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But nobody is suggesting banning "everything outside of normal". This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery. You

by Cenk 9y ago

But nobody is suggesting banning "everything outside of normal". This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery. You can ban holocaust denial and nothing else, or ban hate speech that fits a very specific set of criteria. Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres?

mercer 9y ago
If only.
VMG 9y ago
> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres? No, it led to people calling for the resistance to the WWI draft being imprisoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
ekidd 9y ago
> This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery. I think that if you draft your country's constitution to say, "We have freedom of speech, except for calling for genocide and/or denying the Holocaust," then that can work reasonably well, and it won't necessarily turn into a broader ban. If you actually write a short list of exceptions into your constitution, then that can work. But the US constitution isn't written that way. We have very broad freedom of speech, and the only way to curtail it is via the Supreme Court deciding that certain kinds of speech are somehow an exception to rules. Libel and slander are, of course, exceptions, but they're ancient ones with a lot of case law explaining exactly what's forbidden. There are other exceptions, mostly involving things like angry mobs. But if you want to start saying, "This speech is forbidden because it promotes bad ideas," then you need to fundamentally change how the Supreme Court interprets the first amendment. And once we go there, then we have no idea where we're going to wind up.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres? No, because we never banned shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater; the idea that such a thing was unprotected speech which could be banned is non-authoritative dicta from a Supreme Court ruling which did, however, uphold he criminalization of core political speech in the form of protests against the WWI draft, which has since been overturned and is widely recognized as a major failure when it comes to free speech. Which was worse than a content-neutral ban on all speech in theaters.
alien_at_work 9y ago
Shouting "Fire!" isn't hate speech, it's basically a kind of social fraud: as a member of society, if you scream that some emergency is happening there is an expectation that such an emergency actually exists or could have been believed to exist. Especially in a case like this where the response is likely to injur people. Free speech is about being able to state your oppinion. The person shouldn't "Fire!" in your example doesn't have the oppinion that there is a fire.

by Cenk 9y ago

mercer 9y ago

If only.

VMG 9y ago

> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres? No, it led to people calling for the resistance to the WWI draft being imprisoned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

ekidd 9y ago

> This is not an all-or-nothing proposition, there’s no reason for the slope to be slippery. I think that if you draft your country's constitution to say, "We have freedom of speech, except for calling for genocide and/or denying the Holocaust," then that can work reasonably well, and it won't necessarily turn into a broader ban. If you actually write a short list of exceptions into your constitution, then that can work. But the US constitution isn't written that way. We have very broad freedom of speech, and the only way to curtail it is via the Supreme Court deciding that certain kinds of speech are somehow an exception to rules. Libel and slander are, of course, exceptions, but they're ancient ones with a lot of case law explaining exactly what's forbidden. There are other exceptions, mostly involving things like angry mobs. But if you want to start saying, "This speech is forbidden because it promotes bad ideas," then you need to fundamentally change how the Supreme Court interprets the first amendment. And once we go there, then we have no idea where we're going to wind up.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Did banning shouting "Fire!" in a movie theatre lead to all speech being banned in all movie theatres? No, because we never banned shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater; the idea that such a thing was unprotected speech which could be banned is non-authoritative dicta from a Supreme Court ruling which did, however, uphold he criminalization of core political speech in the form of protests against the WWI draft, which has since been overturned and is widely recognized as a major failure when it comes to free speech. Which was worse than a content-neutral ban on all speech in theaters.

alien_at_work 9y ago

Shouting "Fire!" isn't hate speech, it's basically a kind of social fraud: as a member of society, if you scream that some emergency is happening there is an expectation that such an emergency actually exists or could have been believed to exist. Especially in a case like this where the response is likely to injur people. Free speech is about being able to state your oppinion. The person shouldn't "Fire!" in your example doesn't have the oppinion that there is a fire.