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Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

journal.neilgaiman.com

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Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#61

  If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible.
While this may seem obvious, this is precisely the point.

Freedom of speech is only valuable when you're willing to accept disgusting, offensive, gross and revolting speech (within limits, i.e. inciting violence comes to mind).

Arguments against bigoted -, racist -, fanatical -, etc. speech should be won on the merits of the argument and not with the sledgehammer of the law.

This is, of course, not totally black and white and it's not an absolute. If you, however, value this freedom it should go a very long way before laws can be employed to stiffle such speech.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#62
post #38

Gaiman does a reasonable job with this argument, but in my mind fails to address the most pernicious thought in the letter: The question, for me, is even if we only save ONE child from rape or attempted rape, or even just lots of uncomfortable hugs from Creepy Uncle Dave, is that not worth leaving a couple naked bodies out of a comic? This kind of argument comes up all the time in mostly unsupportable "save the child…

Indeed. It is of course entirely possible to prevent all crime by locking everyone up in solitary confinement at birth. This would save not just ONE child, but all of them, from rape or attempted rape etc., so surely this must be worth it?

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#63
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Speech is far from free, period. The law recognizes a wide variety of restrictions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United... for a few. For a view that "There is no such thing as free speech" see Stanley Fish, etc.. http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-Febr...

Speech is far from free, period. As it should be. All sorts of things that don't deserve to be protected by Freedom of Speech. For example, treason often takes the form of selling out your country with information- which is just Speech after all.

If it involves, say, a high-ranking general giving loads of top-secret military information to the enemy, it's likely that not giving away such information is part of his job description, and that he is in breach of contract. Now, the law might not like punishing breach of contract with long-term imprisonment (or whatever the penalty for treason is), but you could probably work something out--e.g. if he breaks contract, then he retroactively loses all access privileges, and all those times he accessed top-secret data are now considered trespass.

(This seems in fact quite appropriate to me, because then the punishment is proportional to the extent to which the general misused the privileges given to him. If he was new to the job and they didn't show him much of anything, then they have little to complain about him breaking their trust; if he's spent ten years getting his fingers in all their data with their conditional permission, and now they realize they shouldn't have allowed him, then they have a lot to complain about.)

The case of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater can be handled similarly: Customers agree not to do that sort of thing as a condition of being allowed into the theater, and if they break that, then they are guilty of trespass. You might complain that the customers didn't agree to any such thing, and that implicit contracts are bad. Fine, then the theater can put up a sign that says "You are not allowed to falsely shout 'fire'". As a matter of fact, I have seen many fire alarms in large buildings with a sign that says something like "$NNN fine for spurious triggering of this alarm".

The point is, there is no need to count any of these situations as cases where freedom of speech breaks down. These things can be illegal without allowing any chinks into your free-speech armor; they can be punished, not because they're an illegal form of speech, but because of something else.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#64
Because the freedom to do what the majority approves of is not why we need freedom.

The lives allegedly saved by suspending liberties should be weighed against all the lived taken by the dictators, who are made more likely as we eat away at the foundations necessary to establish our rights.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, then, is the difference between my calling your phone number multiple times and leaving harassing messages ("You're going to hell! Fag!"), and what the WBC does at semi-private gatherings, like funerals? I don't disagree with the justifications behind protecting speech, even (and especially) things that I find reprehensible. However, I think it's a bit of a lie to say that law doesn't have fine lines or dist…

WBC does it on public property.

True. But I don't think the crux of the matter is in the ownership of the piece of ground they happen to stand on.

There is a strong argument against exercising the freedom of speech the way they do. The right to speak freely should not trump the right to stop listening. This is not the case here. Whoever attends the funeral has their right to stop listening seriously limited.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WBC does it on public property.

True. But I don't think the crux of the matter is in the ownership of the piece of ground they happen to stand on. There is a strong argument against exercising the freedom of speech the way they do. The right to speak freely should not trump the right to stop listening. This is not the case here. Whoever attends the funeral has their right to stop listening seriously limited.

Actually, that is the crux of the matter. If you're at a party and making an obnoxious ass of yourself, the other partygoers can't kick you out. What they can do is go to the host and ask that he kick you out, which he can do if he so decides. If the host happens to be you (or someone sympathetic to you), then their only recourse (beyond attempting to persuade you to cut it out) is to leave themselves. The avenues of legal recourse are entirely determined by ownership of the piece of ground they are standing on.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#67

He sums it up very concisely in the very last paragraph: And also that I think that prosecuting as "child pornographers" a 16 and 17 year old who were legally able to have sex, because they took a sexual photograph of themselves and emailed it to themselves is utterly, insanely wrong, and a nice example of the law as blunt instrument.

And the inherent problem is that there are a frightening amount of people who think that kids doing things like that are "morally reprehensible" and that such a prosecution is for the good of all.

The even more frightening thing is that there are public prosecutors with this view.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#68

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes (which I suppose was made in the context of the "devil's music" scare of the 1970s/1980s): "There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another." --Frank Zappa

A song can't possess someone and make them do something, but it's a juvenile and ridiculous argument to claim that the media we take in doesn't effect us in some way. After all, we use it because we like its effect; maybe it's relaxing, like jazz, or exciting, like a fast-paced video game. But either way humans are learning beings, and everything we see and hear is filed away and used as reference later. It is almost…

I can't tell what point you are trying to make. Is this a convoluted argument for censorship? Are you claiming that there is a direct link between the content of media and the behavior of people? That's a pretty big claim, if so. If not, then what, exactly, is your point?

Everyone chooses what to surround themselves with. Perhaps it would be better if people didn't choose quite so narrowly to only listen to the voices they agree with, and try to diversify their surroundings/inputs a bit more. If we all paid a bit more attention to the cultures and interests of other people, perhaps we'd be less inclined to distrust and dehumanise others.

I apologise if I'm assuming/misunderstanding things, but I genuinely don't understand what you are trying to argue for here. Watching horror films evidently doesn't make people do horrible things, so any link between the content of media and its effects on people can't be that simplistic.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#69
I like the Swedish approach:

Certain restrictions on freedom of speech exist, notably regarding hate speech against any group based on ethnicity, race and creed, and since 2002 also against sexual orientation. Some notable recent cases are Radio Islam and Åke Green.[citation needed]

Saying that all speech has to be completely free no matter what is a bit fundamentalist. Stuff in the real world is grey, not black or white.

Re: Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

#70
post #8

Its funny I had a similar argument with someone last week (2 weeks ago?) when the Westboro Baptist's won their supreme court case [1]. Speech is free, period. Once you try to put any restrictions on then the whole thing isn't even a slippery slope, its a frictionless cliff. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03...

>Speech is free, period. There is situations when one fundamental right conflicts with another fundamental right. Your statement is that the fundamental right of free speech must always take precedence. I see how fundamental right of a child for the privacy of his/her body [ note: a child can't give an informed consent to waive the right ] can be given priority over somebody else's fundamental right for free speech.…

note: a child can't give an informed consent to waive the right

I don't think the consent argument holds water. We force children to do things without their consent all the time. We make kids go to school. Corporal punishment of children is legal in most states, both by parents and teachers. Children usually don't consent to such things, but we do it them anyway.

Sorry for nitpicking one thing out of your comment, but the "children can't consent" argument really gets to me.

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