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Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?

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

#51

Post by kenjackson »

alanh wrote: post #37
kenjackson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lines in law, where they exist, tend to be fuzzy, rather than fine. Now with that said freedom of speech is a special law. And obviously one that cuts both ways. But a key reason why the law should largely exist untampered is that even if you say something I think is offensive, I can rely on a few things: 1) If it's absurd it will be discarded by most people. 2) If it's absurd those people it would convince, prob…

> If it's absurd it will be discarded by most people. And yet the various flavors of creationism (all equally absurd by measures of science) have convinced half of the U.S. of their validity.

I generally don't find creationism offensive. While I don't believe it, I'm not offended by it. And I think that's true for most people. It's certainly not the type of thing that ever comes up in free speech arguments. I can't think of any atheist I know (although I'm sure some exist) who want creationism banned in speech or writing.

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

#52

Post by russell_h »

jules wrote: post #32
waqf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I had an unfair advantage: I didn't trouble to familiarize myself with the WBC. But by my reasoning, the difference would be legal precedents stating that pickets are legal (irrespective of what you use them to promote) and repeated unsolicited telephone calls are not (irrespective of what you say).

That's not entirely true. You can't write "God Hates Blacks" (per the Racial Hatred Act) but you can write "God Hates Fags". There seems to be no logical basis for this difference.

To clarify: are you talking about the U.S. or another country (a moment on Google suggests maybe Australia?). I'm almost certain that writing "God Hates Blacks" (or waving a sign saying that, etc) is perfectly legal in the United States.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States

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

#53

Post by Zak »

kenjackson wrote: post #19
thaumaturgy wrote: post #14

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…

The lines in law, where they exist, tend to be fuzzy, rather than fine. Now with that said freedom of speech is a special law. And obviously one that cuts both ways. But a key reason why the law should largely exist untampered is that even if you say something I think is offensive, I can rely on a few things: 1) If it's absurd it will be discarded by most people. 2) If it's absurd those people it would convince, prob…

I think the main reason yelling "fire" and the like are illegal is that such speech is intended to and does cause action on the part of others. Solicitation to commit murder, inciting a riot, making a false report of a crime, uttering a forged instrument and making (credible) verbal threats are illegal for the same reason. None of these are illegal because of the lack of opportunity for analysis or debate, but because of the direct link between speech and action.

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

#54

Post by angus77 »

julian37 wrote: post #49

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

I haven't heard that one, but there's a similar one in the Frank Zappa Book about the song "Montana". He wrote a song about dental floss, yet people's teeth didn't get cleaner.

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

#55

Post by evgen »

DavidSJ wrote: post #6
ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I think Neil does an excellent job of capturing the essence of the first amendment. I don't think we do enough to protect peoples right to 'not read' however. edit: While I clearly remember this coming up in at least one of the cases involving DeCSS where a defendant made the argument that their use of DeCSS didn't infringe copyright because they were restructuring the DVD to not play the copyright notices and ads be…

Who has made the argument that skipping commercials violates a corporation's First Amendment rights? Can you provide a link?

It is not quite the same thing, but close enough that someone might be able to make a legal leap...

There are/were services that would make edits of existing films to take out the "naughty bits" and repackage them for sale as a family friendly edit of the original film. These derivative works were not authorized by any of the original copyright holders and the censoring services lost the case (Clean Flicks of Colorado, LLC, et al. v. Steven Soderbergh, et al.) This particular case probably hinged more on how the first sale doctrine worked for digital works, but there were copyright issues raised and the judge did find that the edits were not protected by any fair use claims.

From censoring out tits to skipping commercials is a jump, and this would probably only be applicable to making and distributing copies of dvds that cut out any of the annoying warnings/ads/"coming attractions" (e.g. adding this ability to players or distributing the edits and jumps via an additional channel would not be covered) but it is a precedent to consider...

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

#56

Post by kenjackson »

Zak wrote: post #53
kenjackson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lines in law, where they exist, tend to be fuzzy, rather than fine. Now with that said freedom of speech is a special law. And obviously one that cuts both ways. But a key reason why the law should largely exist untampered is that even if you say something I think is offensive, I can rely on a few things: 1) If it's absurd it will be discarded by most people. 2) If it's absurd those people it would convince, prob…

I think the main reason yelling "fire" and the like are illegal is that such speech is intended to and does cause action on the part of others. Solicitation to commit murder, inciting a riot, making a false report of a crime, uttering a forged instrument and making (credible) verbal threats are illegal for the same reason. None of these are illegal because of the lack of opportunity for analysis or debate, but becaus…

Those are in a whole different class than I was thinking of. Those are with the express intent to further a crime. Although I guess the Fire example can fit there too, although I was thinking more of someone who thought it would be funny, but not necessarily anticipate the full breadth of consequences.

The issue though isn't a link between speech and action (PE coaches don't violate this although their barks usually directly create action). It's the link between speech and furthering a specific crime.

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

#57

Post by __david__ »

iamdave wrote: post #43
kwantam wrote: 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…

I take umbrage to this creepy uncle being named "Dave".

Yeah, I didn't like that either.

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

#58

Post by cookiecaper »

julian37 wrote: post #49

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 impossible to turn this off.

Speech shouldn't be censored but individuals should choose wisely what they decide to surround themselves with. Thought is father to the deed and the media is actually about implanting ideas and emotions in people -- we should choose carefully that which we let through.

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

#59

Post by DavidSJ »

evgen wrote: post #55
DavidSJ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has made the argument that skipping commercials violates a corporation's First Amendment rights? Can you provide a link?

It is not quite the same thing, but close enough that someone might be able to make a legal leap... There are/were services that would make edits of existing films to take out the "naughty bits" and repackage them for sale as a family friendly edit of the original film. These derivative works were not authorized by any of the original copyright holders and the censoring services lost the case (Clean Flicks of Colorad…

Those are copyrights, not First Amendment rights.

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

#60

Post by sliverstorm »

jwb119 wrote: post #28
mikeryan wrote: 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...

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.

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