Speech vs Incitement
(Up to: Freedom )
ZDNet news story: UK police chief: Shut down 'abhorrent' Web sites
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An interesting split between "freedom of speech" and "incitement" indeed. There are some comments that I agree with, to start with:
And who decides whether something "incites [people] to commit illegal acts" or not?
When something expressly incites people.
People who say things like "Harry Potter/GTA/Something incited my kid to kill our hamster" are clutching at straws - that's not the issue, and they know it. If, however, Harry Potter featured a scene where he addressed the camera and told people how to eat hamsters, why it's good fun to do so, and asked us to follow in his footsteps, that would be incitement. That's what needs addressing. It's one thing to claim something incites, but unless it expressly does, it's a matter of opinion.
So, because something is illegal to do, you believe it should be illegal to discuss? There's a difference in describing how to cook a human for eating, and in encouraging someone to go kill someone to eat.
I think this highlights a different sense to the problem - I'm less worried about how to decide which incitements should be illegal (after all, incitement to nicety or politeness is no problem), and much more worried that a greater amount of non-threatening freedom will be outlawed as a result of people making laws far too quickly about things they don't understand. Blanket laws. * #8386718
So, to preserve the freedom of speech, we have to preserve the freedom of all speech. Even speech which we find personally distasteful, immoral, or downright putrid.
Laws are not separate to freedoms, they are entangled, if not one and the same. Our laws should be a formal representation of what we feel our liberties, and thus also our responsibilities, should be. Blanket laws are laws that have let the responsibility overwhelm the freedoms.
The obvious counter-argument to, say, banning necrophiliac websites, is that there are many people (many more people, in fact) looking at the site that don't pose a threat to anyone. Of course, the problem with this is balance - someone dying, or being abused, is perhaps of a more serious nature than someone who is not.
