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Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by muppetpastor on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @12:24PM (#15239800)
Easy answer to your question -- do a quick google search for NAMBLA

We don't censor the opinion that people should be able to have sex with children.

There is a very clear line and it's called the First Amendment.

We censor child porn because it is a crime that involves a victim.

The Daily Stormer was all talk.

Once you start talking about censoring people who might cause people to commit crimes, you've crossed a philosophical boundary into policing thought crimes.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by joshuamorton on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @12:50PM (#15240098)
On the other hand, erotic literature about children (which has no victim) is at best in a legal grey area, and has been successfully prosecuted before. Such a thing is also "all talk".
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by khawkins on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:34PM (#15240566)
Can you give an example?
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by joshuamorton on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:48PM (#15240710)
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/14/us/child-pornography-write...

There are a few other examples of people getting in varying amounts of trouble, but that one stands out.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by mcguire on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:03PM (#15240858)
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by imgabe on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @12:52PM (#15240114)
We censor spam without a second thought and that's only advertisement. Some may be outright illegal scams, but some is surely offering a legitimate service, just in an annoying way. Free speech doesn't grant you a right to use privately owned infrastructure for anything you want.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by dtech on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:04PM (#15240256)
You have to actively opt-in to spamfilters/advertisement blockers though, or at the very least can opt-out (e.g. look into your spambox).
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by detaro on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:22PM (#15240448)
Internet companies remove users posting spam all the time.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by ocdtrekkie on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:53PM (#15240751)
The act of spamming people is, in fact, illegal. Having an opinion isn't.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by intopieces on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @03:29PM (#15241733)
Let’s be careful not to conflate legal with ethical. It could very easily be legal to censor all hate speech (Canada and UK have these laws). And I mean government censorship, not we-don’t-want-to-do-business-with-you-censorship.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by ocdtrekkie on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:33PM (#15242321)
I was very explicitly speaking of "legal". With acts like the CAN-SPAM Act, a lot of spam is, in fact, illegal, and it isn't by any stretch a restriction of free speech for an infrastructure provider to shut down someone sending illegal spam.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by imgabe on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @05:13PM (#15242750)
The fact that it's illegal, that is, the government has outlawed that form of speech, renders it very clearly a free speech restriction.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by detaro on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:54PM (#15240773)
Is it? e-mail spam yes, I don't think posting advertising on websites or social media is per se - still companies act against it if it doesn't meet their own thresholds.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by intended on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:20PM (#15240415)
the CEO dropped stormer because they claimed that cloudflair was secretly nazi.

if i said someone was secretly a nazi, i would definitely be causing them harm.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by middleclick on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:28PM (#15240513)
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by forapurpose on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:07PM (#15240913)
> The Daily Stormer was all talk

Talk is not all safe nor is it all protected, even under the First Amendment in the U.S. You can't slander people; you can't say fraudulent things (this elixir cures cancer!); you can't yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater; you can't assist or encourage people, though talk, in the commission of a crime.

Talk moves armies and nations, to good and evil, and in fact is far more effective at it than anything else. Talk encouraging ethnic hate has a very well-established track record of causing great harm to people's lives and liberties in large numbers. Arguably, nothing has done more harm in human history than ethnic hatred. To try to minimize it as "all talk" is dangerously misleading.

(OTOH, I do believe we should be very careful with limiting speech, and that monopolies and oligopolies are the wrong people to do it.)

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by davesque on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @12:26PM (#15239828)
Thanks, very good point.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by ztbrown on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @12:59PM (#15240200)
For what has to be the billionth time: when a company stops you from posting hate speech on their platform, your first amendment rights have not been violated.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by lordlimecat on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:43PM (#15240662)
It takes some serious cojones to declare your support of the principles of free speech upon which western democracy is built, and then when someone points out your hypocrisy in censoring declare "Im not violating the law!!!!"

No. You're not. You're just (legally) attacking the principles upon which your society is built.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by Toboe on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @07:43PM (#15243790)
Are you sure that western democracy is build on an interpretation of "free speech" that means having to host nazis?

Western democracies like Germany, the Netherlands, or Canada (to name a non-european democracy) might disagree there.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by cr0sh on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:06PM (#15242087)
> You're just (legally) attacking the principles upon which your society is built.

The US government, by the first amendment, can't legally censor your speech.

That doesn't mean they have to give you a bullhorn, a soapbox, and a corner to stand on, though.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by zzzcpan on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:05PM (#15240261)
For a random small company - sure. But not for a large infrastructural company that can pretty much silence you if a handful of other large infrastructural companies follow.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by falcolas on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:12PM (#15240326)
No, but your fundamental human rights, as recognized by the UN, have been.

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

Article 19

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by mcguire on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:10PM (#15240954)
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

I assume you'll be filing suit against Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and The Economist for failing to publish your articles?

Seriously, I would bet that "impart information and ideas through any media" doesn't mean that you have the right to use others' equipment, venue, and name.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by talmand on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:49PM (#15241370)
Except for maybe when you paid for such access beforehand?
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by cr0sh on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:13PM (#15242150)
Just because you pay for something, doesn't mean I have to continue to sell it to you.

Now - if the Daily Stormer paid for services, and wasn't refunded their money after their access was pulled, that's one thing.

But if the money was returned to them, and they were told "We won't sell you this service any longer, because you have violated our terms of service" - then the company offering the services are free and clear to do that.

If the DS wants to continue broadcasting their speech, they are welcome to set up their peering services, dns providers, and DDOS prevention and CDN services themselves. And, if someone violates their terms of service, they are just as free to stop providing services to them.

But companies aren't required to give someone a bullhorn to amplify their voice.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by anigbrowl on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:12PM (#15242144)
Well you can't follow just a bit of the UN charter:

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @01:56PM (#15240786)
Honest question: is the UN declaration incorporated into American law?
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by anigbrowl on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:18PM (#15242182)
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by Zuider on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @02:05PM (#15240894)
That is trivially true. The first amendment forbids the government from suppressing free speech, but the moral principle of a liberty to engage in free expression exists prior to the first amendment in the same way as the right to life is prior to Title 18, U.S. Code Chapter 51.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by bduerst on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @03:49PM (#15241938)
Even as a moral principle, free speech isn't a blank check to express whatever you want without consequences. The founders of free speech principles even acknowledge this with the harm principle, where someone's free speech liberty can be hindered if the expressions cause harm.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by Zuider on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:22PM (#15242218)
I did not claim that free speech should completely unconstrained, and I don't see how such an inference can be drawn from my point above. My point was simply that the scope of the principle that free speech ought to be protected is not bounded by the limits of the first amendment because it is a moral principle that exists prior to codification in law.
Re:The Terrifying Power of Internet Censors by bduerst on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @10:02PM (#15244479)
You simply stated that free speech as a moral principle wasn't constrained by the law. I was just reminding you that free speech as a moral principle still has constraints, which are relevant to the discussion of expressions that historically harm others (child pornography, Nazism, etc.)