Council of Europe Pushes Net Hate-Speech Ban 642
omnirealm writes: "The N.Y. Times is reporting that the 43-nation Council of Europe is trying to ban racist and hate speech from the Internet by adding a protocol, or side agreement, to its cybercrime convention, which was stamped for ratification on Thursday."
Oh well, so much for Voltaire. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, c'mon. You'd think Europeans would learn after a few centuries or so that trying to make bad people shut up doesn't really work.
No, I'm not an American.
Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, I hate MSCE's, and we all know that they're inferior to the rest of us.
What's wrong with stating that? Are MSCE's going to get offended? Then let them be offended! And let them learn how to patch IIS so it isn't assaulted by countless virii!
On a more serious note, this is indeed stupid. Perhaps racist and hate speech is wrong, however, everyone's entitled to their opinion. What's next? Book burning?
Harry Potter, burn 'em all, they promote witchcraft. Get rid of those copies of The Charge of the Light Brigade. Man, if that doesn't promote violence, I don't know what does. Don't get me started on Tolkien..
Sounds ridiculous, eh? Not so much. If someone wants to believe something they read, whether that be that a certain race is inferior, or that the Nazgul are chasing them down.. Well, shouldn't it be their choice whether or not to believe it?
Banning hate speech from the internet isn't going to make the problem go away. Nor will banning it from being written anywhere else. You could always make it illegal to even speak hate, but in the end, if someone wishes to hate something, be it a person, place, thing, or an entire race, they will.
And there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
Fight now, Europeans, or become slaves to tyranny.
Re:Going too far. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Europeans think that calling for the elimination of a category of people is at least as bad as calling for the murder of one particular person. Racism is simply a call for murder disguised as political speech (just like Bin Laden's ramblings are calls for murder disguised as religious speech).
The French consider this a crime that they call "incitation a la haine raciale" (enticement to racial hatred). I think it's perfectly fine to make that illegal. The Germans (and most of the rest of Europe) suffered from complacency toward hateful speech in the last century. That's why they are careful now. Some Americans suffered from that too, many still do, but they represent 10% of the population (to which you probably do not belong).
If you think freedom of speech exists in the US and not in Europe, then explainto to us why we don't see naked bodies anywhere on American network TV (unlike in Europe). Explain to me why the government can't stop me from calling for the murder of people of one particular color, but Microsoft can stop me from publishing benchmarks of their SQL server, and my ISP can regulate what I can put on my web page.
Freedom of speech in the US (as well as privacy) is an illusion: money and corporate greed have almost total control over what can be said and done. The government can't stop me from speaking, but the corporate world controls our lives.
The US government does NOTHING to help me protect my freedom of speech or my privacy. European governments actually protect the privacy and the freedom of speech of their citizens to a much larger extent (and I have lived on both sides of the pond).
- Anonicous Moward
Re:Free speech? There's a difference. (Score:3, Interesting)
Criminalizing is not the answer. As pointed out by others, it's a short step from "hate speech" to "politically unpopular speech". And it's a short step to the Ministry of Information, making sure no one is thinking bad thoughts.
Information and speech must remain free. There is a price, but the price is worth it. Killing people, defacing cemetaries, threatening people, and the like are all already illegal. We must be vigilant in their enforcement, and make sure they know that their behavior is not acceptable. But the next step after banning their speech is banning speech you don't find offensive (but someone else does), and the next thing you know, it's your speech that is censored.
Information and propeganda have been used as a political tool for millennia. We must not fall into the same trap again. We must keep this tool out of the hands of those who would use it to control us. Though you may agree with them now, governments are not looking out for your best interest. Their power must be kept in check, and one major way this is done is with freedom of information, and freedom of speech.
--Bob
Re:Free speech? There's a difference. (Score:3, Interesting)
You keep saying that. Have AOL, Microsoft, and Apple taught you nothing? People don't want hard. They want easy! They don't want freedom, self-sufficiency, and responsibility for one's own actions. They want a benevolent government grandfather who will take care of them and put their kids through school and keep the thugs off their streets. But woe to the person who raises the ire of this government. It's spare the rod and spoil the child. That's the price you pay for an advanced, "progressive" society, I guess.
Frickin' EUian elitists. Oh wait, that's hate speech! Lock me up!
Re:Going too far. (Score:3, Interesting)
Also a lot of the time those who advocate such censorship advocate it in highly selective ways. e.g. "racist speach" is ok if the speaker has dark skin, "sexist speach" is ok so long as the speaker has 2 X chromosones, "religious intolerance" is ok if the speaker is the "right" kind of Jew/Christian or Moslem.
I believe that if the facts are presented clearly and forcefully to the average Joe/Jane, he/she will choose the right way. So, if there's racist speech out there, counter it through speech of your own. Don't force your opponents to shut up; speak more loudly and more clearly than they.
But you can only do this where there is unrestricted free speach.
Restrictions can easily be used to protect all sorts of bigoted speach. Since then an opposition or questioning can be silenced...
Re:Reflections of Hate Speech and Legislation (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free speech? There's a difference. (Score:2, Interesting)
First, you can buy and study "Mein Kampf" in Germany, if you would like to do so. There is no ban and burning of that book.
Second, it is known that most Nazis, who willingly accepted any of Hitler and Goebbel's propaganda hate speech to be reasonable, never even bothered to read the book. They hated the Jews before Hitler even told them to do so. All they got in Hitler was someone, who allowed them to act upon their hidden hate thoughts legally.
What you don't see is that people have hate feelings and hate thoughts no matter what. How well you let those thoughts out in the open via hate speech is dependent how much freedom you give people to act upon their hate thoughts. And that freedom to act upon one's hate thoughts is dependent on how much public hate propaganda you are going to tolerate.
There are two sayings:
First saying: "Deine Gedanken sind frei" (Your thoughts are free) -
note: the freedom of thought is absolute, but it doesn't equate automatically that your freedom of speech is absolute as well.)
Second saying:"If it can't be abused, it's not freedom".
Guess what, if you can use your freedom to destroy freedom, then there is unfortunately no freedom left, rather sooner than later. There is no proof or guarantee that the ones, who use freedom to destroy freedom, are always counterbalanced by those, who use freedom to protect freedom. Usually it has been a struggle of epic proportions since existence of mankin. What the majority of people end up doing is deliberately limit their freedom to destroy freedom, and consciously using their freedom to maximize freedom to the extent that it can't be used to destroy it. I guess that's why we have laws.
So, bottom line, saying number one is absolutely true and saying two is a logic fallacy.
Wrongheaded. (Score:3, Interesting)
The perfect example of this is the march that Klansmen and Aryan Nation type white supremacists were supposed to have in Washington, D.C. a couple years ago. A white supremacist leader called for a public protest and march in D.C., to show the country that they could do the same thing black people did in the Million Man March and such. It got a lot of newspaper and newscast coverage for weeks before the event; he got on TV, calling for all white people to come join him in a show of strength against the "niggers" and Jews who have "taken over" the government. He got so much publicity, that he expected thousands of people to show up from all over the country. The D.C. police even hired extra workers from nearby police departments to come in that day to help keep the peace between these thousands of white supremacists and the people who would show up againts them.
Guess what? Less than 20 people came to this "demonstration," most of whom were this guy's friends. Nobody came. Despite coverage for weeks ahead of time of this white supremacist leader calling for all white people with his ideas to show up that day, nobody came. In contrast, there were far more peple who showed up to protest *against* the white supremacist march, than the under 20 who showed up for it. In the end, the guys who showed up left very soon after they got there, realizing that they just looked stupid and made people realize that so few people have these racist views.
The lesson there is that giving these morons enough rope to hang themselves publicly does more to discourage their racism than banning it ever would. Things grow in the underground. Things are given a mystiue and aura which draws people to them, when they are verboten. Pick up any rock and you'll find all sorts of nasty little creatures congregating in the darkness. Yet expose the same patch of ground to the penetrating sunlight, and nothing dares linger there, knowing it will be exposed and vulnerable.
This is how the white supremacist groups were driven out of public view in the U.S.--not by censorship, but by letting them make fools of themselves in public. In the 1980s and early 1990s, we had some very boisterous and exploitive talk shows in this country--Geraldo, Sally Jessy, Donahue, etc. Some of the shows still exist, but they have toned themselves down over the years and become more "respectble," not trying to shock as much as they used to. But back then, white supremacists, Klansmen and Aryan Nations skinheads would be on these shows about every week. Some of the shows would have them "confronted" by strong blacks or jews--and some broke out in violence on the stage, like the famous show where Geraldo Rivera got his nose broken.
Now, the upshot of all this open coverage is that people saw these white supremacists for what they truly were--ignorant, inbred, uneducated fools. They were laughed at and scorned, and used for entertainment as we mocked them in public on these talk shows. None of them ever had a good reason for their beliefs, and almost all of them were buffoons. After that, who would want to join them? Who would want to be mocked and scorned as they were? No one. And so, all the coverage they got worked against them. Klan membership fell. Aryan Nations membership fell. And except for occasional rallies in very uneducated redneck backwaters, and very occasional people who come on talk shows and get ridiculed in public, none of these groups ever shows itself in public any more.
There are still racially motivated killings here, like the black man who was dragge behind a truck in Texas a couple years ago. But they are much more rare then they were in the 1970s and 1980s, before we started ridiculing racists in public with their own words. And we can never completely eliminate hate and the crimes that come from it--it is as impossible as eliminating murder, rape, or any crime. But we have a much smaller problem with it than people in Germany do, where such ideas and speech is hidden away and given a mystique it does not deserve.
You see, in the U.S. I can go into any bookstore and buy a copy of *Mein Kampf*. I own a copy myself, not because I am a racist, but because I wantd to know how evil and foolish Hitler really was, from his own words. And yet, we have no great swell of neo-Nazism--because we expose neo-Nazis publicly for the fools they are. In the late 80s there was an upswing in neo-Nazi organizations in the U.S. The cure was letting them make fools of themselves in public on those talk shows I mentioned, and ever since they have no longer been growing in percentage. They are seen by almost everyone as uneducated idiots.
Germany has done the opposite, which is why they have a real danger today from neo-Nazis. You drive them underground instead of exposing them, which gives them power. It has an allure for some German young people, like a secret fraternity would. Some are interested only because of this mystique, this forbiddenness, and that draws them in. As you know, many teenagers will do something only because they're told not to. These groups also provide friendships and togetherness that is attractive to young people. But if you exposed them in public like we did and do in the U.S., they would not be attractive. Who would want friendship and togetherness with people who are made fun of and ridiculed and thought stupid and laughed at? Instead of mocking them, you fear them. That is why they have strength in Germany and France, but not in the U.S. The Klan used to be in the U.S. just like the Nazis in Germany--but while Germany faces increasing neo-Nazism, the U.S. does not face increasing Klan membership. The difference, once again, is that we expose it to the light of truth, while Germany hides it under a dark rock and allows it to grow.
Also, Germany is foolish for allowing so many immigrants to work there while there's so much unemployment. It is a recipe for disaster when you have so many Turks and other non-citizens (some are citizens, but most are not) working while so many citizens go unemployed. This immigration is allowed in Germany to please the rich, who would rather import skilled foreigners than invest in teaching skills to German youth. That is deplorable, and that feeds the fascism which seems to be the only faction truly devoted to keeping German jobs and German money for Germans. If Germany were to stop allowing so much immigration, and force employers to train young Germans to be skilled workers at a living wage instead of importing foreigners to work at a lesser wage, then that would take much of the force out of neo-Nazism. In a way, I can't blame many of the young people who are seduced by neo-Nazism in Germany and to some extent France--their own governments do not care enough about them to protect their jobs from lower-waged foreigners, so naturally they come to resent those foreigners. The U.S. allows even more immigration, but the difference is that even now in our recession, we don't have such high unemployment rates as you do in Germany and some other countries in the area. If your governments do not wake up and take care of your citizens and giving them the opportunity to work instead of importing cheaper foreign labor, you deserve the backlash you're getting. The foreigners don't deserve the hate crimes, but your governments do deserve the threat to their survival, since they are catering to the wealthy business owners and the foreign immigrants instead of to the average citizens.
Food for thought.