5 ms·

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_Uni

by jwb119 16y ago

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_States#Special_exceptions 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-February-1998/fish.html http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-Febr...

vacri 16y ago
There's also the good ol' Free Speech Zones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone "You can say what you want, but we tell you where to say it." EDIT: That being said, the US still has a very high bar for freedom of speech.
sliverstorm 16y ago
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.
- waterhouse 16y ago
  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 "$NNN fine for spurious triggering of this alarm". The point is, there is no need to count any of these situations as cases where freedom of speech breaks down. These things can be illegal without allowing any chinks into your free-speech armor; they can be punished, not because they're an illegal form of speech, but because of something else.
  - ebaysucks 16y ago
    you are right - the essence of freedom of speech is not that all speech should be allowed all the time and everywhere, but that "speech regulation" has to be decentralized via voluntary contracts between property owners
    - eftpotrm 16y ago
      But.... that seems to be the US approach to any of a number of issues, allow legal freedom and private contracts to restrict. However all too often there seems to be no practical alternative to the restriction for many, so what value does the theoretical freedom really have?
  - shpxnvz 16y ago
    The case of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater can be handled similarly: Customers agree not to do that sort of thing as a condition of being allowed into the theater, and if they break that, then they are guilty of trespass. Not that I disagree with your premise, but an issue with this is that people like to see punishment that fits the crime - I'd expect public outrage over a misdemeanor prosecution for an infraction that may result in loss of life. As a matter of fact, I have seen many fire alarms in large buildings with a sign that says something like "$NNN fine for spurious triggering of this alarm". Those fines are actually due to local ordinances. As such they are an example of government imposition on individual freedom in order to protect the public, and are a bit of a counter-example to your point.
    - waterhouse 16y ago
      Not that I disagree with your premise, but an issue with this is that people like to see punishment that fits the crime - I'd expect public outrage over a misdemeanor prosecution for an infraction that may result in loss of life. If someone got stomped to death in a stampede triggered by someone's cry of "fire", methinks the person or people who did the stomping would have a lot to answer for. You shouldn't do that even in a real fire. The only difficulty is that it may be hard to identify the culprit(s) if everyone was busy panicking about their own escape routes; and I can see how a mob, with no other targets available, might place all blame on the original "fire"-shouter. But perhaps this "loss of life" thing is an incidental flourish, and your main point is that people, responding legitimately to a fire alarm (not stomping on people), suffer a lot of inconvenience (they drop whatever they're doing and evacuate), and the "fire"-shouter is responsible for all that and perhaps should pay for it. I agree with that. I don't see a problem with assigning a large punishment to the simple crime of trespass when the trespass has large consequences. Suppose I gain access to a Toyota plant and press a few buttons or rearrange a few materials in such a way that a batch of several cars comes out ruined. I haven't done anything beyond simple trespassing, but I am responsible for thousands of dollars of property damage, and I can be made to pay for it, right? So either this is a case where a trespass is a huge crime; or I can be considered responsible for massive property destruction, even though I just pressed some buttons or rearranged stuff (possibly without realizing the implications of my actions), and even though it required the actions of other people in the assembly line to completely carry out the destruction. (In the latter case, what makes me guilty and the others innocent is that I committed a crime--trespass--and they didn't.) These choices seem largely equivalent to me; the former has the drawback that you can no longer hear "trespass" and think "Oh, ah, trespass, a misdemeanor, with maximum punishment X", but perhaps this could be remedied by calling it "trespass causing major property damage". Either way, I think something similar could be made to apply to the case of a false fire alarm. Those fines are actually due to local ordinances. As such they are an example of government imposition on individual freedom in order to protect the public, and are a bit of a counter-example to your point. Interesting. I didn't know that. Still, couldn't you call it a form of trespass and still punish it with a fine of approximately that magnitude (see above for further discussion)?
orc 16y ago
I am disappointed by this: "Lesser protection of commercial speech" I would like it to be illegal for a news organization or an advertisement to lie to or mislead the public. If you survey 1000 doctors, and 4 say yes, you better not put "4 out of 5 doctors surveyed" in your ad.

by jwb119 16y ago

vacri 16y ago

There's also the good ol' Free Speech Zones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone "You can say what you want, but we tell you where to say it." EDIT: That being said, the US still has a very high bar for freedom of speech.

sliverstorm 16y ago

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.

waterhouse 16y ago
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 "$NNN fine for spurious triggering of this alarm". The point is, there is no need to count any of these situations as cases where freedom of speech breaks down. These things can be illegal without allowing any chinks into your free-speech armor; they can be punished, not because they're an illegal form of speech, but because of something else.
- ebaysucks 16y ago
  you are right - the essence of freedom of speech is not that all speech should be allowed all the time and everywhere, but that "speech regulation" has to be decentralized via voluntary contracts between property owners
  - eftpotrm 16y ago
    But.... that seems to be the US approach to any of a number of issues, allow legal freedom and private contracts to restrict. However all too often there seems to be no practical alternative to the restriction for many, so what value does the theoretical freedom really have?
- shpxnvz 16y ago
  The case of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater can be handled similarly: Customers agree not to do that sort of thing as a condition of being allowed into the theater, and if they break that, then they are guilty of trespass. Not that I disagree with your premise, but an issue with this is that people like to see punishment that fits the crime - I'd expect public outrage over a misdemeanor prosecution for an infraction that may result in loss of life. As a matter of fact, I have seen many fire alarms in large buildings with a sign that says something like "$NNN fine for spurious triggering of this alarm". Those fines are actually due to local ordinances. As such they are an example of government imposition on individual freedom in order to protect the public, and are a bit of a counter-example to your point.
  - waterhouse 16y ago
    Not that I disagree with your premise, but an issue with this is that people like to see punishment that fits the crime - I'd expect public outrage over a misdemeanor prosecution for an infraction that may result in loss of life. If someone got stomped to death in a stampede triggered by someone's cry of "fire", methinks the person or people who did the stomping would have a lot to answer for. You shouldn't do that even in a real fire. The only difficulty is that it may be hard to identify the culprit(s) if everyone was busy panicking about their own escape routes; and I can see how a mob, with no other targets available, might place all blame on the original "fire"-shouter. But perhaps this "loss of life" thing is an incidental flourish, and your main point is that people, responding legitimately to a fire alarm (not stomping on people), suffer a lot of inconvenience (they drop whatever they're doing and evacuate), and the "fire"-shouter is responsible for all that and perhaps should pay for it. I agree with that. I don't see a problem with assigning a large punishment to the simple crime of trespass when the trespass has large consequences. Suppose I gain access to a Toyota plant and press a few buttons or rearrange a few materials in such a way that a batch of several cars comes out ruined. I haven't done anything beyond simple trespassing, but I am responsible for thousands of dollars of property damage, and I can be made to pay for it, right? So either this is a case where a trespass is a huge crime; or I can be considered responsible for massive property destruction, even though I just pressed some buttons or rearranged stuff (possibly without realizing the implications of my actions), and even though it required the actions of other people in the assembly line to completely carry out the destruction. (In the latter case, what makes me guilty and the others innocent is that I committed a crime--trespass--and they didn't.) These choices seem largely equivalent to me; the former has the drawback that you can no longer hear "trespass" and think "Oh, ah, trespass, a misdemeanor, with maximum punishment X", but perhaps this could be remedied by calling it "trespass causing major property damage". Either way, I think something similar could be made to apply to the case of a false fire alarm. Those fines are actually due to local ordinances. As such they are an example of government imposition on individual freedom in order to protect the public, and are a bit of a counter-example to your point. Interesting. I didn't know that. Still, couldn't you call it a form of trespass and still punish it with a fine of approximately that magnitude (see above for further discussion)?

orc 16y ago

I am disappointed by this: "Lesser protection of commercial speech" I would like it to be illegal for a news organization or an advertisement to lie to or mislead the public. If you survey 1000 doctors, and 4 say yes, you better not put "4 out of 5 doctors surveyed" in your ad.