Category Archives: Free Speech

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1. Zuckerberg on Chinese censorship: Is that the internet we want?

The Facebook CEO spoke yesterday at Georgetown University, sharing his thoughts on speech and how we might address the challenges that more voice and the internet introduce, and the major threats to free expression around the world.

Among his arguments: China is exporting its social values, political ads are an important part of free expression and the definition of dangerous speech must be kept in check.

2. Atlassian acquires Code Barrel, makers of Automation for Jira

Sydney-based Code Barrel was founded by two of the first engineers who built Jira at Atlassian, Nick Menere and Andreas Knecht. With this acquisition, they are returning to Atlassian after four years in startup land.

3. Swarm gets green light from FCC for its 150-satellite constellation

Swarm Technologies aims to connect smart devices around the world with a low-bandwidth but ever-present network provided by satellites and it just got approval from the FCC to do so. Apparently the agency is no longer worried that Swarms sandwich-sized satellites are too small to be tracked.

4. Nintendo Switch hits another sales milestone

Nintendos North American Switch unit sales have already surpassed the lifetime worldwide unit sales of the Wii U. The company announced Thursday that they had sold 15 million units of the popular handheld console in North America.

5. HBO Max scores all 21 Studio Ghibli films

WarnerMedia has been on a shopping spree for its HBO Max service. It bought the rights to Friends and The Big Bang Theory, and now its using its outsized checkbook to bring beloved Japanese animation group Studio Ghiblis films onto the web exclusively on its platform for U.S. subscribers.

6. Volvo creates a dedicated business for autonomous industrial and commercial transport

The vehicle-maker has already been active in putting autonomous technology to work in various industries, with self-driving projects at quarries and mines, and in the busy port located at Gothenburg, Sweden.

7. How Unity built the worlds most popular game engine

Unitys growth is a case study of Clayton Christensens theory of disruptive innovation. While other game engines targeted the big AAA game makers at the top of the console and PC markets, Unity went after independent developers with a less robust product that was better suited to their needs and budget. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Daily Crunch: Zuckerberg has thoughts on free speech - TechCrunch

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Last week, a Los Angeles jury found not guilty the student activists arrested for heckling Mnuchin during a 2018 talk he gave at UCLA. (AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster)

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In February 2018, Tala Deloria and several other young people at the University of CaliforniaLos Angeles protested against Steve Mnuchin, Trumps very wealthy, more-or-less-openly corrupt Treasury secretary, who was due to speak on campus about the US economy.Ad Policy

Deloria, 24, and her fellow activists hadnt planned on going inside the auditoriumthey wanted to protest Mnuchin outside the event space with other activists. But there were seats available, and at the last minute, Deloria and a few others from the local chapter of Refuse Fascism (part of the Revolutionary Communist Party) decided to go in.

She sat in her seat quietly at first, but she couldnt take hearing Mnuchin talk anymore without being challenged. So Deloria began yelling at Mnuchin about the Trump administrations cutting of social programs and detaining of immigrants. UCLAs police force quickly moved in, picked Deloria up under her arms and legs, and dragged her away. Several others began shouting in her stead. They were arrested too, and brought to a holding room for several hours. UCLA banned the protesters from campus for seven days.

Deloria was surprised by the arrest, but thought it was all over after she was releaseduntil six months later, when Los Angeles prosecutors filed a host of charges against her and her fellow protesters, including trespassing, resisting arrest, and disturbing the peace. Im pretty furious, Deloria said recently in an interview. Not only because of what happened to me, but because this is part of bludgeoning the right to protest and the right to speak out.

Last week, a Los Angeles jury found all defendants not guilty. But the fact that UCLA arrested the demonstrators and cooperated with prosecutors who pressed charges against them for peacefully disrupting an event may foretell a grim future for campus politics. Theres no official tally, but this appears to be one of the first instances in which protesters on a college campus were charged for nonviolent, nonthreatening behavior that involved no property destruction or violence but only a simple heated exchange of words. Im angry because the university is at the helm of this, Deloria said. Its gonna affect me, but its also gonna put a chill on speech across the US.

Jerry Kang, UCLAs vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion, said that by arresting the protesters, the university was following its lengthy speech and protest policy document, which guarantees a right to speak and protest, but draws the line at disrupting a speaker.

We want serious critique and conversation, but we want persuasion and not coercion, Kang said in a recent interview. We make very clear that we understand and celebrate protest, we understand the need for people to state their case, its just when the protest becomes so disruptive that its essentially an act of force that silences the speaker from reaching a willing audience, that we cant permit that to happen.Current Issue

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Kang said that the school was not involved in recommending that charges be filed, but that he trusts the system that has the court decide what the appropriate punishment should be. There has to be accountability for your actions, he went on. Civil disobedience has a very rich and important tradition in our country. It helps break down laws that are truly unjust, and I want to recognize that we should celebrate civil disobedience, but civil disobedience has always had consequences.

Refuse Fascism members and their supporters, however, point out that UCLA did not simply remove the protesters from the Mnuchin event. It arrested them, cooperated with prosecutors, and granted Mnuchins request to suppress video of the event. The university also delayed the release of documents related to the event, and only after a year of cajoling from free speech groups and a lawsuit from the free speech advocacy group FIRE did UCLA acquiesce to the public records request.

Theyre saying, Look, folks, this is actually a case of free speech, because the free speech rights of Steve Mnuchin were violated, Deloria said. Theyre weaponizing the First Amendment in order to suppress speech.

Dan Kapelovitz, a lawyer for several of the UCLA protesters, said that the charges filed were extraordinarily rare. Usually, in actual disturbing-the-peace cases, like an annoying neighbor playing loud music, they dont file charges, he said. I think the police have it out for this group. Kapelovitz added that the police used excessive force in their arrest, refused to stop interrogating the protesters when they asked for a lawyer, and did not read them their Miranda rights.

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Though the charges against the protesters were ultimately fruitless, UCLAs tough stance against the demonstrators is part of a worrying trend on college campuses: In the name of free speech, colleges and universities, and the governments that fund them, have instituted anti-protest laws that call for the arrest and even expulsion of protesters if they disrupt a speaker.

Over the past three years, the conservative Goldwater Institute has been working to pass variations of model legislation that would prevent schools from disinviting speakers, require the establishment of disciplinary policies for disruptions, and require universities to pay court and legal fees for anyone who is disrupted on campus. The Goldwater Institute has close ties to ALEC, the think tank notorious for pushing through dozens of business-friendly, far-right bills at the local, state, and federal level.

At least 17 states have now passed legislation modeled on the Goldwater Institute bill. And perhaps more troubling is the fact that many colleges and universities are either remaining silent on the new policies or actively instituting them without being asked to by their state governments.

In Wisconsin, for example, where the bill stalled in the state Senate, the University of Wisconsin board of regents nonetheless approved its own Goldwateresque policies that mandate that students who disrupt speakers twice be suspended and those who disrupt three times be expelled. The US House and Senate have also introduced similar bills, which would apply to all public universities and colleges.

The model legislationits a disingenuous use of the term free speech, Risa Lieberwitz, general counsel at the American Association of University Professors, said. Theres a very distinct, very conservative agenda. The problem with the laws, Lieberwitz explained, is that they skew the determination of whose right to express themselves matters: The mission of the university is a public mission, and part of that mission is to protect free speech and the right of students and faculty to engage in vigorous and heated debate. That might be very loud, and some might view it as disruptive, but just because of that, doesnt mean the student should be silenced.

In other words, the laws protect mostly conservative speakers invited to campus without considering the rights of those who protest the speakers.

The laws amount to a conservative-backed bait-and-switchusing the universalist language of the First Amendment to push a one-sided agenda, and limit backlash to that agenda. Its becoming a tried-and-true tactic for the far right. In March, President Trump signed an executive order called Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities that encouraged his administration to cut off funding for any institute of higher learning that doesnt create a safe space for campus speakers. Only a few months later, the administration ordered the University of North Carolina and Duke University to change the content of their courses on Middle East studies to include more positive teachings on Judaism and Christianity, or else risk losing funding from the federal government.

Over the past several years, the nonprofit UnKoch My Campus has collected thousands of pages of documents that show the true intent of these laws and policies prohibiting dissent: they are not meant to increase free speech, but are instead part of a larger strategy to turn higher education into a conservative thought and policy factory. The Koch family now funds programs, professorships, and student groups at over 300 colleges and universities, and many of the free speech organizations, that push for restrictive protest policies.

It remains to be seen how many colleges and universities go along with this conservative agenda. So far, there has been little resistance from administrations over the laws. Given that fact, and also that ostensibly liberal institutions like UCLA have begun to punish student protesters, its likely that restrictive speech codes that lead to disciplinary actions, expulsions, and arrests will become more common across the United States.

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The whole free speech movement is tied to billionaires efforts to teach theories that favor their conservative views and their economic model, Jasmine Banks, the executive director of UnKoch My Campus, said. They want to make sure that theres no dissent to their ideas.

Editors note: This article has been corrected to show that prosecutors, not UCLA, pressed charges against the students, and that the FIRE lawsuit was over various public records but not the video of the event itself.

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Colleges Are Spreading Trump's Disingenuous Notion of 'Free Speech' - The Nation

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Your help is needed, but first, you should know: Yesterday we learned that the SCOTUS justices had, for the third time this month, chosen to postpone for another two weeks a decision on granting (or denying) review in National Review v. Mann. What does this mean?

The vast majority of cert petitions are rejected by the high court immediately, at the time when they are first scheduled to be considered. The fact that our petition has not been declined, that it persists, that it remains ripe for consideration, means, in the calculus of any seasoned high-court observer, that there is clearly some interest in the case among the justices.

Define some. We cant. How about making odds: Does the delay (it looks like the Court will next formally consider the matter in the first week of November) mean that the case will be taken up? Not necessarily. But then, is there reason to see all this as measured good news? Its fair to say: Yes.

Heck: The cert petition could have been denied immediately, as most are. So it is indeed good news that we are still in the fight a fight not of our choosing, but one we intend to engage in with every ounce of institutional energy, every iota of institutional resources. After all, there is an unalienable right being messed with.

Whether SCOTUS takes up the case, or if it proceeds on its current track a jury trial before the very liberal District of Columbia court system the facts remain:

Well over a million dollars have been spent in National Reviews defense since Michael Mann initiated this assault on the First Amendment in 2012 (we wonder: What cabal of liberal moneybags is paying his big tab?). Our insurance pays for much of our defense, but NR has had to pay boatloads of money for costs not covered by the insurer. That burden could be an institutional back-breaker, but as yet it hasnt been, because so many generous people, good people, patriotic Americans folks who abhor the thought that their own right to free speech is being monkeyed with (and is it ever!) have stepped up (nearly 1,300 and counting since we launched this effort last week) to provide NR with real and meaningful financial aid.

Have you helped us out in this matter? If you have, thanks very much (feel free to help some more). The strife persists. Have you yet to help? You are under no obligation to do so, but remember: This fight is not our fight . . . it is OUR fight. NR does not own the First Amendment its yours too. And so should be the fight to protect it.

Help us fight this fight by contributing to our 2019 Fall Webathon. No amount is too small (or big!). If you prefer to fight by check, make yours out to the order of National Review and mail it to National Review, ATTN: 2019 Fall Webathon, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036. Please know we look forward to having you alongside us at the barricade, where we can employ our free-speech right to assure you of our deep appreciation, and the thrill of your camaraderie.

P.S.: Your generous contribution supports the journalism, commentary, and opinion writing published in National Review magazine and on National Review Online. If you prefer to send a check, please mail it to National Review, ATTN: Fall 2019 Webathon, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036.

Please note that contributions to National Review, Inc., while vitally important, are not tax deductible. If you would like to support the NR mission with a tax-deductible contribution, we recommend National Review Institute, the charitable organization founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1991. National Review Institute is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), journalistic think tank, established to advance the conservative principles William F. Buckley Jr. championed, and complement the mission of National Review magazine, including by supporting and promoting NRs best talent. Donations to NRI are explicitly used at NRIs discretion to support NRIs programs. To learn more, please visit http://www.nrinstitute.org.

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Where Our Free-Speech Fight Stands - National Review

The federal government has shown a growing interest in campus speech, taking steps to manage administrative and curricular aspects of the work campuses do. Those mounting efforts to regulate speech at colleges and universities are a threat to academic freedom, and it is time for higher education to push back.

The U.S. Department of Justice, for example, filed a statement of interest last year, backing a lawsuit against the use of bias response team by the University of Michigan. The department agreed with the plaintiffs, Speech First, that the universitys rules probably inhibited free speech.

A federal appeals court also ruled last month that by operating a bias response team, the university might be undermining open expression. In a 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit determined that the powers of the bias response team -- an increasingly common tool used by colleges and universities to address concerns about prejudiced and harassing speech -- objectively chill speech.

In my work on campus free speech, I have raised concerned about bias response teams. Such teams are basically administrative committees that can respond to concerns about bias through voluntary discussions with the parties involved -- and referrals to others if they determine that the conduct in question was against the law or university policy. Administrators can use them to chill speech in ways that are unjustified, and thus create an environment on their campus thats not conducive to open inquiry and effective teaching. That can happen if students and professors constantly have to worry that they might be penalized for their words or ideas.

But the court overreaches in its conclusions, given that no evidence suggests that these voluntary processes are, in fact, chilling speech. The price to speech seems to be low or nonexistent, whereas the gain to the conversation on campuses can be significant, in that more students and faculty members will feel confident in participating and have a way to raise concerns when bias and prejudice limit such participation.

Even more concerning is the Justice Departments interest in the case. Colleges and universities must have the flexibility to deal with matters of conduct without the government looking over their shoulders.

To learn well, students must be exposed to a diverse array of perspectives, and they must do so over time and within a context that supports the expression of dissenting views. The protection of open expression is key to the work that colleges and universities do. So is the protection of a real opportunity for each member of the learning community to try out their views out loud, to consider different perspectives and to share and receive criticism.

Bias response teams can help in the maintenance of a constructive learning environment, depending on how they function. If they are open to students in raising concerns and are built to encourage and mediate a dialogue about those concerns rather than serve as a punitive mechanism, they can contribute to an open atmosphere of research and teaching. The needs of different campuses will be different in this regard, and we will surely make mistakes in the process of establishing them where we choose to do so. But, ultimately, they can serve an important purpose.

Meanwhile, in a similar vein as the Justice Departments filing, the U.S. Department of Education recently accused the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies of an alleged lack of balance in its programming, suggesting that it is treating Islam favorably compared to religious minority groups in the Middle East. The Education Department asserted that the conferences and activities the consortium hosts have failed to promote U.S. national security and economic stability -- key goals of TitleIV, which helps fund the program.

TitleIV programs are good contexts for learning about diverse perspectives, languages and cultures. The governments attempt to regulate the content so that it fits with an ideological vision represents a breach of the needed barrier between regulators and experts. That barrier has been breached before, of course, notably by legislators in Wisconsin and in other states that have looked into syllabi and criticized professors for the contents of their classes. (The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents last week also continued its regrettable and possibly unconstitutional march toward limiting student protest in the name of protecting free speech.)

Such regulatory intrusions by different arms of the federal government, along with recent legislation in various states that curtail student protests and forbid the expression of specific political views, should raise alarms in the higher education sector. Under the guise of protecting speech and defending viewpoint diversity, the government is promoting a political ideology -- an effort that people of all political stripes who are committed to academic freedom should reject. Colleges and universities are institutions where research and teaching take place, both of which, in different ways, are based on shared norms and practices that should not be subject to extensive regulatory tinkering.

Along with the Department of Justice renewal of the investigation against Rutgers University for discrimination against Jewish students, a pattern emerges: one that undermines the autonomy and authority of institutions of higher learning and replaces them with a bureaucratic effort to promote specific views.

Free speech, a necessary condition for learning and expanding knowledge, is hampered when politicians police colleges and universities. Of course, higher education institutions sometimes get things wrong -- including in the structure or language of policies related to bias response teams, or with specific programming or syllabus decisions. But even then, legislative limitations and threats to cut funding unless ideological obedience is ensured are the wrong way to go.

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The government is becoming too intrusive in regulating free speech on campuses (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

The speech wars are resuming on campus with the new semester. But in the opinion columns, conference panels, and state houses debating the state of free expression on campus, they never abated.

The positions are well staked out. Activists point to the videos of invited speakers shouted down by students who object to what they will say. Skeptics retort that free speech is no more imperiled on college campuses than elsewhere. But this seemingly unending debate misses the point.

Free expression on campus matters not because there is a unique speech crisis on campus, but because universities are uniquely positioned to address broader societal crises. The question isnt whether universities have a problem but how theyre uniquely positioned to solve ours.

There are over 5,000 colleges in the United States, and they arent all the same. But together, they are a critical part of the solution for our growing tribalism and intolerance of other points of view.

More than two-thirds of Americans attend college, and more than 1 in 3 will receive a bachelors degree. As a result, college graduates will disproportionately hold positions of influence in our government and culture. These campuses are where the next generation of teachers, judges, cultural influencers, and community leaders are educated. And college is also the first significant opportunity for many students to experience truly diverse ideas and find ways to resolve differences.

Universities are unique in their mission, their impact and in the centrality of free expression to that end. As a sign prominently displayed over an academic building at my alma mater, the University of Virginia, proclaims: For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. Even assuming we know the truth from an error, allowing error to challenge truth helps to guarantee that the ideas we hold true are not accepted as mere dogma. Truth has nothing to fear. It can only be sharpened by conflict.

So civil liberty advocates are not wrong when they raise concerns about the roughly 90% of universities with speech zones, speech codes, and other formal written policies that, however well-meaning their intent, violate the First Amendment. Not only do these policies require taxpayer expense to defend when enforced, but they signal to students that the state can tell you when and where you can speak and what you can say. If 91% of municipalities suddenly enacted written policies unconstitutionally limiting free expression, it seems doubtful there would be much debate about whether this constitutes a crisis in need of resolving.

But skeptics are also correct to note that the focus on a crisis of campus free speech obscures the fact that university students may be no more supportive of censorship than the general population. Almost 30% of adults say that the First Amendment goes too far in its protections, 25% would give the president power to shutter news media engaged in bad behavior, and 50% of adults say that universities should disinvite speakers who will offend some part of a campus population.

So is the crisis really limited to the campus? Hardly.

The necessity of promoting free expression, and eliminating unconstitutional barriers to it on campus, need not be premised on a demonstrated campus crisis. This framing lowers expectations for what our universities should be, grading free speech on campus on a curve with the rest of our society. Yet, free expression is critical to the achievement of the universitys own mission and universities are not just part of our national culture, they graduate the leaders who shape it.

By eliminating speech zones, speech codes, and similar restrictive policies, universities demonstrate that other students and their ideas are not a threat to be managed but an opportunity for growth to be embraced. Supporting debate and other programs that allow students to engage with and even empathize with others with different views is a critical step in ending the tribalism infecting our society.

These ideas are not new, especially to free-speech advocates. But they should pursue these goals not with the aim of simply protecting the rights of combatants in a speech war, but because they enable universities and their graduates better leaders for our future.

Its time we stop focusing on universities as the problem and start treating them as the needed solution.

Casey Mattox is a senior fellow of free speech and toleration at the Charles Koch Institute.

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We're asking the wrong question about the campus free speech 'crisis' - Washington Examiner

Fox News Headlines 24/7 anchor Brett Larson reports on Fortnite disappearing into a black hole as the games season ends.

Political speech is now something that can be wagered on, at least when it comes to The League of Legends World Championship. One wagering firm is taking bets on if political statements will be made at the upcoming championships in Berlin.

This weekends The League of Legends World Championship could be the next battlefront for the democratic movement in Hong Kong. Last week, Ng Wai Chung, who is known by his gaming handle of Blitzchung,had been banned and stripped of his earnings after an interview on the Asia-Pacific Grandmasters broadcast of Hearthstone. In the interview, Blitzchung made a pro-democratic statement and was summarily stripped of his winnings, and was banned because ofhis statement by the game's owner, which is partially owned by Tencent, a Chinese media company..

Now, political speech inspired by Blitzchung is open to bets. SportsBetting.ag is offering three wagering lines on the topic for this weekends championship:

The case at the center of the betting odds continues to draw more attention to the protests in Hong Kong.

Blitzchung wore a gas mask while conducting the interview,a nod to the protesters in Hong Kong. At the end of the interview shouted "Liberate Hong Kong! The revolution of our times!"

This was deemed by Activision Blizzard to be against the games code of conduct, the games owner and operator. Blitzchung was stripped of his winnings and banned for the statement. Days later, Activision Blizzard caved to pressure and re-instated the winnings while cutting the suspension to six months.

Blitzchung responded to his commuted punishment by posting his appreciation on social media channels, but he has left the question of his future participation in the esports community open.

"Honestly, I have no idea on that yet," Blitzchung wrote about if he will compete again. "Since my next tournament is very likely to be the grandmaster tournament of next season, it's probably at least a few months from now on. I will take this time to relax myself to decide if I am staying in competitive hearthstone scene or not."

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Betting on free speech at the The League of Legends World Championship - Fox Business

When a Winnipeg man plastered posters around the University of Manitoba campus in 1991that claimed his ex was overweight, baldingand suicidal,he may not have realized he was breaking a law older than Canada's Criminal Code.

Buthe was, as a Court of Appeal judge who upheld the man's conviction wrote in his decision. Specifically, the judge said, the Winnipeg man had broken a defamatory-libel law in Canada that had "essentially remained unchanged" since it was first written in 1843, before being enshrinedin the country's first Criminal Code in 1892.

Though Canada's criminal law on libel publishing a defamatory statement about someonehas come to beseen by many in the legal community as something of a relic, its use appears to be on the rise.

And that may present challenges to free expression, some experts warn.

While most libel cases aretackled bylawsuits in civil courts instead of criminaltrials, the charge has remained on the books, and was upheld as constitutional ina 1998 Supreme Court decision.

That decision also observed the charge was originally created to prevent duels, andlumped itin with other "rarely invoked" charges liketheft from oyster beds andhigh treason.

But Lisa Taylor, a lawyer-turned-researcher at Ryerson University's School of Journalism andCentre for Free Expression, says the charge is making a mini comeback.

Taylor and a colleaguepublished research last year that foundmore than 400prosecutions using the criminal charge since 2000at a rate per year that doubled between 2000 and 2015.

One troubling aspect of their findings is that roughly a third of cases dealt with libel against public officials, from police officers to politicians, she said. In effect, it is being used to criminalize speech against government officials.

"When we started looking at the period from 2000 to 2015, we saw a significant and steady year-over-year increase [in]how oftenthese investigations were being launched," Taylor says. She argues that's a problem.

She's one of a cohort of Canadian legal experts who say the Supreme Court got it wrong, arguing the charge is an intrusion on freedom of expression that leaves the door open for abuse and needs to be repealed.

It also contradicts trends elsewhere.

In the U.S., the number of states with criminal libel laws has been declining since the 1960s, Taylor wrote in her paper. The offence was struck down in the U.K. in 2009. It was also struck down inGrenada in 2012and in Jamaica in 2013 both Commonwealth nations that, like Canada, inherited criminal libel laws from the British.

"We and others [have]argued that this should be removed, and it wasn't, and I haven't heard a good reason for it," said Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

The association argued in 2017 for the law to be abolished during a Criminal Code cleanup designed to remove so-called "zombie laws" those which are outdated and unenforced, usually because they've been struck down by courts.

"I really don't know why it's still on the books."

Criminal defamatory libel exists in two sections of Canada's Criminal Code: Section 300, which criminalizesthe publication of libel known to be false, and Section 301, which criminalizes the publication of all defamatory libel.

The 1998 Supreme Court decision upheld the former, concluding Section 300 did not violate the right to freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Instead, Justice Peter deCarteret Cory observed that while the law's origins were in preventing breaches of the peace like duelling it was intended, he wrote, to provide a legal alternative to "duels fought in defence of the honour of defamed parties" the purpose of criminal defamatory libel laws has long since shifted to protecting personal reputation.

Section 301, meanwhile,has been struck down by a handful of provincial superior courts, but has never been tested at the Supreme Court.

In spite of its roots in old-timey duelling, Taylorsaid she found that the law's application in the last 20 years has been very modern it's been used to prosecute damages to reputation likecyber-smearing and online slut-shaming. Such cases account for about two-thirds of the prosecutions she reviewed since 2000.

But she and other like-minded legal experts argue Canadian jurisprudence now has more finely honed tools to prosecute revenge porn and other types of smearing, from cyberbullying and revenge porn legislationto Criminal Code provisions against uttering threats and criminal harassment.

"The defamatory libel provisions, as they stand now in the Criminal Code, arevery poorly drafted to deal with that kind of problem," said Jamie Cameron, aprofessor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School.

"It would be a better idea to scrap those provisionsand,if you need new ones, to draft the new provisions and customize them to the particular type of extreme harm that you're trying to punish."

Critics of the criminal defamation laws saymost libel cases belongin civil courtsanyway, where they're dealt with as a matter between two individuals, instead of taken on by the state as an offence against society.

David Hutt, a Halifax media defamation lawyer, said prosecutions of libel couldbogdown already-overburdened courts, and unlike a lawsuit, don't offer the accused any chance to get back the cost of defending themselves.

"This allows a complainant to wield a very heavy hammer, because they're so insulated from the costs of the prosecution," he said.

The other harm of the law remaining on the books,Taylor argues,is the potential to criminalize speech that's critical of the government.

A prominent example includes Fredericton blogger Charles LeBlanc, who was charged with defamatory libel in 2012.

He posted a photo of a police officer who ticketed him for not wearing a bicycle helmet, calling him a "fascist cop" and "sexual pervert Quebecois Const." Thecharge was later abandoned and an inquest ordered that concluded Fredericton police should have "farmed out"the investigation.

The criminal provision "runs the risk that you're significantly interfering with free speech," said Michael Lacy, president of theCriminal Lawyers' Association of Ontario.

It could have a chilling effect, he argues, by "subjectingsomeone, even if they're acquitted at the end of the day to the threat of criminal prosecution as well as potential imprisonment."

Taylor says the criminal law has "long outlived its usefulness, and it's entirely inconsistent with the Charter of Rightsthat says we have a right to free expression."

"No speech is without limits," she notes. But the question, she says, is "how harsh arethe limits going to be?"

Link:
Why some experts say a law created to prevent duelling is a threat to free speech - CBC.ca

This article will appear in the next issue of The New York Review.

Does the First Amendment need a rewrite in the era of Donald Trump? Should the rise of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups lead us to cut back the protection afforded to speech that expresses hatred and advocates violence, or otherwise undermines equality? If free speech exacerbates inequality, why doesnt equality, also protected by the Constitution, take precedence?

After the tragic violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, these questions take on renewed urgency. Many have asked in particular why the ACLU, of which I am national legal director, represented Jason Kessler, the organizer of the rally, in challenging Charlottesvilles last-minute effort to revoke his permit. The city proposed to move his rally a mile from its originally approved siteEmancipation Park, the location of the Robert E. Lee monument whose removal Kessler sought to protestbut offered no reason why the protest would be any easier to manage a mile away. As ACLU offices across the country have done for thousands of marchers for almost a century, the ACLU of Virginia gave Kessler legal help to preserve his permit. Should the fatal violence that followed prompt recalibration of the scope of free speech?

The future of the First Amendment may be at issue. A 2015 Pew Research Center poll reported that 40 percent of millennials think the government should be able to suppress speech deemed offensive to minority groups, as compared to only 12 percent of those born between 1928 and 1945. Young people today voice far less faith in free speech than do their grandparents. And Europe, where racist speech is not protected, has shown that democracies can reasonably differ about this issue.

People who oppose the protection of racist speech make several arguments, all ultimately resting on a claim that speech rights conflict with equality, and that equality should prevail in the balance.* They contend that the marketplace of ideas assumes a mythical level playing field. If some speakers drown out or silence others, the marketplace cannot function in the interests of all. They argue that the history of mob and state violence targeting African-Americans makes racist speech directed at them especially indefensible. Tolerating such speech reinforces harms that this nation has done to African-Americans from slavery through Jim Crow to todays de facto segregation, implicit bias, and structural discrimination. And still others argue that while it might have made sense to tolerate Nazis marching in Skokie in 1978, now, when white supremacists have a friend in the president himself, the power and influence they wield justify a different approach.

There is truth in each of these propositions. The United States is a profoundly unequal society. Our nations historical mistreatment of African-Americans has been shameful and the scourge of racism persists to this day. Racist speech causes real harm. It can inspire violence and intimidate people from freely exercising their own rights. There is no doubt that Donald Trumps appeals to white resentment and his reluctance to condemn white supremacists after Charlottesville have emboldened many racists. But at least in the public arena, none of these unfortunate truths supports authorizing the state to suppress speech that advocates ideas antithetical to egalitarian values.

The argument that free speech should not be protected in conditions of inequality is misguided. The right to free speech does not rest on the presumption of a level playing field. Virtually all rightsspeech includedare enjoyed unequally, and can reinforce inequality. The right to property most obviously protects the billionaire more than it does the poor. Homeowners have greater privacy rights than apartment dwellers, who in turn have more privacy than the homeless. The fundamental right to choose how to educate ones children means little to parents who cannot afford private schools, and contributes to the resilience of segregated schools and the reproduction of privilege. Criminal defendants rights are enjoyed much more robustly by those who can afford to hire an expensive lawyer than by those dependent on the meager resources that states dedicate to the defense of the indigent, thereby contributing to the endemic disparities that plague our criminal justice system.

Critics argue that the First Amendment is different, because if the weak are silenced while the strong speak, or if some have more to spend on speech than others, the outcomes of the marketplace of ideas will be skewed. But the marketplace is a metaphor; it describes not a scientific method for identifying truth but a choice among realistic options. It maintains only that it is better for the state to remain neutral than to dictate what is true and suppress the rest. One can be justifiably skeptical of a debate in which Charles Koch or George Soros has outsized advantages over everyone else, but still prefer it to one in which the Trumpor indeed Obamaadministration can control what can be said. If free speech is critical to democracy and to holding our representatives accountableand it iswe cannot allow our representatives to suppress views they think are wrong, false, or disruptive.

Should our nations shameful history of racism change the equation? There is no doubt that African-Americans have suffered unique mistreatment, and that our country has yet to reckon adequately with that fact. But to treat speech targeting African-Americans differently from speech targeting anyone else cannot be squared with the first principle of free speech: the state must be neutral with regard to speakers viewpoints. Moreover, what about other groups? While each groups experiences are distinct, many have suffered grave discrimination, including Native Americans, Asian-Americans, LGBT people, women, Jews, Latinos, Muslims, and immigrants generally. Should government officials be free to censor speech that offends or targets any of these groups? If not all, which groups get special protection?

And even if we could somehow answer that question, how would we define what speech to suppress? Should the government be able to silence all arguments against affirmative action or about genetic differences between men and women, or just uneducated racist and sexist rants? It is easy to recognize inequality; it is virtually impossible to articulate a standard for suppression of speech that would not afford government officials dangerously broad discretion and invite discrimination against particular viewpoints.

But are these challenges perhaps worth taking on because Donald Trump is president, and his victory has given new voice to white supremacists? That is exactly the wrong conclusion. After all, if we were to authorize government officials to suppress speech they find contrary to American values, it would be Donald Trumpand his allies in state and local governmentswho would use that power. Here is the ultimate contradiction in the argument for state suppression of speech in the name of equality: it demands protection of disadvantaged minorities interests, but in a democracy, the state acts in the name of the majority, not the minority. Why would disadvantaged minorities trust representatives of the majority to decide whose speech should be censored? At one time, most Americans embraced separate but equal for the races and separate spheres for the sexes as defining equality. It was the freedom to contest those views, safeguarded by the principle of free speech, that allowed us to reject them.

As Frederick Douglass reminded us, Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Throughout our history, disadvantaged minority groups have effectively used the First Amendment to speak, associate, and assemble for the purpose of demanding their rightsand the ACLU has defended their right to do so. Where would the movements for racial justice, womens rights, and LGBT equality be without a muscular First Amendment?

In some limited but important settings, equality norms do trump free speech. At schools and in the workplace, for example, antidiscrimination law forbids harassment and hostile working conditions based on race or sex, and those rules limit what people can say there. The courts have recognized that in situations involving formal hierarchy and captive audiences, speech can be limited to ensure equal access and treatment. But those exceptions do not extend to the public sphere, where ideas must be open to full and free contestation, and those who disagree can turn away or talk back.

The response to Charlottesville showed the power of talking back. When Donald Trump implied a kind of moral equivalence between the white supremacist protesters and their counter-protesters, he quickly found himself isolated. Prominent Republicans, military leaders, business executives, and conservative, moderate, and liberal commentators alike condemned the ideology of white supremacy, Trump himself, or both.

When white supremacists called a rally the following week in Boston, they mustered only a handful of supporters. They were vastly outnumbered by tens of thousands of counterprotesters who peacefully marched through the streets to condemn white supremacy, racism, and hate. Boston proved yet again that the most powerful response to speech that we hate is not suppression but more speech. Even Stephen Bannon, until recently Trumps chief strategist and now once again executive chairman of Breitbart News, denounced white supremacists as losers and a collection of clowns. Free speech, in short, is exposing white supremacists ideas to the condemnation they deserve. Moral condemnation, not legal suppression, is the appropriate response to these despicable ideas.

Some white supremacists advocate not only hate but violence. They want to purge the country of nonwhites, non-Christians, and other undesirables, and return us to a racial caste societyand the only way to do that is through force. The First Amendment protects speech but not violence. So what possible value is there in protecting speech advocating violence? Our history illustrates that unless very narrowly constrained, the power to restrict the advocacy of violence is an invitation to punish political dissent. A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy all used the advocacy of violence as a justification to punish people who associated with Communists, socialists, or civil rights groups.

Those lessons led the Supreme Court, in a 1969 ACLU case involving a Ku Klux Klan rally, to rule that speech advocating violence or other criminal conduct is protected unless it is intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action, a highly speech-protective rule. In addition to incitement, thus narrowly defined, a true threat against specific individuals is also not protected. But aside from these instances in which speech and violence are inextricably intertwined, speech advocating violence gets full First Amendment protection.

In Charlottesville, the ACLUs client swore under oath that he intended only a peaceful protest. The city cited general concerns about managing the crowd in seeking to move the marchers a mile from the originally approved site. But as the district court found, the city offered no reason why there wouldnt be just as many protesters and counterprotesters at the alternative site. Violence did break out in Charlottesville, but that appears to have been at least in part because the police utterly failed to keep the protesters separated or to break up the fights.

What about speech and weapons? The ACLUs executive director, Anthony Romero, explained that, in light of Charlottesville and the risk of violence at future protests, the ACLU will not represent marchers who seek to brandish weapons while protesting. (This is not a new position. In a pamphlet signed by Roger Baldwin, Arthur Garfield Hays, Morris Ernst, and others, the ACLU took a similar stance in 1934, explaining that we defended the Nazis right to speak, but not to march while armed.) This is a content-neutral policy; it applies to all armed marchers, regardless of their views. And it is driven by the twin concerns of avoiding violence and the impairment of many rights, speech included, that violence so often occasions. Free speech allows us to resolve our differences through public reason; violence is its antithesis. The First Amendment protects the exchange of views, not the exchange of bullets. Just as it is reasonable to exclude weapons from courthouses, airports, schools, and Fourth of July celebrations on the National Mall, so it is reasonable to exclude them from public protests.

Some ACLU staff and supporters have made a more limited argument. They dont directly question whether the First Amendment should protect white supremacist groups. Instead, they ask why the ACLU as an organization represents them. In most cases, the protesters should be able to find lawyers elsewhere. Many ACLU staff members understandably find representing these groups repugnant; their views are directly contrary to many of the values we fight for. And representing right-wing extremists makes it more difficult for the ACLU to work with its allies on a wide range of issues, from racial justice to LGBT equality to immigrants rights. As a matter of resources, the ACLU spends far more on claims to equality by marginalized groups than it does on First Amendment claims. If the First Amendment work is undermining our other efforts, why do it?

These are real costs, and deserve consideration as ACLU lawyers make case-by-case decisions about how to deploy our resources. But they cannot be a bar to doing such work. The truth is that both internally and externally, it would be much easier for the ACLU to represent only those with whom we agree. But the power of our First Amendment advocacy turns on our commitment to a principle of viewpoint neutrality that requires protection for proponents and opponents of our own best view of racial justice. If we defended speech only when we agreed with it, on what ground would we ask others to tolerate speech they oppose?

In a fundamental sense, the First Amendment safeguards not only the American experiment in democratic pluralism, but everything the ACLU does. In the pursuit of liberty and justice, we associate, advocate, and petition the government. We protect the First Amendment not only because it is the lifeblood of democracy and an indispensable element of freedom, but because it is the guarantor of civil society itself. It protects the press, the academy, religion, political parties, and nonprofit associations like ours. In the era of Donald Trump, the importance of preserving these avenues for advancing justice and preserving democracy should be more evident than ever.

August 24, 2017

Read the original here:
Why We Must Still Defend Free Speech - The New York Review of Books

Circulated this morning by University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ:

This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense. The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The United States has the strongest free speech protections of any liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the courts have consistently upheld these protections.

But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of legal constraint that were required to allow it but of value. The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book, On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it.

Berkeley, as you know, is the home of the Free Speech Movement, where students on the right and students on the left united to fight for the right to advocate political views on campus. Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley community come together once again to protect this right. It is who we are.

Nonetheless, defending the right of free speech for those whose ideas we find offensive is not easy. It often conflicts with the values we hold as a community tolerance, inclusion, reason and diversity. Some constitutionally-protected speech attacks the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that are deeply hurtful. However, the right response is not the hecklers veto, or what some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is, dont shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to hate speech with more speech.

We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to expect the university to keep you physically safe. But we would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous. We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner resilience, which is the surest form of safe space. These are not easy tasks, and we will offer support services for those who desire them.

This September, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos have both been invited by student groups to speak at Berkeley. The university has the responsibility to provide safety and security for its community and guests, and we will invest the necessary resources to achieve that goal. If you choose to protest, do so peacefully. That is your right, and we will defend it with vigor. We will not tolerate violence, and we will hold anyone accountable who engages in it.

We will have many opportunities this year to come together as a Berkeley community over the issue of free speech; it will be a free speech year. We have already planned a student panel, a faculty panel and several book talks. Bridge USA and the Center for New Media will hold a day-long conference on October 5; PEN, the international writers organization, will hold a free speech convening in Berkeley on October 23. We are planning a series in which people with sharply divergent points of view will meet for a moderated discussion. Free speech is our legacy, and we have the power once more to shape this narrative.

Sounds right to me.

See the rest here:
UC Berkeley chancellor's message on free speech - Washington Post

Plus, more than a third of Americans think it should be illegal to join the KKK or American Nazi Party

Americans have always had a problem with free speech. Those in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll are no exception. While the First Amendment may protect speech, many Americans would not allow dangerous speech or speech many of them disagree with.

Thats especially true for speech associated with a group like ISIS. Most Americans Democrats and Republicans would forbid an ISIS supporter from making a speech in their community. It matters little whether someone is personally worried about becoming a terror victim or whether their expectations for an attack on U.S. soil is high or low. All groups oppose ISIS speech.

There are similar reactions when it comes to whether or not a book written by an ISIS supporter should be removed from the public library, though in this case, more than a third oppose removing such a book. But most would fire any ISIS supporter teaching in a college. On these two questions there are party differences: Republicans are 14 points more likely than Democrats to want to remove an ISIS supporters book from the public library and 13 points more like to fire the college teacher. But both would remove the book and fire the teacher.

In the past, the General Social Survey has asked about members of multiple groups giving speeches. The support or opposition to free speech depends on the group asked about with an anti-American Muslim the least likely to be given free speech protection.

The GSS hasnt asked specifically about the Ku Klux Klan, but racist speech is less acceptable in their polls than atheist, militarist, pro-gay (which has become dramatically more acceptable since the 1970s) or Communist speech. In this poll, Americans would not allow a member of the Klan to speak, are divided on whether or not they would remove a Klan book from the public library, and would fire a college teacher who was a Klan sympathizer.

Again, this is not necessarily a matter for partisan debate. Democrats and Republicans would ban a Klan speech, remove a Klan supporters book, and fire a Klan sympathizer from a college teaching position. Trump voters seem to be the most accepting of them: narrow pluralities of Trump voters would allow the speech (49%-39%), and keep the book on the shelves (46% would not remove the book, 39% would).

Feelings are similar when it comes to the free speech rights of neo-Nazis. Americans dont think they should have them. The public would ban the speech, remove the book, and fire the college teacher. Again, Democrats and Republicans agree.

Neo-Nazis and the KKK are decidedly unpopular. Just 6% have a favorable view of the Ku Klux Klan, and 5% are favorable towards neo-Nazis. And these low ratings are across the board whites, blacks, Democrats, Republicans, Trump voters and Clinton voters.

The protection of unpopular speech such as American Civil Liberties Unions defense of the Charlottesville white nationalist protestors is itself not popular. A third approve of the ACLUs actions, 43% disapprove. Democrats, who generally think better of the ACLU than Republicans do, are slightly more likely than Republicans to disapprove.

The Constitution also protects the right of association, and here the public divides on whether or not membership in the Klan or in a neo-Nazi group should be allowed. Just about as many would make it illegal for Americans to join these groups as would permit it.

See the original post here:
YouGov | Americans wary of extending free speech to extremists - YouGov US