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A comment on Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis. Parent comment

Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity... by d110af5ccf on Monday June 07, 2021 @01:53AM (#27419434)
> there’s _plenty_ of legal limits to free speech in the US

Not really? The limits are essentially directly inciting violence, directly threatening, and knowingly aiding someone in the commission of a crime (ie literally coaching someone else on how to break the law). That's not "plenty", that's really the bare minimum (and exactly how it should be, from my perspective at least).

Edit: Crap, just realized I forgot about our ridiculous obscenity limitations. Those shouldn't exist IMO, but to be fair about the only thing that's managed to run afoul of them so far is literal bestiality porn. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/15/) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/535/234.html)

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Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity... by peteretep on Monday June 07, 2021 @02:41AM (#27419717)
Right, apart from incitement to violence, words liable to cause breach of the peace, threatening speech, obscenity, defamation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, campaign financing, speech by government employees, many forms of national security related speech, and instruction on how to make weapons, what speech is banned?!?
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Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity... by d110af5ccf on Monday June 07, 2021 @03:54AM (#27420136)
Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood and have caused measurable harm if I understand correctly. That really seems like the absolute minimum of limitations to me if we're going to have a hope of maintaining a functional democracy. (We've got laws against false advertising as well ...)

Campaign financing - Notorious for enjoying minimal regulation in the US relative to other developed countries. Again I'm not sure how else a functional democracy is supposed to be maintained?

Invasion of privacy - I'm a bit fuzzy on this one. Are you referring to things like HIPAA, or to something else? Bear in mind that such regulations only apply to the professionals who are already authorized to view the data. To me it seems similar to the confidentiality you enjoy when talking to an attorney.

I already noted that I disagree with the existence of obscenity restrictions. The other ones you mention (national security, government employees, emotional distress) are fairly nuanced and quite limited as far as I understand. The vast majority of restrictions seem to boil down to the generic idea of knowingly and intentionally working to break some law that isn't itself related to speech.

I just can't seem to get too worked up over such a practical set of restrictions myself. Does it bother you that you can't legally incite a mob, or intentionally teach an aspiring terrorist to manufacture explosives? Or do you just object to my characterization of that as being a minimal set of restrictions? But if that isn't minimal, then what is?

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Re:Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity... by dragonwriter on Monday June 07, 2021 @04:03AM (#27420180)
> Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood

No, it doesn’t. Even the narrow standard applied when a public figure is the subject (“actual malice”) can be satisfied either by the speaker/publisher knowing the material is false or speaking/publishing it with reckless disregard for whether it is true or false.

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