Namely the banning of the manifesto. Blocking images of violence is one thing. But making the leap to blocking ideas is on a whole other level. I’m all for de-platforming. No one should be forced to host your vile content, legal or not. But for the government of your country to ban a specific string of characters as a criminal matter is terrifying.
The manifesto was a presentation of a political viewpoint (and perhaps a call to action - I don't know, I haven't read it). The manifesto qualifies as speech.
The video was a record of a criminal act of great violence. I wouldn't classify the video as speech. (In contrast, a fictional portrayal of the same acts but made with actors and no-one dying would be speech).
For now.
The lessons learned and recorded through 2000 years of Western history, starting with the Greeks and culminating in the American revolution, was that such things can never be relied upon unless guaranteed by law.
It suppose it wouldn't actually be hard for them to seize the copyright (perhaps with a new law if required) and start issuing DMCA takedowns or threats of lawsuits.
The takedowns that Facebook and YouTube have been performing started immediately after the attack loooooong before the video was classified as objectionable. This is because Facebook and YouTube do not want to distribute these videos. That’s all.
But the Office of Film and Literature Classification is literally a government agency, according to Wikipedia. Maybe it's staffed by bureaucrats rather than elected officials, but it's still government censorship. MPAA, on the other hand, is a trade association, and compliance with its ratings is purely voluntary.
>It must meet the definitions under the law that the office operators under. [...] It is checked by the ability of the judicial branch to evaluate these cases against the definition in the law.
I wouldn't count on this, given how vague the the law is, and how useless constitution is (see comment elsewhere in this thread).
>And the law can be changed by the citizens electing new representation and giving mandate for that to be done.
That's a final backstop, but if there's active government censorship going on, how can the results of the subsequent election be trusted?
The law that makes this material objectionable is the same one that makes child pornography illegal, and it should be obvious that it wouldn't work very well if each video involving sex with children had to be classified as objectionable before it became illegal.
The criteria are here:
https://www.dia.govt.nz/Censorship-Objectionable-and-Restric...
And the government is literally arresting people for distributing the video.
I'm really struggling to see how this could be construed as a non-government action.
As a Crown entity the Classification Office is accountable to the New Zealand public - it must perform its functions efficiently, transparently, and in a financially responsible manner.
The Minister of Internal Affairs is responsible for managing the Government's relationship with the Classification Office."
Edit: I see now they have banned it, and the "manifesto" too. https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/ch...
But also these people:
22 year old: https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/zealand-man-22-arrested-alleg...
44 yo male: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object...
This woman was arrested for hateful commentary (not distributing the video, just comments): https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12214654&ref=t...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6820769/Teen-accuse...
>The accused teenage Facebook poster appeared in Christchurch District Court on Monday and was granted an interim name suppression order, but he was denied bail by Judge Stephen O'Driscoll.
https://www.9news.com.au/2019/03/18/14/49/christchurch-shoot...
That he did it online, or didn't realise that saying vile things would have undesirable consequences shouldn't excuse the behaviour.
(N.B I think he should be charged with something, but I don't think prison time is a fair response to his actions).
That isn't the case in NZ; Most of the population trusts the government and value's collective good above individual liberty, the policies and responses to events like these are born out of our culture and focus on those values. It's apples & oranges with the US culture of valuing individual liberty.
I do feel that to say that it's solely personal responsibility is to disregard easily mislead demographics (specifically the youth). Of course the plan is to educate them so that they can reason these situations out for themselves, but until then it's societies duty to look out for them, and to ensure they're not being exposed to unnecessarily harmful views.
Personally, I believe some people can't actually be reasoned with all that well; You can try, but eventually you exhaust yourself without ever changing there mind; What's the saying about "the world changes when old men die"?
As a final counter-point. My understanding is that Osama Bin Laden never personally attacked the US. It was his hate speech that incited violence, it was his ideology that was his weapon. The response to that was to condemn a man who was not US citizen to death without ever having a trial. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been killed; I'm asking why one incitement of violence, of hate speech; is acceptable and should be allowed when another is not? (keeping in mind that both are in relation to a terrorist attack).
It's a modern American stance that dates back to the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio. The reason that this particular standard for free speech, formulated by the US Supreme Court has permeated segments of the English-speaking world is an example of the cultural dominance of the United States, and internet culture.
Besides bin Laden, another even more striking case is the cleric, a US citizen, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen because of his advocacy of violence. And no sane person who values their freedom, in the English-speaking west, would dare advocate on behalf of ISIS today.
No society in human history has permitted absolute free speech, and the United States doesn't either.
Bin Laden was directly responsible for the planning and support for attacks on the USA and others. Wikipedia is a good place to start with links to items, including transcripts etc.
I emotional agree it is hard to trust the masses to do the right thing, never the less, we have to. It’s the only way. Everything else leads to opression.
To use an example of an obscure half-joking religion just say calling Pastafarians a bunch of stupid useless colander-heads is hateful speech but not hate speech. Saying that we should all go out tomorrow and lynch Pastafarians would be religious intimidation and captures where the wrong is - not the speech but the actual 'verbal assault'.
When the 1st amendment was written the US had approximately the same population as new Zealand does now (4M versus 5M). New Zealand is about the size and popolation of Oregon.
Our political landscape is wildly different, simply because we are so much smaller, and we don't have states.
Our politicians and our government are not "them": they are us. This is the general feeling towards the Muslim community too We all (including our politicians) see the affects of policy upon our friends and family, because most New Zealanders have direct connections to a range of backgrounds.
The US Supreme Court only set the modern boundaries for freedom of speech in Brandenburg v Ohio in 1969.
Off the top of my head, the government has: used the existing regulatory system to temporarily halt sales of the sort weapons used in the terrorist attack; introduced legislation into parliament to permanently halt sales of the sort of weapons used in the attack, which will proceed through the regular legislative process; announced plans to investigate how the attack was not prevented by security services; and facilitated memorial services for victims.