Radical Islam Website Readers May Be Prosecuted

Personally, I agree with zorse. One of the best ways to combat extremism is to give extremist groups enough rope to hang themselves. Nail them when they actually solicit or request specific illegal actions (calling for hits on people, calling for somebodies home or business to be vandalized, etc) but otherwise allow them to make fools of themselves in public. See how the WBC or the KKK marginalize themselves in the US by being permitted to publicly say what they think.

Radical Islam does not seem to be a sizable threat in the US (because of, or despite of, the US's loose hate speech laws... you decide) and domestic "homegrown" terrorism is a wildly overblown threat. People like "sovereign citizen" are widely mocked using material that they upload to social media. Would sovereign citizens still be widely recognized as nutters if they were not allowed to upload youtube videos of them making fools of themselves? Despite (or because of) the US's lax speech laws, we don't have a Golden Dawn equivalent political party that is actually winning elections.

The following countries have laws against hate speech:

Belgium@: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Anti-Racism_Law

Denmark: http://www.inach.net/content/denmark.html

Finland: (sorry, could only find PDF) http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Expression/ICCPR/State...

France@: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_France

Germany@: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/StGB.htm#130

Iceland: (Art 233) http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=190914#LinkT...

Netherlands: http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001854/TweedeBoek/TitelV/Arti...

Norway: (135 a) http://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1902-05-22-10/KAPITTEL_2-6...

Sweden: (PDF Ch. 16 sec. 8) http://www.government.se/content/1/c4/15/36/d74ceabc.pdf In case you don't want to read that far "sentenced for agitation against a national or ethnic group to imprisonment for at most two years"

UK: See article.

The countries with an '@' are ones that also ban certain kinds of denial (usually Holocaust denial).

Note it is very likely that more countries in Europe have bans on free speech, these are just the ones I know of and could get sources for quickly.

On top of that, your point "Europe (as a political entity) has only generally positive things to say about freedom of speech" is only accurate if you don't take freedom of speech seriously. The European Convention on Human Rights AND the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union says it is up to the countries whether hate speech counts as free speech! Which misses the entire point of free speech, that no one is able to say what is and is not okay speech!

I live in the UK and the things that upsets me most is the lack of free speech here. There seem to be far too few countries that take it seriously.

So yes, I think it is fair to say Europe has a problem with free speech.

For instance, the freedom of the press is much weaker in the UK than in continental Europe, surveillance is _a lot_ more commonplace in the UK and the UK is not part of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. (Btw. the UK and Poland are the only EU countries that aren't a part of it.)

About 15 years ago I turned on the TV one day, zapped to the music channel and was faced, all of a sudden, with the face of Kid Rock.

He was talking to some sort of host on the German channel when the following interchange happened:

Kid Rock: You mean I can say anything?!?

Host: Yes!

Kid Rock: Anything at all?

Host: Yes!

Kid Rock: Ok, here it goes. Pussy-licking finger-fucking ho-ass cunt.

And then he smiles as if it's his fifth birthday. Indeed, in the US, you can't say these things on TV if it is a live transmission and they will be beeped in a recording. Even today, it's always funny to see American celebrities on British panel-comedy shows being startled by the nonchalant usage of coarse language.

That's also a regulation of speech on the airwaves. Granted, it's organized by private entities (or is there a law?) but the effect is the same.

Now contrast that with the limitations of free speech here in Germany: While I'm no friend of hate-speech laws in general, I must say that the one we have in Germany served us very well. The only thing that is banned are the Nazi party symbols and the general patterns connected with it (Holocaust-denialism, preaching against a minority, that sort of thing) and it has been an effective tool to counter any resurgence of "The Nazis 2".

Because, as most non-Germans are most likely unaware, Neo-Nazi groups have been actively trying to gain a foothold in youth culture here for a very long time. I can distinctly remember the knuckleheads that tried to distribute "those" tapes/CDs back in school.

Of course having the "illegal" tapes was enough to radicalize some, but they never could organize on any scale, since any organization or music group that attracted too big a following was rapidly banned.

Weighing the good and the bad consequences of our German law comes IMO very much out on the positive side. And no, there has been no feature creep, even though the law is decades old.

Beeping the potty-mouth on the other hand is just off-balance.