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I don't think you're giving a great summary of these stories. The first two are related to personal defamation: * Police horse and dog: people could be arrest

• mcguire 5y ago
  Thanks for the details! Any news on Simon Singh and the British Chiropractic Association or the Church of Scientology?
  • rovolo 5y ago
    This is what I found with a quick search. * Simon Singh & BCA: appeals court changed Singh's "statement of fact" to "fair comment" (opinion) in 2010. The BCA then withdrew the libel lawsuit. The "Libel Reform Campaign" used this case to push for a 2013 act which modified libel laws. * I don't know which Scientology libel suit you're asking about. The most recent news item I could find was a 2015 chilling effect where a local broadcaster and publisher rethought showing/printing "Going Clear" because Northern Ireland wasn't covered by the 2013 libel law. The latest actual libel suit I could find was a 6 year libel case where: (ex-Scientologist) Bonnie Woods started a phoneline for other dissenters, the Scientologists printed leaflets calling her a "hate campaigner" and distributed them in Hood's neighborhood, Hood sued, the Scientologists counter-sued, Hood eventually won a settlement. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/on-libel-and-the-law-u-s-and-u-k-go-separate-ways https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_in_the_United_King...
• wutbrodo 5y ago
  Thanks for the details, I was mentioning them from memory as well as eliding some details for brevity (though none that I thought changed the nature of my point). > Police horse and dog: people could be arrested for "threatening, abusive or insulting" speech in public at the time. The police, being wankers, overused their discretion on "insulting" speech and so the law was changed in 2013 to remove "insulting" as a criterion. Yes, this is consistent with my point. Abuse of the spirit of any law is a given, and it's part of what goes into assessment of whether a law is wise or not. It would be great if we could pass laws that could identify and laser-target "bad" speech in perpetuity with no potential for abuse, but that's just now how law works and proneness to abuse is a central part of the criticism. > [count dankula and snoop Dogg lyric] In what way my summary misleading? I think perhaps we have different notions of what's relevant here. Training a dog to react to "gas the jews" isn't categorically different from training a dog to respond to seig Heil with a nazi salute. In fact, it's the exact same joke. > The guy repeatedly left the cartoons in airport _prayer-rooms_. I was mistaken about this story, thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure where I got the impression that it occurred in restrooms. >Downplaying the parts people actually got angry about makes it seem like you're complaining about the people getting angry about the actions rather than the trials and punishments. This is a pretty wild assumption about ny motivations. Your descriptions are as easily described as "downplaying" the relative triviality of the acts: in the case of Dankula, you mention "gas the jews" without mentioning that it was a trigger word for another dog trick (use/mention distinction), and in the case of the snoop Dogg lyric, you leave out 1) that "she copied the lyrics from a friend’s Instagram account, which were used by thousands of people to pay tribute to Frankie Murphy" and 2) the complaints centered entirely on use of the word "nigga", which is even more ridiculous than the violent content (as her lawyer pointed out, should Jay-Z be fined for using the same language during a Glastonbury performance?) Though I don't think the reason you left these out is because you're trying to mislead: your focus was "why people were angry", and mine was "how absurd the incidents are to the sensibilities of citizens of a country with robust speech protections". Whether or not people get angry is immaterial to my point, which is the exact opposite of caring enough about their anger to downplay it. The absurdity comes from the idea that it's workable for the state to be coordinating speech at such a ridiculously low level.
  • 5y ago