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EU Moving to Ban Online Hate Speech
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Apr 25, 2007 04:44 PM
from the slippery-slopes dept.
from the slippery-slopes dept.
WED Fan writes "Several members of the EU Parliament are moving to ban online hate speech. 'The draft of the declaration, which heise online has seen, calls on providers in somewhat vague language to make provisions against "hate pages" part of their standard terms and conditions.'"
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Your Rights Online: EU Views Net Censorship As a "Trade Barrier" 245 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The European Parliament just passed a proposal to treat internet censorship as a trade barrier, in particular the 'Great Firewall of China.' If passed by the European Council, the issue would be raised in trade negotiations and could lead to economic sanctions and trade restrictions for those countries unwilling to remove oppressive Net censorship." We have discussed some of the ways in which the EU, and its member countries, engage in their own brand of censorship.
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Yeah, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Informative)
For example, consider the Alien and Sedition acts, passed by the Fifth congress (1798) under the direction of John Adams. The Federalists at that time were trying to consolidate their hold on the government. The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, as part of a Federalist blitz to prepare to defend the United States from French attack. Never mind the fact that France currently busy invading Europe, making an attack on the US unlikely. The Federalists were fearful of foreign subversion by French and Irish immigrants, especially since both groups were active in the Jeffersonian party, the Federalists opposition. To counter this threat, the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Part of the A&S acts, the Sedition Act, "made it a crime to publish 'false, scandalous, and malicious writing' against the government or its officials." (Wikipedia: Alien and Sedition Acts). Publishing such offensive information against the government would lead to fines and imprisonment. This act was used to stifle the Jeffersonian opposition, and lead to the imprisonment of several key Jeffersonian printers, such as David Brown.
Fortunately, all of the A&S acts, except the Alien Enemies Act, were repealed. However, the fact is that the constitution was blatantly violated for the reason of protecting the nation from the dangerous French subversives.
The scary part is, our congress and president are now casting similar laws (*cough*Patriot Act*cough), to protect us from dangerous Islamic terrorists.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But our new step daddy is out to take care of that.
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:4, Informative)
Europe has similar protections. They're enacted differently, but the end efect is the same. If a State or the Federal Government tried to enact similar legislation in the USA, my understanding is the constitutionality could be challenged in court; if it's enacted in Europe its compliance with human rights treaties can be challenged in court.
As the saying goes, "There's more than one way to do it".
Parent
Slipperly slope? This is a pit of misery. (Score:3, Funny)
I'd just like to say that I HATE the EU for doing this.
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or expressions of religious belief?
This is little more than a thinly veiled attempt by the EU to outlaw religion (both Muslim and Christian religions believe homosexuality to be immoral; the reasoning goes that even condeming immoral behavior (as opposed to people)is sufficient to trigger the statute.
IIRC, a similar law has been passed in the Netherlands, with pastors being warned that there are certain sins they are no longer allowed to mention in public.
Even if you are an atheist, the premise is troubling. I would be likewise disturbed if questioning the existence of God was made illegal - certainly this development is not going to expand and enlighten public discourse on sensitive subjects.
Truly a troubling development.
Parent
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Informative)
Or expressions of religious belief?
This is little more than a thinly veiled attempt by the EU to outlaw religion (both Muslim and Christian religions believe homosexuality to be immoral; the reasoning goes that even condeming immoral behavior (as opposed to people)is sufficient to trigger the statute.
Not that the Socialists would be above it, as a matter of fact any political or other group, left or right, has enemies it would sometimes like to silence.
IIRC, a similar law has been passed in the Netherlands, with pastors being warned that there are certain sins they are no longer allowed to mention in public.
Even if you are an atheist, the premise is troubling. I would be likewise disturbed if questioning the existence of God was made illegal - certainly this development is not going to expand and enlighten public discourse on sensitive subjects.
Truly a troubling development.
Europe is a continent with many very different cultures that have fought bitterly in a not so distant past, just take the troubles in the Balkan.
It does not take much imagination to see new flare ups of extremely damaging violence in parts of Europe when certain scrupulous groups and individuals would not be constrained.
It is regrettable this type of legislation is needed but in countries that have had this legislation for many years the advantages have generally outweighed the worries.
Parent
I LOL'ed (Score:5, Insightful)
How many years has the US *not* been at war? 10-20, in it's entire history, maybe?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If by religion you mean "a personal relationship with one's creator", I don't think any law against hate speech is going to have a negative effect on people of faith. Most of the faithful Christians, Jews and Muslims I have encountered seem to be able
we need REAL tolerance (Score:5, Insightful)
This law will become the equivelent of the UnAmerican Activites Committee. Welcome to the Witch Hunt.
Parent
Re:we need REAL tolerance (Score:4, Interesting)
So what? Your church doesn't hold with Leviticus 20:13 then?
Or maybe your church just throws out the entire old testament?
If so then can I join? I always felt that the old testament was contrary to the christian spirit... (Kings 2:24 for example, the bit about the bears slaughtering children, the list just goes on and on).
Parent
Re:we need REAL tolerance (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not a Christian, nor am I the poster of the GP.
However.... Christian tradition and even the writings of Paul are horribly conflicted over the place of Leviticus in Christianity. On one hand, you have Paul condemning homosexuals by inventing words based on Leviticus 20:13 (and thus inherently citing Leviticus as moral authority). A certain portion of Christians side with Paul on this matter. On the other hand, you have Paul suggesting that the Law (presumably including Leviticus) is not the judge of things and a certain portion of Chistians side with Paul on this issue. Those of us who while not ignorant of Christian doctrine are not Christians ourselves look on with amusement.
The problem is not only that those ideas are mutually exclusive, but also that Leviticus equally condemns wearing clothing made from two different kinds of material, plowing the corners of a field, trimming the corners of one's beard, and breeding mules. While one can cite Christian tradition to get out of eating kosher, the only way out of these other prohibitions is to side with the idea that the Law (including Leviticus) does not bind Christians. In doing so, you reject Leviticus 20:13.
I suppsose that Christians reading this who believe in Leviticus will find that Cotton/Acrylic shirt feeling slightly uncomfortable now..... But most of these CHristians are beard-shavers anyway...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is already the case. French right-wing politician Jean-Marie Lepen once publicly declared that the Nazi gas chambers were a detail of history (which, however horrible, they technically are, since history concerns much more than 3 years in some spots of Germany and Poland). Mr. Lepen was sued in court and condemned for having said that.
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many political parties in europe are banned, which I think is a travesty.
I can't talk for all those parties and all members of the EU, but here in Germany a party is going to get banned when it doesn't accept the democratic basis of the country's society.
Why should a democracy allow and even support a group with the declared aim to destroy that democracy?
You shouldn't assume that parties get banned lightly.
A lot of people call for banning two right-winged (and I mean _right-winged_, not just 'very conservative') parties here in Germany. But because they don't openly talk against democracy and because their actions stay within the limits of the law, they are free to do their political work.
Every freedom hast limits and has to have limits.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you actually *that* brainwashed?
Because maybe there is possibly a better form of government than a democracy? Or, more clearer, a more pure, direct form of democracy than the present government?
I'm a minority. Sort of. Rather, I'm perceived as a minority. I'm half "Asian." I live in the US, where hate speech is generally not prohibited. The best thing about free speech, in my view, is that it he
Re:it's "speech," dammit! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Le_Pen [wikipedia.org]
"Jean-Marie Le Pen (born June 20, 1928, La Trinité-sur-Mer, France) is a French far-right nationalist politician, founder and president of the Front National (National Front) party."
"He has been charged with Holocaust denial several times, and has unsuccessfully sued some who had accused him of this."
right wing i would think gwb et al, This guys more reminiscent of the KKK I guess by your
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Hate speech" is just a label placed on a subset of what some politicians don't like. Since politics differ from country to country, the meaning changes along with the politicians. In Canada, publicly disparaging Muslims or homosexuals without a list of references is "hate speech". In some European countries, claiming the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is less than six million is "hate speech". The US has a some
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
What is Hate Speech? (Score:4, Insightful)
Governments vs the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the beginning of a slippery slope that ends up where web pages, emails, documents, or speech that is anti-establishment becomes illegal as well. It's important to set precident with the less-obvious things early on so this slope is avoided altogether.
Hate speech banned eh? how much do you bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
But here's the proof, imho : in the US, where you can pretty much say any old darn thing short of direct calls to violence, neo-nazi, KKKs and other white supremacist groups exist, express themselves (much to the dismay of the local populace around them) and... they look like a small group of retards. On the other hand, in Europe, where you can't say something even remotely critical of the jews, and where naziism has become taboo to the point where it's not even possible to discuss the official head count of the holocaust without landing in the pokey, antisemitism, racism and extreme-right groups are growing at an alarming rate. Why? because these people stay hidden, embedded in the general population, by force of law, instead of coming out and showing themselves as the numbskulls they are like in the US.
So in short, banning hate speech will do nothing but promote hate. Well done EEC, some insight...
Re:Hate speech banned eh? how much do you bet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Euope vs. US Hate Comparisons unfair (Score:4, Insightful)
With Napoleon's conquests, the idea of people as citizens took hold, but it was culturally foreign, and integration never happened. Combine this with relatively small areas with different languages and religions, and you have homogenous countries that have been reared to hate the other because one was often at war with them.
Indeed, the initial efforts of the Nazi's were not the extermination of the Jews (although that was the end goal, they took stages), the first effort was to separate the assimilated Jews out of German culture, restoring their status as "others" to be distrusted by the people. Before they rounded my ancestors up into camps, they prohibited inter-marriage, and forced them to be separated from the culture. This was an important first step, because in Germany, the Jews were highly assimilated into the local culture, indeed the Reform movement was born in Germany setting the goal to assimilate, which is why so much of Reform cantorials and other German Jewish customs are borrowed from Lutheran protestant Curches through the assimilation there. In order to rile the people of Germany up against them, they needed to draw a line between Germans and Jews, which naturally made Jews the enemies and ripe for being attacked.
Europe's problems of racism and xenophobia stem from a culture of being at was with other groups and having them nearby. In contrast, in the United States, the former Slave and Jim Crow states, which have had a much shorter history of integration, suffer from more severe attitudes towards different races. It's not that racism and persecution doesn't exist in former Union States (it does, and may often be more severe), but the portion of the populace that would support race based laws is more minor.
I don't think that one can simply point to the US's First Amendment and Europe's post-War speech regulations and attempt to show that the latter causes growth of neo-nazism and the former stops it. I think that we have yet to see Europe get 3 generations from killing people for being "other" and Americans outside of the deep south haven't fought over the matter in 150 years and even in the deep south the civil rights movement was accomplished with relatively minor violence. Sure their were showdowns over integration of schools, but no pogroms. Even the worst abuses of people by the KKK pale in comparison to the European's behaviors, including wars over churches, kidnapping Jewish children if someone claimed the child was baptized, prohibitions of land ownership, etc.
There is a massive cultural gap between the US and Europe in these regards, the Europe's cultural elites are so removed from it they don't understand it. While the gulf is smaller in the US, our elites understand it enough to make fun of those that hate others, which is probably better than ignoring it... call someone an idiot or wrong, they fight back, just mock them, and they get embarrassed...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So Fred Phelps thinks that God hates fags? Fuck him. Let him say what he wants. Let more enlightened Christians point out his doctrinal shortcomings, and let the general public ridicule him.
So David Irving wants to sue against claims that
Anything that removes the liberties of thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually - and we should NEVER forget, it was 5.7 million Jews, and about 13.5 million Europeans in Total. The holocaust was truly awful, but it is still only a part of the true evil that Germany protracted in the 1930's and 1940's. (you can add in another 10 million if you want to include the American, and Pacific related deaths which Germany is either directly or indirectly responsible for)
Having spent some time li
Prohibition doesn't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Alcohol
Drugs
Guns
Bad speech/thoughts
All attempts to enforce prohibition result in oppressive government, reduced civil liberties for all, and greater dissemination of the originally prohibited contraband.
Re:Prohibition doesn't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone actually does you harm, by all means call them a criminal.
If the actions of someone hurt your feelings, gross you out, strike you as immoral, or irrationally frighten you: get over it, ignore them, and mind your own business.
Parent
I think you can pretty clearly define hate speech (Score:4, Insightful)
To me hate speech is a severe form of slander and libel which is pushed upon one entire ethnic group or race. I think laws for hate speech are possible as long as you put strict requirements on it. Should I be able to walk down the street and call you a N*****? Legally, yes I should be able to. Should I be able to create a book detailing with no real scientific proof, that african americans are an inferior race of stupid people who should be shot an hanged on site for merely existing? Absolutely not. To me it's an extention of the same slander and libel laws. I could walk down the street and call you an asshole if you cut me off, but if I cook up some lies and speak about them publically or write an article on the web about you just to damage your reputation and make it harder for you to keep or find a job, then that should be illegal.
No society is absolute. Americans hold up the constitution as the ultimate black and white definition of what should and should not happen, but as time marches on, people evolve and grow ever more savvy about how to game the system.
And to those who think that the hate speech would evolve into squashing all free speech are offering up a red herring. Libel and slander as they are now are laws that limit your freedom to speak your mind, because in those cases you are hurting someone else. Same with yelling fire in a crowded theater. Freedom of political and social speech can been preserved just fine. Free speech is not a simple black or white philosophy and we forget exceptions and how we frame them when look at the freedom of speech.
The EU countries already have bans on hate speech, as does Canada and probably others. Different countries deal with different problems differently, and the US, while it has a strong protection of freedom of speech, also has problems with evil reactionary groups who are allowed to exist and spread what I consider the most evil of lies under the banner of free speech. I don't see the EU collapsing now because they crack down on hatemongers and I don't see it happening any time soon either.
Re:I think you can pretty clearly define hate spee (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Absolutely. End of story.
Parent
Re:I think you can pretty clearly define hate spee (Score:5, Informative)
We already have laws for the things you are talking about, involving things like inciting violence.
How often have you heard about a case where someone caused actual harm to anyone, that went unprosecuted, that would have been a violation of your vision of a hate speech law?
Parent
Re:I think you can pretty clearly define hate spee (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I think you can pretty clearly define hate spee (Score:5, Insightful)
So you can define hate speech.
And we could probably agree on what is acceptable and not.
But, the effect of an a priori prohibition speech based on its content damages society as a whole.
The battle over free speech isn't merely about public statements. It is also a battle over how best to address the problem of troubled individuals, who, while not criminal (yet), exhibit pathological tendencies. Without freedom of speech, we would have to wonder if everyone was out to get us. With freedom of speech, I have a reasonable assurance that I'm on good terms with others because they are free to let me know if they hate me or love me, or are merely indifferent. Hence, our collective sense of security and civil stability is very much tied to our freedom of speech.
Parent
Hate speech (Score:4, Funny)
Rights disappear whenever people stop using them. So I suggest we let go on the hate speech in this specific thread and have a hateful conversation (you fucking nerdy retards)
Why this is a problem ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, freedom to choose is the freedom to make bad decisions; there is no controversy in making good decisions.
here's a thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Suppression of speech produces people like Hitler; free speech produces people like David Duke.
Not allowing speech that is hateful just drives it underground where such ideology can fester. I would much prefer to let people blow off their steam in freely and in a controlled manner where everyone can see who they are. I have never understood this presumed right to not be offended. I know that hearing hearing a racial slur can be quite painful (having endured a couple in the last few years) but do these people really think they are going to stop racism by banning some expression of that racism. All it will do is lull the target race into thinking everything is okay when in reality the hate is still there, just hidden. This is a bad idea, it is.
Anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Austin, Texas. Texas is a conservative state, and Austin is a liberal city that also happens to be the capitol of our state. The means that groups from across the state congregate here to protest, rally, and so on. Well, about a year ago, the Ku Klux Klan of Texas decided to hold a rally in front of our city hall. For weeks beforehand, there was debate over whether the city was right to grant a permit for the rally to the KKK. They decided to in the end. And what happened?
Maybe ten Klan members showed up. Maybe. They were greeted by something close to a thousand protesters as cops watched on in riot gear. There was no altercation, it was just made clear for the crowd, the media, and the people at home that the Klan was exactly how they perceived it: a group of ugly, not-so-bright rednecks that is very few in number.
The lesson? Let these people expose themselves for who they are, the population's mean attitude towards such things has shifted to the point where even ultraconservatives find groups like the Klan repugnant, and they'll only diminish the popularity of their cause. If the rally had been suppressed, it would have only served to reinforce the perception that Klan members [and whites in general] are being persecuted, and groups like this operate by convincing economically disadvantaged people that they are being persecuted.
The solution to hate speech is to not listen. An even better solution is to listen and laugh.
Stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway one mans hate speech is another's fight for freedom.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-jcr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He wasn't fired because he wasn't bringing money in. On the contrary, the case actually boosted the amount of coverage he was getting. I'd never even heard of the fella until that all blew up. He was fired because he exercised his 'freedom of speech' and society determined that doing so in the way he did was unacceptable. Ma
Re:Godwinning this Topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Societal disapproval is not the same as illegal.
Parent
Re:Godwinning this Topic (Score:5, Insightful)
No contest. The one where you can actually end up in jail for something you've said.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sound familiar?