Lookup US obscenity law and case history. Child pornography is an easy example, 80 years ago it was any pornography, or even obscene literature, joyces Ulysses was once banned.
On general speech has only gotten freer, to think we now are at the precipe and speech won't be even freer is naive, provincial, and arrogant.
Interacial kissing was once provocative, sodomy illegal as recently as 2003, and now depictions of transexuals is edgy.
That anyone thinks its okay to limit speech, the midwife of thought -- its a debate going back to the State sanctioned murder of Socrates for 'corrupting the youth', 'making the weaker argument the stronger', and 'profaning the gods' -- its sad hilarious but those we are educated know such views are on the wrong side of history even if good people like Socrates are murdered along the way.
Let's see if I even share my speech here, I'm regularly shadow banned for no reason.
Once your speech starts to infringe on the rights of others it is no longer deserving of protection. Your rights are not more important than the rights of your fellow citizens. I don't understand why libertarians don't agree with that. I thought the whole point of the government was to protect the rights of the individual.
That is quite a chilling statement. What right do others have to silence speech? A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege. The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.
You have the right to silence speech that infringes on your rights. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they knowing print lies in order to ruin the career of another individual. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they leave a burning cross on the curb outside their black neighbor's house. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are reprinting the published work of another person without permission or fair use. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are threatening violence on another individual.
>A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege.
You don't even have to go back a decade to find that this isn't true. Prop 8 is a perfect example of how a right can be taken away by public opinion.
Some people get misled by the Declarations of Independence's whole "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" thing that human rights are some natural phenomena. That has never been true. We bestow these rights on each other because we as a civilization have decided they are the bare minimum that every person should be guaranteed. As human history will show it is a constant struggle to help ensure that is true.
>The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.
By that logic no free society has ever existed before.
Most of your examples are covered by other laws. Property rights, defamation or such. However, none of this is forbidden as speech.
>We bestow these rights on each other
This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.
>By that logic no free society has ever existed before.
Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.
That is exactly my point. What do you think defamation is if isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think copyright is if it isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think laws against threats or intimidation are if they aren't a limitation of free speech? Those laws are created because we think some speech shouldn't be protected.
>This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.
There is no one stopping anyone from taking your rights away if you are born into the world alone as a living being. That is one of the primary purposes of government. The protection of its citizens' rights. If we don't have some force to protect those rights, there is nothing preventing the powerful from taking away the rights of the weak as evidenced by the entirety of human history.
>Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.
That is obviously true, but the r value in that correlation also isn't equal to 1. The US is at the extreme in terms of free speech but it is rarely in the top of the various freedom indices that exists to measure the freedom of a society.
Think of it this way. If I harm someone by punching them, I will not be prosecuted for improper use of my fist. I will be prosecuted for the damages. Same with these examples of speech. You are being prosecuted for damages, not violating a speech code.
So a law that forbid certain speech and allowed for prosecution without proving damages or somehow prevented me from saying something in advance would then be a limitation on actual speech.
The problem starts, when people project there wish to control the lives of others upon some vague enough person as power.
Other People need the help of government? They should stop being lazy and put their faith in the free market.
My folks need government help? Well we deserve it, give it to us, right now, don’t delay, don’t you have a heart?
Compared to the members of communist, conservative and other demanding and identity-integral idealogies, libertarians are far smaller in number and altogether weaker as an independant political force.
The thought of this terrifies me. It invites the absolute worst kind of collectivism.
The question worth exploring is how to balance individual and collective needs.
Using "collectivism" as a pejorative gets us nowhere.
It's kind of crazy that we finally agreed that the government doesn't have the right to unfairly treat two gay dudes who want to get married, but now if someone doesn't want to serve them the cake the government can force you to. No matter how righteous either act, we just traded one form of tyranny for another and made no progress in understanding the importance of the lesson. When can we just agree that telling you what to think should have never been a legitimate role of government in the first place? It is a concept fundamentally and completely opposed to democracy and individual liberty.
I guess what it comes down to is what you fear more: tyranny or some racist people with restaurants.
Human rights end at where someone else’s rights begin. It’s obvious following from this that perpetrating physical violence on the innocent is wrong and must be stopped. But what of people who glorify, encourage or publicly plan to do such a thing? Do you always have to wait until people translate toxic words into toxic actions?
Yes. Otherwise we are attempting policing through pre-crime. Also, `toxic` is always subjective. It becomes a useful vehicle by which the definition will always be expanded to include what someone dislikes.
Who are you to judge my religion and culture wrong and vane?
Some entity must then be given power to determine what qualifies as that speech. This is then the point speech is lost. Once someone has the power to determine what people can say, then that becomes the vehicle through which it will be undermined. The definition of what is acceptable will continue to change as the state will want to keep expanding its power of `public good`. This becomes a selling point to the public to support such efforts while the state will continue to silence opposition to its interests with support of the public as all will be framed in the interest of protecting the public.
The other possibility is just chaos and vigilante justice. Which is what the CEO of Cloudflare did.
Both the legal system and businesses need to draw lines. We can't pretend those lines don't exist or that 100% free speech is some ideal natural state. Once those line are drawn it is only natural for there to be debate about them. I think frequently debating and reassessing those lines is healthy.
If the restaurant benefits from special safe harbor exemptions to food safety laws because they have so many customers from all walks of life that they supposedly can't spare the resources to play hygiene police while serving everyone on time, then no.
But aren't copyright laws another way of suppressing free expression? It seems contradictory to say that it's not ok for Cloudflare to suppress the free expression of Nazis while implicitly supporting the suppression of the expression of file sharers, remixers, and other violators of copyright who want to use Cloudflare. Furthermore, you seem to be arguing that the explicitly political expression of Cloudflare's CEO should be suppressed using the power of the state (by suggesting that it should open them up to legal liability).
Are you suggesting that in order for them to be allowed to turn down Stormfront's business they must take on the legal obligation of actively screening all their content for illegal material?
I don't see the connection or justification.
As the Cloudflare CEO explained, that is not the case in this instance.
https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/
The only way they can terminate the terms is:
"Cause for such termination shall include, but not be limited to: (a) breaches or violations of the Terms of Service or other incorporated agreements or guidelines; (b) requests by law enforcement or other government agencies; (c) a request by you (self-initiated account deletions); (d) discontinuance or material modification to the Service (or any part thereof); (e) unexpected technical or security issues or problems; (f) extended periods of inactivity; (g) you have engaged or are reasonably suspected to be engaged in fraudulent or illegal activities; (h) having provided false information as part of your account; (i) having failed to keep your account complete, true, and accurate; (j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited; (k) use of fraudulent payment methods; and/or (l) nonpayment of any fees owed by you in connection with Cloudflare.com and associated Services."
Meaning "and anything else we forgot to include or think of later," so "woke up pissed off at you" is a valid reason for termination under that clause.
To to mention that "j" is broad enough to include pretty much any content-based decision.
Also, like yelling `fire` in a building is not a speech issue, it is a property rights issue in that you cause damage to the owners of the property.
The point is that it can be prosecuted, but not on the grounds of speech.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...