I'll echo again, what do you or anyone arguing for criminalizing of speech really want? Because forget people I don't like criminalizing my free speech. Forget the government criminalizing my free speech. I wouldn't trust my closest friends to criminalize free speech. I wouldn't trust myself to criminalize free speech. So what do you want criminalized? You seem to have a faith in the government bordering on the religious, from my perspective, if you are willing to seed to them the ability to regulate speech that they find detestable. I am truly at a loss.
OK, let's start with some basic legal principles. There is criminal law, breach of which is a criminal offence. There is civil law, which regulates behaviour between private citizens - contract, tort, and so on, and which is enforced through court rulings and compensation payable by the losing party to the winning party. And there is public/administrative law, which is how actions taken by governmental authorities are regulated by the courts ruling whether government action is lawful or not and where it is not ordering the government to put the matter right and using contempt of court if the government does not comply with a court order.
All of which means: free speech can be regulated without criminalising it. The laws of slander and libel are restrictions on free speech but are not criminal but civil: a dispute between private citizens which is settled by the court ordering the slander or libel not to be repeated and granting compensation. And government regulation of free speech is a public law matter: if the government regulation goes beyond what is constitutionally permissible the court will order the end of that action, but no-one need be criminalised by it.
So nowhere have I suggested criminalising free speech. Perhaps you leap straight to "criminalising" because you do not understand that there are legal methods other than criminalisation which can be used? And perhaps you have not noticed that my (so far very general) suggestions would not limit the free speech of individuals but could require broadcast media and social media to act in better ways than they currently do. As an example, here is an excerpt from purposes of the BBC as set out in their Charter -
"To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them: the BBC should provide duly accurate and
impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens."
Also, I don't necessarily have faith in government, I do have faith in the courts, without which democracy is completely lost to us. Which is why I think the appointment of judges needs to be taken so seriously, and why I think Trump's extreme politicisation of the appointment of judges in the USA is a worrying development, and much prefer the non-political systems of appointing judges we have here in the UK.
I think a couple of things are happening here. One, I may have misused the term criminalizing from a legal sense. I freely admit I am not a legal scholar, so if the term is incorrect, my bad. However, I feel your discussion on different laws serves the purpose, intentionally or not, of obfuscating the point. Administrative law is really not the point. The point is, there are two things civil things about disputes between citizens and then what the government can or can't do as law. Criminalizing might not be the correct word, but whatever it is, I'm concerned with the government passing laws regulating people, not as much on what the branch of law that regulates what they can do is called. That's why the constitutionally protected items are so cool. They say the government can't do this. Whether the appropriate term is criminalizing it, making it illegal, etc...whether it's enforceable by imprisonment or fines, the government is still making a law to punish something to prevent it from happening and the constitution prevents it from happening. That's the frame of reference I'm talking about. I'm talking about what is right and wrong for the government to do. Also, the OP was originally talking about one person putting up one ad, so I don't think it's unfair to assume the general topic of conversation is about the regulation of one person's free speech. If you find the government regulation of a single person's free speech as abhorrent, then great, you're part of the club, let's have a party :). If not, we have extreme disagreement.
So back to my what do you want question. I'll ask as to what your plans would be for the government to place restrictions on social media and broadcast. How would bad speech be determined? Who would get to make the decisions? You say you don't have faith in the government but do in the courts. That's great, I guess, but I don't have faith in any of it or any one when it comes to making decisions on a gradient here, which is really what we're talking about. I have a little faith/hope that the courts can get it right when it's black and white - that the government can't regulate free speech. At least with that, we have something we can point to - a line in the sand. Without that, we are, by definition, grading what speech is acceptable on a completely debatable curve, and it's not simply don't touch it. Don't touch it - safe. Let's see what we think might be bad or might not be bad....yeah, that's a government of horrors there.
How do you feel about Charles Manson's imprisonment?
In trial, it came out that Charles Manson didn't directly tell anyone to commit a murder. Charles Manson was convicted of murders that he was physically not present for entirely because of his speech and ideas. Should he have been in jail for those murders?
Interesting question. I had not heard or studied much about Manson before you mentioned it. I did not find what you said that it was definitive that Manson didn't directly tell anyone to commit murder. Even if that is the case, I would say that he still could have been tried for abetting the murders from the very rudimentary look I took at that. I didn't put a lot of study into it, so that's off the cuff.
So back to my what do you want question. I'll ask as to what your plans would be for the government to place restrictions on social media and broadcast. How would bad speech be determined? Who would get to make the decisions? You say you don't have faith in the government but do in the courts. That's great, I guess, but I don't have faith in any of it or any one when it comes to making decisions on a gradient here, which is really what we're talking about. I have a little faith/hope that the courts can get it right when it's black and white - that the government can't regulate free speech. At least with that, we have something we can point to - a line in the sand. Without that, we are, by definition, grading what speech is acceptable on a completely debatable curve, and it's not simply don't touch it. Don't touch it - safe. Let's see what we think might be bad or might not be bad....yeah, that's a government of horrors there.
I'm not the government and I'm not a political party and so I don't have any plans. If any plans were to be made by a government the process would go something like -
1. Career civil servants further refine and identify the problem they are set by their political masters, using academic research, political and legal inputs and public soundings, and develop a range of possible responses from "do nothing" to "legislate"
2. If the political masters are happy, an initial public consulation ensues.
3. If the results of the public consultation are positive then further work identifies the preferred response and works up in detail what would be involved.
4. There is a public consultation on the specific proposal.
5. If the public consultation goes well and indicates legislative change then legislation is drafted, presented to the legislature and passed with or without amendments.
6. Civil servants then put in place the work necessary to implement the legislation, monitor its effects, respond to any litigation which results and consider whether any change is necessary to the legislation.
I'm not going to go further down this policy route in a blog post than say "it looks as though there is an issue here which needs study as to whether there are improvements which can be made to the current position, possibly including legislation."
Your position is that this is a case of individual rights concerning only the child who created the advertisement. My point is that the advertisement was published on an unregulated internet site: one can regulate the internet site without criminalising the child. Do you regulate the individual or the publisher? Which is better? Should the constitution give rights to companies as well as individuals? Is a classified ads site on the internet part of the "free press" and if so who should be responsible for its editorial content? I don't know: there are pros and cons all around which is where the long policy process above comes in.
First, I'll clarify because I can see how it would seem that way, but I'm not saying the child shouldn't be charged with a crime. It seems like it could very well be harassment, so I am not defending him. I was just saying that because it started out talking about him, I felt that we were talking about individual free speech rights more.
You, of course, don't have to go any further down a policy discussion than you want to. However, I wasn't as interested in the procedure as who you would like to be the one for whom the buck stops. Who makes the final call that free speech is too dangerous to be allowed? I'm not getting a whole lot of specifics from your proposal except, I guess, congress passing a law about it after study? So, to me, the answer then is congress ultimately, because we know people can and will get whatever data they want however they want it and use it to justify what they would like. Would any of my liberal friends really like for the recent previous Republican majority House, Senate, and President deciding what speech should or should not be allowed? I'm still somewhat conservative and I sure as heck would not. If any liberal/progressive people on here who is against my arguments on this thread so far would like to answer this question, I'd love to hear it.
I guess overall, I'm just having to revise my worldview on things :-). When I was a younger very conservative/Republican fellow, I was much more pro-government control. I was pro-Patriot act, pro criminalizing flag burning, etc. My liberal friends argued from a less government control standpoint. As I became more Libertarian in viewpoint and began to look at liberal ideas with more favor, one of the first ones that made sense to me was that I was on the wrong side on freedom of expression. My anti-flag burning misplaced patriotism was successfully argued against by some smart liberal friends. It lead me to see things much more in terms of not wanting the government to restrict free speech. I mean, shoot, the ACLU defended KKK people's right to protest. I began to think, man, liberals are right about free speech, maybe they're right about other things. And now, the majority of the liberals on this board are challenging my first foray into looking at liberals as having some sense :-) by not being the staunch protectors of free speech that I felt they were. It's kind of disheartening, I guess....
