This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.
Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. That commenter would probably be alright with that because those types of comments are not ok. For some reason, however, these people are never ok with censorship by anyone if it impacts their beliefs.
I find this highly hypocritical.
The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.
Posting false statements about someone molesting children would be libel, so it would not be protected under the First Amendment.
Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).
How Censorship of lie A fundamentally different from Censorship of lie B?
Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.
People seem to be upset by my comment, but I am just stating what the actual law is regarding free speech about ideas and about libel. These rules are very well established in terms of what they encompass and don't.(IAAL, FWIW.)
I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1]
That’s irrelevant to this discussion. Saying free speech excludes a limitation on free speech as defined by a specific country means anything that country excludes is therefore perfectly acceptable.
It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.
Wrong on both counts, actually (I am a former tax lawyer, so your second example is right in my area of expertise). The exception for libel is in the First Amendment in the US and in many other countries. This is not just about the US.
And as for payroll taxes, they are still taxes, but they are not applied on all income. For example, they do not apply to capital gains, or to income above ~$140k. Also, social security is (at least in theory) a forced savings plan, and people who pay into it more over their career then receive more out when they retire.
Income taxes, on the other hand, are not capped at a certain level, and you never get money back later based on how much income tax you paid in the past.
There are times where it is silly to refer to them in the aggregate, but it is not "Doublethink" to talk about them separately. They are different in important respects.
The US definition of income taxes also excludes gifts received even though that’s also “income.” As such by your definition they aren’t income taxes. Of course you could just define gifts as not income and things are ok, except if you continue to define income taxes as taxes based on a specific system then the definition is only applicable to that system at a specific point in time.
For example, is money received by tax free investments income? That’s now undecided until you determine the specific source, time period, and country involved. And as soon as you have statements that are both true and false you have a problem.
Even if you want to stick with US definitions, the states and federal government have different rules. As such the exact same transaction can be both income and not income. Which is about the clearest example of Doublethink I can think of.
PS: Instead, if you say for purposes of X it’s defined as Y then you don’t have this issue. But, then it’s very clear that specific things are exceptions. (To be clear I kept adding to this comment.)
Exactly. There's a familiar pattern to this debate. Someone categorically declares there can't be any exceptions to free speech.
Inevitably, someone brings up a counterexample.
Then the original person replies that it doesn't count, because it's not speech and there's a different word for what it is. Libel, incitement, terrorism, whatever word is needed to cover the example.
But in doing that, you've carved out a category for things that are excluded from protections afforded to speech.
Then the next thread comes around, someone declares there's no exceptions to speech, and the cycle continues.
If you're going to confine this conversation to the first amendment, then that's not relevant to youtube. For many the concept of speech in the sense pertinent here is broader than just U.S. law.
I've been on many HN threads where free speech absolutists make explicitly this point because they want to apply the concept of unfettered speech to private platforms, and they square the circle by insisting it's bigger than just the first amendment.
It's not all about the First Amendment, but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point. Also, Google is a company headquartered in the US, so US law is somewhat more relevant than other law.
>but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point.
It's relevant insofar as legal distinctions between US and UK are relevant, which is to say, not relevant at all so far as I can tell. I don't think anyone's argument here hinged on such a distinction. If it did, and to that extent, it's relevant. But the heartland of this whole conversation has to do with a conception of speech as a principle that's broader than just U.S. law.
So we should be clear about the extent to which this is, or isn't, speaking to the conversation that everyone else is having.
Good point. We allow judges and juries to do this. It is much more tractable problem in the case of statements about individuals. Also, it avoids questions of legal standing (who has suffered injury and is allowed to sue).
Libel is a statement that damages the reputation of a person. Libelous statements are not protected under the First Amendment.
Ideas about election fraud do not fall into this exception to the First Amendment unless they refer to individuals and make defamatory statements about them.
For the record, I'm not saying there couldn't be a reason to ban these statements, just that a libelous statement is not a good comparison because it is one of the established exceptions to the First Amendment.
In other words, a but. Which is the whole point - the original statement was you can't have freedom of speech with "buts". We already have "buts", and most people would agree we have freedom of speech.
A functioning society can't have the unbridled "freedom of speech" op is insinuating we should have. You aren't free to lie in a court of law, that's infringing on your freedom of speech. You can't falsely accuse someone of a crime - also an infringement on freedom of speech. Add countless other exceptions to the rule. And all of that is ignoring the fact that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean: other people are forced to listen to you or repeat what you said.
I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind.
You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.
I fail to see how massive global wealthy companies with immense influence and who by now control a sizable chunk of the places where public life and moreso public discourse takes place are so much different from governments in this context. Other than that we actually elect governments, meaning the mega corps are even less accountable to the general public. The Googles and Facebooks have more power (money, influence, etc) than a lot of actual nation states and their governments already, and they are constantly increasing their influence by means of lobbying (including keeping competitors at arm's length with regulatory capture), directing public discourse and quite often just "doing things" and waiting if anything bad will happen to them - which usually won't.
While the amount of wealth companies and a few individuals have is absolutely concerning and something we’d be crazy to ignore, it boggles my mind that you don’t see any differences between governments and companies when it comes to speech....
For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
We live in a time when the ability to find a platform for your ideas is significantly bigger than it’s ever been in history, even without the couple of tech giants.
And just to reiterate, we should be terrified of the power of some of these tech giants, but I’m skeptical of anyone who fails to see a difference between a company saying, “not on my servers” in a world where governments literally kill people who say things they don’t like.
I do see a difference, sure. Just that the difference is getting slimmer and slimmer constantly, and already is too small for me to consider to be comfortable.
>For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
Companies used to do that already. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. That's why, in my humble opinion, the time is now to reign in the power of mega corps.
It also misses the point a bit by focusing on the most egregious things like kidnapping, imprisonment, killings. You don't have to kidnap, kill or "vanish" your opponents, there are many ways to repress them, scare them into obedience and so on.
You cannot "quit" google when google is actively framing policy and the law for everybody.
You may say that so far google wasn't too bad, and I would agree. Regardless, I still find it concerning that they are able to concentrate that much unchecked power. "Don't be evil" was yesterday, "Don't be evil unless it hurts our margins too badly" is today, I think there is a possibility - but not a certainty of course - that tomorrow it might gonna be "Evil is quite alright if it helps our margins". And that's just google. Other companies with massive influence, like the Murdoch or Koch empires, haven't been as nice as google.
Yes, you absolutely can. Switch from YouTube to a different site, or host video yourself.
If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
Right now we're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
>If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
I am doing both.
Also, switching hosting isn't a cure. Google/Youtube and Facebook and reddit and twitter, for better or worse, control much of the audience online. If they decided you do not exist then for the majority of people you do not exist. Not because those people chose to ignore you, but the companies made the decision for the audience. At the same time companies like google do everything to disrupt the "open market of ideas" and replace it with a "walled garden of ideas we can monetize and do not object to", so far mostly to gain a competitive advantage not to push their point of view, but that may well change.
Taking about hosting in isolation is in my opinion not helpful, one has to always consider the larger picture.
In doing so, you have failed to answer the load-bearing question.
We're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
>Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
I am in favor of regulating the very big players like utility companies are regulated: you don't get to refuse customers electricity or clean water just because you do not like them.
In general, you want liability safe harbor (DMCA, section 230)? Then you have to abide by the same freedom of speech contract the government has to abide by. You want to moderate the content on your platform? Go for it, but then you're on the hook for moderating all of it in a timely fashion.
PS: Companies are not people (SCOTUS may disagree). I'd very much differentiate between a for-profit operation and personal stuff when it comes to certain types of legislation.
Try quitting Amazon. I haven't ordered anything from them for over a decade. Easy peasy. Oh but my employer uses AWS. Damn. And so do untold websites that I use. Damn. And just this week, I bought something from good ol' BestBuy -- nothing wrong with that, right? Except they now have "marketplace" listings and my purchase was delivered by Amazon. Shit.
We have large body of dystopian fiction in all media (books, movies, TV, videogames, comics, etc.) about what might happen if the private entities accumulate more money and power than democratically elect governments.
I’m not saying we’re there just yet, but this Google’s stance is a step in that direction.
You don't even have reach as far as dystopian fiction. Look at the history of the Hudson Bay Company and the India Trading Company, private companies which were in effect defacto governments.
When that private entity achieves a near-monopoly on search, then it becomes the arbiter of what does and does not get heard.
That's concerning enough in itself for free speech, but add in pressure from government to "self-regulate," and you arrive at effective government censorship/suppression. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are brought before Congress to testify about what they're doing to stop the spread of "fake news," the implicit threat is that if they don't pro-actively do what Congress wants, then Congress will force them to do so (or punish them in other ways).
Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.
YouTube (of Google), Facebook and Twitter are three different sources of (peer-propagated) information, and even combined do not constitute a centralized source of information.
It does seem like they are used for "news" way more than (in my personal opinion) is advisable, but they are still each independent organizations, and they do not hold (quite) all of the keys to information, and still want to preserve a reputation of impartiality, as difficult and impractical of a goal as that is.
It's certainly a problem when other sources of information loudly pronounce misinformation as fact. If you only compare YouTube and a single other competing news source, you might feel it's rather odd that YouTube is choosing to stop information of a certain nature. If you look widely enough, you are more likely to find that the information is false, and it was your original comparison source that was, in fact, problematic.
The point of all this is that there needs to be more sources of valid, factual information than sources of the same problematic false information, or we are all going to lose the ability to determine any reasonable facsimile of truth. The fact that is it peer-propagated certainly entangles a complexity that is reflected in the very divided opinion on this issue.
But I think in the end it will boil down to something simple. Like other things we've previously agreed should not be free to be amplified on peer networks, likewise demonstrably false information sourced from the government of the people should also not be free to find amplification on those peer networks.
Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them.
Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same.
As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.
Google can do bad things to you. Significantly less-bad things to you than imprisonment/asset seizure/execution, BUT they are not required to follow due process and are not answerable to anyone but themselves if they do something bad to you. They can also provide substantial amounts of incriminating evidence to the government (the ones who can execute you) and technically a warrant is not required. If the cops go to Google and ask for info about you that is stored on Google's computers, and Google gives it to them without a warrant, your rights as a US citizen have not been violated.
That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?
Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud?
If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.
>We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN.
And nobody would believe it if it wasnt deleted. They'd just be irritated by it.
Nonetheless that's not political speech (unlike the YouTube vids) . It's basic libel.
Goebbels was in favor of free political speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of freedom of political speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise - whether that's Trump or whomever. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
He is absolutely exercising his first amendment rights to freedom of political speech by lying about what happened without evidence.
The first amendment isn't there to protect you from his lies though. It's to protect you so that you can speak the truth when he or somebody like him wants to stop you.
Be careful what you wish for. The same mechanisms that are used to shut him up will be used to silence you one day.
Provided they forgo legal common carrier protections they are, yes.
Once they do start censoring on that basis they become criminally liable for all content posted on the platform though.
If they're willing to take the same legal responsibility over all tweets that a publisher would over every page of its magazine id say let them. I'd like them to take legal responsiblity for the toxicity their platform generates.
we're talking about an election that was won with razor thin margins in a few specific swing states, with numerous statistical anomalies, hundreds of sworn affidavits, and a pending lawsuit to the scotus with 17 states attached.
prior to 2020 election, the democrats, CNN, NBC, and many others are _on record_ saying that Dominion Voting has the potential for massive fraud & shouldn't be used.
the problem is that they're effectively saying no one can question these anomalies, or the claims, and that "youtube" as the expert has adjudicated the election.
the truth is that it could take years of investigation to resolve whether or not some of the alleged evidence was credible or not, and neither youtube nor the claimants can say it's truth until then.
why does big tech get to decide who's right? that's the problem here & why it reeks Orwell.
Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights.
Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc.
Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact.
---
Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc.
It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.
> I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason
In this YouTube situation, property rights and freedom of speech are mutually exclusive. Either the owners of YouTube have the right to censor whatever they want on their platform/property, or people have freedom of speech and YouTube can't remove speech from their platform/property. In this situation, you can't protect both property rights and freedom of speech - you can only protect one.
If enough people demanded it though, we could make it socially unacceptable for Youtube to use their property rights in the pursuit of censorship. The problem really isn't the law, it's public opinion. We've lost sight of how important freedom of speech is, and we are by and large cheering on censorship where it hurts those we disagree with. It's short sighted and will ultimately cost us a lot more than it gains us... but it feels good for now.
Ultimately, if people didn't accept these draconian measures, advertisers would complain because there would be notable data showing a decline in consumer engagement.
I actually like that YouTube is announcing all of this stuff up-front, because it makes it far more clear and crystal that if you have an alternative viewpoint from the mainstream, you will have to build your own infrastructure to support your message. It's best that people learn this sooner, than later. Enough people have suffered by being too trusting of brands like YouTube.
I think you're missing the forest for all the trees. This isn't a tactical debate, it's a philosophical and foundational one. Until we all defend the right of people we despise to voice their opinion, everything else is playing at the margin.
People have forgotten that it's not just good for the people we detest, it's good for us to be able to listen to bad ideas and form rational and compelling counterarguments and defences against them. And since none of us is perfect, there will be times when it is _us_ that is espousing the bad idea, and it will be damn good for everyone that people are able to speak up and correct us.
There are indeed growing pains as the world comes online and starts being able to talk to each other. We're really in our adolescence as it pertains to life online. But we're making the most naive and expedient appraisals and supposed remedies to the discomfort its causing. My hope is that we're able to turn a corner and wrest control away from the reactionaries who currently control the narrative and the agenda.
> it's good for us to be able to listen to bad ideas and form rational and compelling counterarguments and defences against them.
I agree, and it's quite obvious that if you want this, then you should not go to YouTube.
> But we're making the most naive and expedient appraisals and supposed remedies to the discomfort its causing.
The only naivety being expressed here, is the idea that YouTube is the be-all-end-all online UGC video provider. Why are you placing YouTube on such a high pedestal, assigning such a non-deterministic fate to its decisions and outcomes? They're not even a little important to the dissemination of free ideas - perhaps they once were, but that ship sailed long ago.
Why are you so in love with YouTube? You clearly despise their choices; abandon the platform and don't look back.
> This isn't a tactical debate, it's a philosophical and foundational one.
I agree; you need to change your philosophy. Stop relying on YouTube to be the heroic service that you want it to be, and start realizing that it will never do what you want it to do.
YouTube is a specific company and they run an engine for recommending videos to people. YouTube doesn't prevent people from finding other hosting for their own videos and linking people to those videos. Do people have any more right to YouTube's megaphone than they do to any specific newspaper or TV channel's reach?
I despise people pushing anti-vaccination misinformation. Would it be good for us to fight for their right to have their message to be uncritically broadcast on say NBC? I might care if the government made a law that was ambiguously too broad that happened to make it so antivaxers couldn't possibly be broadcast on TV at all, and it was clear that antivaxers winning that fight against that overly-broad law would open things up for other groups I thought the law was too strict against, but if it's just the case that every TV station decided of their own will and probably specific reasons to not broadcast them, then even if I thought all the TV stations were generally too strict, I'd pick something I actually liked that they were being too strict against to support to convince the stations to change their opinions.
Nobody is suing YouTube over this though, they are just sharing the information about it so that people can decide whether to keep using YouTube to host their content, and encouraging people to stop using the service.
Also we are discussing the ethical issues surrounding this decision.
The bigger conversation isn't really about YouTube, it's that some people want these ideas suppressed from everywhere and some people don't. Youtube just happens to be more flexible than the government, but don't think for a second they're all going to draw the line if the government passes a law prohibiting saying those things. Legally enforced censorship is what many of them ultimately want.
On the other side of the coin, the anti-censorship people also want the government to prohit Youtube/FB/etc. from censoring their ideas. That's just as anti-freedom.
Why would YouTube want legally-enforced censorship? The existence of that would make more work for them and would open them up to liability.
YouTube is specifically pushing back at propaganda coming from the government here, so I don't know how it makes any sense to assert that it's evidence they really want to allow government propaganda.
Property rights inherently derive from the state. Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
Oh? I have an intrinsic right to the land that I currently own, the car in my driveway, and the computer I'm typing this on? How did that intrinsic right derive? And why don't I have an intrinsic right to, say, the land of the entire continent of North America?
Property rights are entirely a social construct. They are not intrinsic; they are created and granted solely via the formalizations of that social contract in the form of the state.
> Property rights inherently derive from the state.
This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
> Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights.
> Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society.
Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own.
> To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
> This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them.
Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights, then rights absolutely do come from the state. Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
> And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them.
Indeed, and the same for the state.
> Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights,
I'm not advocating for anything, just correcting some misconceptions.
> then rights absolutely do come from the state.
No, they do not. Rights are a social fiction that arises from mutual cooperation and are continued through repetition and intentional performance. It is true that actors whose actions are colored by state power can participate disproportionately in this process of evolving norms.
> Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
Yes because the norm of property requires that theft, robbery, and things of that nature are violations of that norm.
> > Property rights inherently derive from the state.
> This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
> > Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
> The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights.
Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
> > Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society.
> Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own.
> > To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
> Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
> Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
I'm not sure what proof (or evidence really) would be required. You can observe animal territoriality in the wild, or you can trust animal behaviorists to report on it accurately. They have areas they defend against other members of the same species. Behavior varies widely, solitary species don't like any other members of their species (except for sexual partners), social species have different arrangements. Sometimes an elder male will have several females and young that are permitted and when the young get big enough they either leave or fight. Sometimes the males will have a hierarchy and defend the territory against other members of the species who are not part of their group. Sometimes they even make war on another group for their territory. If you let me know what kind of evidence you're looking for I might be able to supply it.
> Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
He said that state is a formalization of the social construct of property rights. I'm saying the state is not a formalization of the social construct of property rights, but a social construct of nation and government; and that the two have relation but exist independently of each other.
> But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
Excellent question, thanks for asking. Rights are a social construct that emerges from mutual cooperation, essentially a social technology that allows people to co-exist and pursue their own interests and desires without needing to establish the same agreements with every individual and without generating unnecessary conflict. This is to say that rights are emergent and arise from individuals agreeing to respect each other.
Perhaps an example would help: I don't like to be the victim of violence. Neither do you. At some point we agree not to do violence to each other. A third person shows up and attacks me to steal my food. You make the rational choice to help me defend myself because if he kills me for my food he may do the same to you. Being that he is outnumbered he stops and we explain "don't do violence on people." He says "you contradicted yourself, you say you're against violence but you used violence to stop me." We say "You're correct, it must be the initiation of violence that is bad, and it would be ok to use violence on someone who has used violence on you." He says "ok that may be the case but you used violence on that gazelle I was trying to take from you." We eventually conclude that rights are a social arrangement between humans as a result of our preference for cooperation with humans and do not apply to inter-species relations.
> you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right?
Property is a human expression of territoriality. Property rights are a social arrangement where people customarily or by agreement avoid violating each other's territory. Rights are a social arrangement that allow people to minimize the amount of violence in a community.
This is already kind of long but let me know if you have more questions and thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
First let me say I appreciate your non-confrontational arguments (you have been admittedly much better than myself) in a thread which is really quite a "sh*tshow".
>> Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
>I'm not sure what proof (or evidence really) would be required. You can observe animal territoriality in the wild, or you can trust animal behaviorists to report on it accurately. They have areas they defend against other members of the same species. Behavior varies widely, solitary species don't like any other members of their species (except for sexual partners), social species have different arrangements. Sometimes an elder male will have several females and young that are permitted and when the young get big enough they either leave or fight. Sometimes the males will have a hierarchy and defend the territory against other members of the species who are not part of their group. Sometimes they even make war on another group for their territory. If you let me know what kind of evidence you're looking for I might be able to supply it.
I agree that we can territoriality in the animal kingdom and I'm can also admit that we see territoriality in humans (at least some of the time). However, you claimed that property rights are an incarnation of the territoriality, which is a quite a leap from territoriality exists in humans. Maybe this is related to the discussion of what is a right. Just a side-note I do think it's drawing parallels and conclusions from behaviour in the animal kingdom is fraught with problems. Just one example, I think based on this principle one could make clear arguments that people are inherently egoistic or altruistic.
>> Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
>He said that state is a formalization of the social construct of property rights. I'm saying the state is not a formalization of the social construct of property rights, but a social construct of nation and government; and that the two have relation but exist independently of each other.
I somewhat disagree with you here, however I admit we are starting to discuss semantics. But I would argue (and this is how I understood the OP, that the state is a social construct/formalisation of our social interactions, which does guarantee property rights (and others). So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state. Now, the argument becomes a bit of a question of how broadly do we define state. I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
>> But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
>Excellent question, thanks for asking. Rights are a social construct that emerges from mutual cooperation, essentially a social technology that allows people to co-exist and pursue their own interests and desires without needing to establish the same agreements with every individual and without generating unnecessary conflict. This is to say that rights are emergent and arise from individuals agreeing to respect each other.
>Perhaps an example would help: I don't like to be the victim of violence. Neither do you. At some point we agree not to do violence to each other. A third person shows up and attacks me to steal my food. You make the rational choice to help me defend myself because if he kills me for my food he may do the same to you. Being that he is outnumbered he stops and we explain "don't do violence on people." He says "you contradicted yourself, you say you're against violence but you used violence to stop me." We say "You're correct, it must be the initiation of violence that is bad, and it would be ok to use violence on someone who has used violence on you." He says "ok that may be the case but you used violence on that gazelle I was trying to take from you." We eventually conclude that rights are a social arrangement between humans as a result of our preference for cooperation with humans and do not apply to inter-species relations.
I quite like your definition and largely agree with it. But would you not agree that we need some sort of social organisation to guarantee these rights? If not rights are largely meaningless or one could argue non-existent, because there is not social entity/organisation to construct them. So this is how I understood the OP, when he said (paraphrasing) property rights derive their existence from the state.
>> you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right?
>Property is a human expression of territoriality. Property rights are a social arrangement where people customarily or by agreement avoid violating each other's territory. Rights are a social arrangement that allow people to minimize the amount of violence in a community.
So the way I understand this, is that territoriality might be the reason for forming/formalising property rights in society (I still don't fully agree on this, but that's a different argument), however to me that is very different to saying that property rights are an incarnation of territoriality. Maybe a formalisation of territoriality is a better word?
>This is already kind of long but let me know if you have more questions and thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
I thank you, this is definitely an interesting discussion.
> I agree that we can territoriality in the animal kingdom and I'm can also admit that we see territoriality in humans (at least some of the time). However, you claimed that property rights are an incarnation of the territoriality, which is a quite a leap from territoriality exists in humans.
Perhaps I was unclear. Property is the human incarnation of territory. This is an observation based on their similarities, treating humans as animals. When one animal claims an area and reacts with hostility to the conduct of other members of the same species in that area, it is said that the animal defends a territory. Property rights are a social norm that some humans use as a means of defending their territory. Rights are merely norms that allocate to individuals certain activities, behaviors, or other social goods. The territory (or property) exists because an animal believes that it exists and acts as though it exists. Of course this can be violated, its just an idea in someone's mind that manifests as territorial behavior. Property rights are a social arrangement where people respect each other's property.
Please note that I'm not assigning any moral weight to this notion. I'm merely describing human behavior in these terms and letting the reader come to their own conclusions. Rights (and property rights) take different forms in different communities. Thats because norms are social constructs and therefore intersubjective.
> Just a side-note I do think it's drawing parallels and conclusions from behaviour in the animal kingdom is fraught with problems.
Perhaps so. I think it can be problematic to consider humans as separate from the animal kingdom. Probably both perspectives have strengths and weaknesses.
> But I would argue (and this is how I understood the OP, that the state is a social construct/formalisation of our social interactions, which does guarantee property rights (and others). So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state. Now, the argument becomes a bit of a question of how broadly do we define state. I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
This is conflating norms with the state that enforces them. Norms exist in all communities, most of them are not state-enforced. Frequently communities have norms that conflict with the formal statutes. In fact, the idea that there are agents of the state who you "are supposed" to obey is itself a social norm. Sometimes those social norms change but the people with the guns still attempt to enforce statutes.
Just as a side note, I find formulations of the type "the state guarantees property rights" to be problematic. The state may enforce some laws and fail to enforce others. The state may enforce some norms and fail to enforce others. The state may engage in widespread and long-standing violations of property rights (civil asset forfeiture). People can resolve this by considering those rights to be "whatever the state says they are" but this equivocation leaves us with no basis on which to criticize state actions related to rights.
> So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state.
Property rights do not require an organization to enforce them. They (can) exist as community norms. Organizations enable large-scale coordination of actions that can shape those norms.
> I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
I agree but this also depends on how one defines terms. Some scholars use "state" and "government" differently as well.
> But would you not agree that we need some sort of social organisation to guarantee these rights?
No I don't agree that is necessary in all cases. In some cases its clear that an organization would be necessary to enforce the norms that I prefer. Perhaps a criminal organization seeks to expropriate all the left-handed redheads in an area. But then how would someone respond logically if we considered the organization that seeks to expropriate as the government? They're enforcing a concept of rights, just not the one I like. If rights are just what the government says they are, and we have people ready to enforce a particular concept of rights, how are we justified in determining who is the government and who is the criminal? It does us no good in this case to define rights with respect to the rights-enforcers because we have no basis to criticize the rights-enforcers for enforcing a different concept of rights. It must be that norms exist independently of the enforcement organization.
> So this is how I understood the OP, when he said (paraphrasing) property rights derive their existence from the state.
Couldn't we equally consider the state to have been derived from property rights, if we imagine the state to have arisen in order to enforce those rights?
> So the way I understand this, is that territoriality might be the reason for forming/formalising property rights in society
Territoriality is human nature, the purpose of formalizing it and enforcing it is to enable large scale coordination and minimize the amount of violence. People are going to have territory and they are going to have territorial conflicts. Rights are a social construct that enables people to have similar theories of acceptable conduct without having to know each other or agree as individuals on everything. Property rights allow people to have their territory and then settle territorial disputes in a way that creates (non-binding) precedents. This allows people to live in greater densities and avoid coming to violence over trespasses.
> property rights are an incarnation of territoriality. Maybe a formalisation of territoriality is a better word?
Territoriality just means that people are built to have an idea that something belongs to them. The specific property norms of a society are what determines what specifically they consider to be property. Property rights are just the rights surrounding places and things. Rights are social arrangements that allow people to live inc lose proximity and make arrangements with a reasonable security and reasonable expectation without having to get everyone to agree to everything all the time. Someone has the right to life, that means if someone deprives them of their life we already know it was wrong, we don't have to wonder if they had some verbal agreement that made it ok or if it was ok for Arthur to kill Bradley because Bradley was "in the way." Many norms are tacit and not formal. We could say the body of law is a formalization of the social norms.
> I thank you, this is definitely an interesting discussion.
Likewise, thank you for replying.
> First let me say I appreciate your non-confrontational arguments (you have been admittedly much better than myself) in a thread which is really quite a "sh*tshow".
LOL no kidding, but thanks for your non-confrontational approach as well. The world may burn around us but if we can keep our heads perhaps we can set an example for the lost and hopeless.
>I think it's better to have a society where property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason.
So hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons? (I realize this is not a practical concern today, but I'm trying to find out if anyone truly believes there are no lines to be drawn on property rights.)
That is a difficult issue. One potential resolution I see is to say that if you see someone making his own nuclear weapons without telling anyone about it, this is strong enough evidence that he's going to try to do something terrible (i.e. it looks like a crime in progress) that you would be justified in using force to stop him.
How does this generalize and fit into the framework of property rights in general? What makes, say, manufacturing guns not strong enough evidence of trying to do something terrible? Is it mere history, or is it the defensive uses of guns, or does the magnitude of the terribleness matter, or something else? (In practice, I think purifying U-235 takes huge facilities and no one can do it in their backyard—it's probably a few orders of magnitude more expensive and complex.) Also, if it's 100% established that this one guy making the nukes is a trustworthy pacifist who won't use them, but the problem is he won't keep them in a particularly secure location, can one defensibly call his actions illegal? ("Planning to be neglectful"? How about someone who will guard them as heavily as he can, but that's just not heavily enough?) There would be a lot to explore there, but I think it may be possible to resolve the issue of nuclear weapons while keeping a pure system of property rights.
>One potential resolution I see is to say that if you see someone making his own nuclear weapons without telling anyone about it, this is strong enough evidence that he's going to try to do something terrible (i.e. it looks like a crime in progress) that you would be justified in using force to stop him.
Only 2 nuclear weapons out of the 10,000s made have ever been used. Almost no one announces they are building a nuclear weapon, it is usually done in secret. So this argument does not really hold.
What I think most people do is they see from a practical standpoint that having unrestricted access to nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous and work backwards to justify why it fits their ideological framework.
> Only 2 nuclear weapons out of the 10,000s made have ever been used. Almost no one announces they are building a nuclear weapon, it is usually done in secret. So this argument does not really hold.
The entities that have, so far, made nuclear weapons are nation-states. I think most people would agree with the following statements on that: (a) it's hard to prevent nation-states from making them (not for lack of trying), (b) many of them already made them long ago (U.S., Russia, France, China, etc.) and we're not trying to say that was illegal, (c) the concept of "illegal" at the level of nation-state actors is ... to say the least, very different in implementation, and possibly in concept, from that of "illegal" at the level of individuals. Many people think that nations making more nukes is bad, and some are in favor of disarmament treaties, but I don't think they believe international law either does or should mandate disarmament for all nations. Some would say it's hypocritical for the nuclear club to try to prevent other nations from developing nukes; I suspect others agree it's hypocritical but also don't want those nations to develop nukes.
The question in this case was, "So, hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons [personally]?" It would be impractically difficult for one person to make nuclear weapons by himself, without essentially buying or stealing all the important stuff from elsewhere. And if it were easy for one person to make nukes, then probably no ideological system could resolve that easily. There might be some middle ground of possible scenarios that's important to resolve—e.g. if a company wants to make a nuke to use for, I dunno, their own Project Orion or mining a mountain or doing an interesting underwater experiment, then should that be illegal?
We may end up facing the "one madman can create a superweapon" scenario with biotech. Perhaps, by that time, everyone will have their own hazmat suits and their houses will have UV decontamination chambers to fight off SARS-COV-5 or whatever.
> What I think most people do is they see from a practical standpoint that having unrestricted access to nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous and work backwards to justify why it fits their ideological framework.
Yep, I cheerfully admit this is what I'm doing. At least I stated it as "I think it may be possible to resolve the issue" after mentioning problems with my proposal, instead of asserting "my ideological framework resolves this easily". Though I probably should have made the "how would an individual get access to nukes anyway, and if that were easy, then what would any legal system be able to do about that?" point first.
This sounds sensible and I agree with it. When we circle back to
> Property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason
I am not squaring the circle. If we don't allow someone to build a nuke with materials they purchased, we are infringing on their property rights. If we say you can build a nuke only for mining a mountain we are infringing on their property rights. Which in my mind is a good thing. Property rights are not absolute, we just are just arguing about where to set that line. But as long as we decide to not let individual's own nukes I am fine with pretending property rights are absolute.
The scope of the effects. Firearms can be pointed, explosives have a damage/kill radius. It is not permissible to arrange so that a person is brought within the range of effects of a weapon without their consent.
In the case of explosives, that means you need enough property to contain the effects. In the case of nuclear weapons, it basically requires an entire planet.
Why should YouTube have a megaphone to give in the first place? Last I checked, there are still laws on the books to handle companies with >90% market shares. [0]
Good, so we agree that this is not an anti-censorship issue but an anti-trust issue.
Private entities can't censor anything, anyhow. Independently and freely choosing which sentiments to platform on a private service is not censorship, no matter how far anyone tries to stretch the definition of the term.
I just checked a couple of definitions in case my memory was failing me, but I don't see any definition of censorship that limits it to governmental action. YouTube can and does censor content on their platform, I don't understand why so many people seem have trouble with that word. All it means is (quoting Webster) "to examine in order to suppress ... or delete anything considered objectionable"
The way it's being used in public discourse is not necessarily the dictionary definition of the term. You have to meet people where they are when it comes to rhetoric, not try to force them to follow your version of what means what.
YouTube chooses not to display media uploaded to their servers. That is not censorship, that is discretion.
Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
I'm not who you've been talking to, but I can't help but laugh at this exchange.
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
No, actually, that isn't the definition. You guys just had a back and forth on this. You're artificially trying to limit the definition of "censorship" to fit your sentiment because your sentiment is not based in objective reality.
While I would agree with you that YouTube should not be compelled by law to host any content and can censor whatever they want (and we can, and should, refuse to use YouTube to host our videos and inform ourselves), it is still censorship, plain and simple.
If you send me a DM asking me to repeat your claims in a public-facing comment, and I refuse, that is not censorship. Ditto for any and every private entity which exists.
I hear net-neutrality is a common position around here. If you agree prima facia that Comcast should not be allowed to block simply or censor YouTube (they're a private company, its their own equipment, etc, etc), then why doesn't the same argument apply to Google?
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
That is your own personal definition. What happened to meeting people where they are?
Net neutrality has little to do with censorship, and more to do with extortion. While it is true that extortionary tactics can be used to effectively censor particular sentiments, that is not what is being referred to in discussions surrounding net neutrality.
" Some notable incidents otherwise have included Bell Canada's throttling of certain protocols and Telus's censorship of a specific website critical of the company."
" Deep packet inspection helped make real-time discrimination between different kinds of data possible,[49] and is often used for Internet censorship."
>While it is true that extortionary tactics can be used to effectively censor particular sentiments, that is not what is being referred to in discussions surrounding net neutrality.
Maybe it wasn't being discussed around you. I certainly remember discussions on HN about comcast blocking torrents or whatnot and 'censoring' the internet. But I guess you have a different definition of censorship, so we never did achieve common ground on that.
The way "censorship" is being used in public discourse, in practice, seems to be that it's not censorship when it's applied to views the people driving the public discourse disagree with. Remember the controversy over LGBT content supposedly being removed or demonitised on YouTube - pretty mucn none of the mainstream discourse agreed with the idea that it wasn't censorship because YouTube was a private company, let alone the idea that - as I've seen pushed in other areas - that pressuring YouTube not to do it was actually the real attack on their free speech rights.
1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
2. (in ancient Rome) the office or position of censor.
Yes, but back then we had the party organ of the American Nazi Party and the party organ of the International Workers of the World, and a couple more in between. You could buy them, and you know what you would get. Now you just have Youtube. That is a problem.
Modern capitalism has replaced the public square and a huge number of face-to-face communication opportunities with communication mediated by private corporations, and it uses those (and they take liberties themselves to for their own purposes) to outsource censorship and stiffle public discussion...
The idea of restricting freedom of speech to the state is an antiquated idea, belonging to pre-internet times, when a huge part of social interaction didn't happen through social media...
Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights.
How are you defining "freedoms" and "fundamental natural rights"? This sounds good in theory, but once you start enumerating what they are for the purposes of encoding them in law, or if not a law, then some form of social contract other than "might makes right", the counterexamples immediately flood in, and for good reason.
Anarcho-Libertarianism does not as far as I know have an answer to a basic real-world problem:
Humans are social and always form affinity groups.
Groups have more power (by any definition) than individuals.
Absent enforcement, groups will invariably infringe at will on the rights of individuals or minorities.
QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors.
There are many mechanisms and descriptions of this activity, but, the bottom line is always the same. This is as true for the "free market" as it is for the "free market of ideas" or the contemporary ordering of law and punishment.
The state has to be the ultimate authority, to prevent smaller aggregations from stripping minorities and individuals of their own liberty.
No proposed alternative system has so far demonstrated stable viability.
That the examples we live within are terrible does not mean they are not also the least bad viable alternatives.
Personally I may think this is a shame, but, oh well.
Heinlein loved to portray rationalist societies in which ad hoc aggregations formed just long enough to enforce a purported majority-recognized rational moral order, without need for formal constitutional law or persistent institutions with formal institutional memory.
When I was 15 I thought this was how things should be.
At 50 I am certain that it shall never be so, not with the limitations of our actual evolved embodiment.
>First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute.
The post doesn't appear to be disputing that the fire in a theater example is a legitimate illustration of the limits of speech under the first amendment. They just proceed from there to make a more general principle that this example can be invoked by people who intend to suppress speech. Which I also don't think is in dispute.
So I don't think that post has anything to do with anything, insofar as this comment thread is concerned.
It makes the point that saying "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" is not a helpful contribution to the discourse around free speech. And since this is a conversation about free speech, and the parent did exactly that, it is completely relevant. Using thought-terminating clichés should be avoided, even if they are technically correct in that particular circumstance.
>It makes the point that saying "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" is not a helpful contribution to the discourse around free speech.
It certainly does say that, and that's really broad and vague. And it's hard to keep track of this whole thread, but I'm pretty sure the branch we're on sprouted from a categorical claim that there are no "buts" when it comes to free speech. But your article doesn't dispute that there are exceptions, and so it's fair to invoke the fire in a crowded theater to illustrate the principle for that purpose.
For anything beyond that, the value and relevance will depend on what point is being made by whom and how well you are doing in your responsibility to interpret and respond to those charitably. But linking to a long blog post and vaguely warning that it's "bad" without doing any further work to connect that to a contention in any given comment is just confusing and unconstructive.
This was originally a metaphor used by a judge to support restricting the speech of anti-draft/anti-war campaigners.
I don't think it's a good example of appropriate censorship.
I think these days you cannot operate a crowded theatre where people will get trampled if they're panicked by the thought of a fire. At least I hope not. That's the real problem with yelling fire. But people should stop using that example for other reasons others have mentioned anyway.
>"Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter.
It can very well be a principle of law. In certain legal codes, it actually is.
As for reality, that's a pretty low bar.
We have many "shoulds" (e.g. you should not cross a red light lest you get a ticket / prison) that are not some inherent property of reality or physical law, but things we've decided upon.
In fact, those are the only things that makes sense to consider as "shoulds". The constraints of reality are not negotiable, so should there is superfluous.
No, I am dumb, since clearly you are not like me I would love to know what are the 6 solid reasons to permanently deprive the whole population of basic freedoms.Because this is not the case of "I killed a burglar who pulled out a gun on me so he forfeited his right to freedom". Even if you strongly disagree with a position, if that position is censored, you are impoverished because of that, society is impoverished. Grievance must be vented openly, otherwise you push the fringe(and not so fringe) groups underground.
Here are 6 solid examples of "buts" we have on freedom of speech in the US.
1. You can't publish child porn.
2. You can't publish copyrighted work. [EDIT: For which you don't have the rights. I thought that was sufficiently implied.]
3. You can't defame another person.
4. You can't threaten someone.
5. You can't use your speech to invade someone's privacy.
6. You can't use obscenity freely.
And this is just freedoms of speech and isn't even including the whole controversial money is equal to speech opinion.
Freedoms and rights are rarely binary. There is often a spectrum and there are often complexities regarding where your rights end and mine begin. All of the above (with maybe the exception of number 6) involve one person using a right to take away someone else's rights. As a society, we have decided to side with that other person in these cases.
1-> is a limitation on the freedom of speech. Speech is not absolute, and the US has limits set by the courts. This is a reasonable one and it's very narrowly limited. The United States and Japan are probably the two best countries when it comes to defending freedom of speech. Keep in mind, China has freedom of speech in their constitution, so the law doesn't have much by itself.
2-> This is a civil violation. The FBI poster before movies says it's criminal, but it's very rarely persued as such (unless you're Kim Dotcom).
3-> Civil, not criminal
4-> Reasonable limit to speech and it's specific. You have to threaten specific harm to a specific person (or group in a specific time frame). There's a lot of very complex case law here, test for 'call to action' ... a lot of it going back to the Red Scare
5-> Like publishing Trump's tax returns? That's a federal crime by the way.
6-> Obscenity has some very specific and narrow definitions (see #1). Although people like to throw around the "I'll know it when I see it," there are certain tests to determine obscenity in the US.
In the US, there is no prior restraint that prevents one from doing the things in your list.
If expressions are deemed unlawful after-the-fact and via due process, the speaker may be punished.
It is anti-freedom to bar expression w/o adjudication or due process. E.g., alleged threats or alleged defamation are protected speech until a court determines them to be unprotected. Emergency injunctions or the like may be temporarily enforced if the court feels it is likely that the expression in controversy will be found to be unprotected speech.
Also, courts can issue narrow and temporary gag orders but they are limited and specifically targeted for reasons unrelated to the viewpoint of the speech.
1. You are not giving up any freedom for not being able to sexually abuse children. Jesus, dont be obtuse just to gain fake Internet points. When I talk about Freedom are things inherent to the dignity of human condition, usually written in documents like the universal declaration of human rights or the constitution.
2. You can, people do it all the time. You cannot publish it if you dont own the rights same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited. What supposed freedom you are renouncing to?
3. Same as 2
4. Same as 2
5. I dont have any idea what is that supposed to mean.
6. In TV, I supposed you are not, at your home oh yes you can. In the street unless you are being a prick that is rarely if ever enforced.
Human freedom does not mean,"I will treat the universe like my personal minecraft game" it means, "These rights are universally agreed to be indispensable for the human condition and we will agree to gran them universally"
1. The prohibition extends beyond cases of sexual abuse. Computer generated child porn without any actual victim is still illegal.
2, 3, 4 - I don't know how "people do it all the time" is supposed to be a defense. People jaywalk all the time too. It doesn't invalidate the law. The fact is these forms of speech are illegal and people get in trouble for them all the time.
5. People have a right to privacy and you can't use your freedom of speech to infringe on that. For example, I can't publish photos of you that I captured from a camera in a public restroom.
6. Yes, you are right this doesn't apply in your home. However it does apply in several public spheres. In most of this country, women can't even take off their shirt in public. You are right that obscenity laws aren't universally enforced, but this is a common charge levied against undesirables.
>Human freedom does not mean,"I will treat the universe like my personal minecraft game" it means, "These rights are universally agreed to be indispensable for the human condition and we will agree to gran them universally"
But these examples prove we don't "grant them universally". We grant them conditionally as long as you don't use them to interfere with the rights of others.
FYI for point 1 this is not true, in the US, pornographic images are only restricted when they document someone being abused, drawing, animation, and even role play are legal.
When talking about freedom of speech, we use the US as a gold standard simply because we aren't talking about what is legal, we are talking about what should be legal, and the US has the least restrictions on speech anywhere in the world (my above paragraph serves as an example of this).
Otherwise I'm just enjoying this back and forth, you're both making coherent points and it is a productive discussion.
> in the US, pornographic images are only restricted when they document someone being abused
I don't think this is true. Since "child" means anyone under 18, "child porn" therefore includes teenagers sexting their boy/girlfriends; some of those relationships could be called abusive, but surely many could not be, unless you think a teenager taking pictures of him/herself is inherently (self-)abusive. But I'm sure no internet content moderation policy, nor likely any police raid, would look into the background of a nude picture of a 14-year-old and determine that no abuse was involved and therefore the picture is permissible.
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22144707/ . "The cases involved "youth-produced sexual images" that constituted child pornography under relevant statutes according to respondents. ... US law enforcement agencies handled an estimated 3477 cases of youth-produced sexual images during 2008 and 2009 ... Two-thirds of the cases involved an "aggravating" circumstance beyond the creation and/or dissemination of a sexual image. In these aggravated cases, either an adult was involved (36% of cases) or a minor engaged in malicious, non-consensual, or abusive behavior (31% of cases). An arrest occurred in 62% of cases with an adult involved, in 36% of the aggravated youth-only cases, and in 18% of the "experimental" cases (youth-only and no aggravating elements)."
So the idea is that sexual activity with minors is coercive, and that trading in pornography is sexually exploitative and a minor cannot consent to be exploited. I would disagree with that on principle, however if it were to be established as precedent that it is not it would be a huge loophole for people actually exploiting people coercively, and I'm not entirely sure how to square that myself.
Er, you say sexual activity, but I was talking about sexting, which generally means partly or fully nude pictures of oneself—taken by oneself, alone—which don't depict sexual activity (except possibly masturbation). Those pictures will generally be classified as pornography—as my link said, they "constituted child pornography under relevant statutes according to respondents [law enforcement agencies]"—and producing them is an offense for which one can be and sometimes is arrested, and it is up to the police to decide not to enforce it (similar to speeding).
Then, if, say, someone still has naked pictures from age 15 (of herself in her bedroom alone) when she turns 18, and decides to start selling her own pictures online (or even posting them for free), and some guy buys them, and at some point the guy gets raided and the police find those pictures... I'm pretty sure the guy will get charged for possession of child pornography based on those pictures (assuming one can tell by looking that the girl was 15), and "no one abused this girl in the process" will not be accepted as a valid defense in court.
>FYI for point 1 this is not true, in the US, pornographic images are only restricted when they document someone being abused, drawing, animation, and even role play are legal.
The analysis I have seen in the past disagrees with this, but honestly I am not looking to plug the necessary keywords into a search engine to find a source. I believe the specific example was regarding deepfaking completely fake computer generated children's faces onto adult porn.
1. That depends on the legislation of every country and it is a hotly debated topic, it is not black and white.
2,3,4. You misunderstood the point. I said people publish copyrighted material all the time (if they have the rights to it). Not at all what you are saying here.
5. You have no right to privacy in any public space. That's why paparazzi exists. In most civilised countries a public bathroom gives you total privacy so that is not even an issue.
> But these examples prove we don't "grant them universally". We grant them conditionally as long as you don't use them to interfere with the rights of others.
You are mistaken. Those are orthogonal concepts, universally just means: to everybody. And yes we grant them conditionally, with the unstated assumption you lose them temporarily if your actions stop other people rights. It certainly not the case of these youtube channels, they are not restricting anybody's freedom.
1. I'm not the one suggesting there are universal truths here. You are the one who established freedoms as binary. Something being "hotly debated" and "not black and white" is a point in support of my argument.
2, 3, 4. I thought not owning the rights was implied by my comment. I edited that to make it more specific. I don't know how potential for people owning a copyright and publishing their own works applies to issues 3 and 4.
5. You do have certain expectations of privacy even while in public. Laws against upskirt photos are one example.
>And yes we grant them conditionally, with the unstated assumption you lose them temporarily if your actions stop other people rights.
So do you know agree that there are "buts" on freedom?
> It certainly not the case of these youtube channels, they are not restricting anybody's freedom.
I have the right to vote and have my vote counted. These Youtube videos are trying to invalidate my vote from being counted.
> I'm not the one suggesting there are universal truths here.
I never talked about truth, I talked about freedoms. I think you should revise your definition of "universal" it seems you dont understand it. The whole idea of my original point is that you cannot say OK this is an universal(for everybody) agreed upon freedom but.... No but here, restricting freedom to an specific subset of the population who has not commited a crime is a big no-no. I mean, did you actually read the post, it's bone chilling:
> Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information are important ways we protect people from problematic content that doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines.
They acknowledge the content doesnt violate any community guideline(even less any law) and yet they want to "protect" us from it. Sorry, I will be on the other side every single time. If that means to be next to Alex Jones, so be it.
Youtube says: " For example, while problematic misinformation represents a fraction of 1% of what's watched on YouTube in the U.S., we know we can bring that number down even more. " This is what I oppose to, to selectively curtailing universal rights. I dont care about any pedantic discussion on semantics, I will gift you them all.
> Laws against upskirt photos are one example.
Same case with fictional animated child pornography, this is not a settled issue(https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/top-us-court-rules-upsk.... Let me repeat that the point is not that. You could still argue for years what it is the best course of action. What you cannot do is selectively enforce those rights or prohibitions against certain sets of the population.That is the problem, that is the violation of the universality of a right, Not the complexity of a legislation.
> So do you know agree that there are "buts" on freedom?
If you call freedom do whatever the hell you want , yes there are buts. If you say freedom as universally granted rights, "But" let's stop this group of having them. There is no valid buts, sorry. I wont never ever be on favor of censoring people who has not commited any violation by expressing their points.
> I have the right to vote and have my vote counted. These Youtube videos are trying to invalidate my vote from being counted.
This a pretty weird, and frankly out of character for you, argument. Some loonies doubting the election, asking for recall or even a repeat are not violating your right at all. I am dumbfounded for such a jump of logic here anyway. Any decision about the election will be taken by the authorities not random youtubers. Go search in youtube "Trump should be impeached, jailed,judged" you will find thousands of videos, are those videos invalidating the votes of the people who vote for Trump. Because from my POV either your vote is safe and you have nothing to worry about or your vote is discarded and you will have to take that with the authorities, not Johnie P Schmuck in youtube, who ironically has many more things in common with you and me than with Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg.
Universal has multiple meanings. I think freedoms are universal in that they apply to all people. I don't think they are universal in that they would apply in every situation. I have given you plenty of examples of situations in which people can be reasonably deprived of freedom of speech.
Governments get their power from the people. That is the foundation of the US political thinking. The larger the percentage of the population that supports overturning this election, the more pressure elected officials will feel to comply. Therefore allowing this misinformation to spread increases the odds that my right to vote will be infringed. Is it an immediate and direct relationship like in some of the other examples we have discussed? Obviously not. However there is a clear causal line from someone advocating that my rights be taken away to the potential of my rights actually be taken away.
Posting this purely because of the hypocrisy displayed by the poster, Cambalache. Your arguments attempt (very poorly) to appeal to ethos, are littered with false equivocations, and jump to illogical, impossible conclusions based on flawed logic defined earlier in your "argument".
> You cannot publish it if you don't own the rights
Who gave YOU the right to take away MY ability to publish anything? Stay consistent with your arguments, at least.
> same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited
Who gave YOU the right to take away MY right and freedom to enter a place?
----
Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
Would love to hear your answers to the above points I made please and thanks.
> Your post amounts to asking "Who gave YOU the right to tell ME I can't fire my GUN wherever I want".
There are no good answers to a point that absurd.
> Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
> Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
amazing! my technique works, as per usual. :) thanks for proving my point.
> 2. You can, people do it all the time. You cannot publish it if you dont own the rights same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited. What supposed freedom you are renouncing to?
I think you know exactly what is meant. You even say it in the second sentence of your comment.
Free speech does not allow copyright infringement. Yes, "people do it all the time". That doesn't mean it's allowed.
> Yes, "people do it all the time". That doesn't mean it's allowed.
People does it all the time. Disney does it, any editorial house does it. If you have the rights you can publish the material. Same as you have the right to enter your house. Not mine, yours.
I thought it was very obviously implied that they meant "You can't publish copyrighted work that you don't have distribution rights to."
I find it hard to believe that you didn't actually know this and took a strong stance against an incorrect understanding of the comment because you want to be pedantic.
Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). This seems reasonable.
Consider a hypothetical with the current election and baseless claims of fraud. A month from now as Biden is sworn in, the drumbeat of fraud continues. There are now collectives of militia groups who claim they cannot "stand by" anymore and the election must be overturned or they will secede from the union. Trump decamps to Mar-a-lago and continues to claim he won. Then one day, local county governments in northern Texas band together and take the side of the militias, saying they will not recognize the current federal government until Trump is declared the winner. This action spreads like wild fire and triggers the same revolt in most rural areas of the country. Trump incites them and declares himself leader in exile. Most red county governments back the militias and declare they will not recognize the current government, as they have no choice at this point. We are now at civil war.
Is this scenario likely to happen? In the current state if disinformation and cult-like following of Trump supporters, I honestly think it is. Look at how Kyle Rittenhouse is now a hero of the right.
So at what point does disinformation reach the level of "imminent lawless action" and should not be protected speech? The government is weak and severely limited here. Any action against disinformation will immediately back fire. It will not happen.
But YouTube as a private company can. And I think they should. It is fair that they see this disinformation campaign as getting very close to "shouting fire in a crowded theater" and are acting on this threat.
Should child pornography be legal? Falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater? Doxing of private information? Those are all "positions", in your view.
There isn't a bright line between the merely offensive and the "obscene". Even the supreme court couldn't do any better than "I'll know it when I see it". And for that matter, different cultures define obscenity in very different ways. Which one is the objectively correct way?
Expressing an opinion is not obscenity. Showing images for provocation is obescenity. The I know it when I see it argument is ridiculous. The Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. California that obscenity is content that is without socially redeeming value to that which lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Now you can argue the points of what has literary value, but the written word has always had literary value, no matter how grotesque.
If I draw a stick-figure and label it The Prophet Muhammad should that be banned? After all my drawing skills are terrible and it is likely to provoke people. But that doesn't seem very free to me.
If you don’t understand the point someone is making please ask follow up questions instead of choosing to interpret it in a way that you can accuse them of being a pedophile
This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.