a way that harms people"
Bullshit. You know how hard it is to win a libel or slander judgement in the U.S.? There is no law against bearing false witness, except under oath. And then you have to prove it.
Or what about the truth, when it hurts? Careful with that broad brush, Doc. The ends don't justify the unintended consequences. (or are they?)
Yes, speech, or the publication of thought, is an act, and some non-verbal acts are speech, too. But speech is a protected act in the U.S. "Congress shall make no law", etc. That's why the "fighting words" concept is still part of U.S. law, despite the nanny state wanting to reserve all violence, justified or not, to itself.
These clowns deserve to be horsewhipped by the nearest Jew, but silencing them, silencing speech a priori, and sticking everyone else's head up some collective politically correct ass is not only tyrannical, but myopic and dangerous. I'm sorry U.S. jurisdictions dropped the ball on this one. Obviously they are anticipating the U.S. hate crimes, cyberbullying, etc. bills.
It was a nice run while it lasted, folks.
Reed-Elsevier announced, beginning July 4th of this year, a new licensing structure for Lexis-Nexis articles cited as precedent in court cases. "We expect volume discounting to keep the cost per cite down to $10,000 per case, per judge, and per referencing attorney", a Reed spokesman said.
Hey, it could happen, given Judge Posner's reasoning.