Scrutable

IvanV wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:36 am

Millennie Al wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 3:52 am

It's either free or it isn't. Once it's not free it will inevitably become controlled by those already in power.

Not at all. It is a very graduated and nuanced thing. It isn't just on or off. The distinctions of the freedom of speech environment are different in every country. We cannot say only a country where you can say anything you like has freedom of speech, because no such country exists and it is not desirable it should.

To what extent is freedom of speech freedom to cause damage through your speech? It's a bit like asking, as AP Herbert once did in one of his satirical books about the law, How much are you allowed to murder your burglar? Just as the state protects our property from damaging physical incursions, so it protects reputations, and privacy, and so forth, from damaging verbal incursions, to a degree. Just as with burglary, there is some kind of a balance to be struck between reasonable protection, and open season on suspected burglars.

The graduations on freedom of speech depend on how we define what is the damage you are not permitted to cause, what enforcement there is of that, and what restitution may apply.

For example, in terms of protecting reputations, the laws on libel vary by country. So what you can get away with saying in the USA, Britain and China is different. The USA is famously a liberal country on libel, whereas Britain is a favoured country for smelly people to sue those who mention their odour, because we are relatively illiberal on it despite an attempt to loosen up a few years ago. In China you cannot mention the misdeeds of the powerful without very serious consequences. In China, accuracy is not a defence, in the way that it would be even in Britain. Although some truths are in the realm of privacy, and that can be a reason the state might prevent you publishing them. And so privacy is often bound up with libel.

State secrets is another issue like that, where the laws are graduated from one country to another. On this one, the USA seems to be a bit illiberal. It is the USA that Assange fears going to, for revealing stuff that needed revealing.

And there are further things the state prevents you saying. These include obscenity, threats, incitement, and abuse of the vulnerable. And sometimes specific religious protections. Most of these things are regulated to some degree in most places, but the extent varies.

Authoritarian states can go too far in all of these kinds of protections to protect their ruling position. But a country in which there was no protection for any of these things? I think Britain would do well to lighten up on some of them, especially libel, but not to a point where you can say anything at all with no consequences.

A common misunderstanding about freedom of speech is to confuse it with right to a platform. It is one thing to be allowed to say things without suffering for it. It is another thing to demand that platforms give you access to say it on that platform. It is helpful if we distinguish these two things, and limit the understanding of freedom of speech to the right to say things without suffering for it. Of course, people who want to stir things up typically make this confusion deliberately.

Edited for clarity.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 2:11 pm

For additional examples of limits on speech, most fraud is essentially a speech crime, and so is perjury.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 2:11 pm

For additional examples of limits on speech, most fraud is essentially a speech crime, and so is perjury.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 4:04 pm

dyqik wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 2:11 pm

For additional examples of limits on speech, most fraud is essentially a speech crime, and so is perjury.

So's a lot of "conspiracy to commit" etc.

Millennie Al wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 23, 2021 3:52 am

Millennie Al wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 20, 2021 1:36 am

Well, that depends on whether you believe in free speech or not.

tom p wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 20, 2021 8:57 am

Millennie Al wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 20, 2021 1:36 am

Well, that depends on whether you believe in unrestricted and potentially dangerous free speech or not.

FIFY

It's either free or it isn't. Once it's not free it will inevitably become controlled by those already in power.

An example of extremely dangerous free speech is blasphemy and heresy which history has proved has been extremely damaging to Christianity to the extent that very many people today refuse to believe what they're told to.

tom p wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:22 am

Grow up, you child

Stranger Mouse wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:14 pm

Sound up and watch all the way through

I believe this is a new arrest https://twitter.com/badsciencemonk/stat ... 66402?s=21