Category Archives: Freedom of Speech

A police officer escorted a participant in Saturdays free speech rally away from the scene as a water bottle was headed in his direction.

If one line captured the essence of Saturdays Boston Common rally and counterprotest, it was a quote halfway through Mark Arsenaults Page 1 story in the Globe:

Excuse me, one man in the counterprotest innocently asked a Globe reporter. Where are the white supremacists?

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That was the day in a nutshell. Participants in the Boston Free Speech Rally had been demonized as a troupe of neo-Nazis prepared to reprise the horror that had erupted in Charlottesville. They turned out to be a couple dozen courteous people linked by little more than a commitment to surprise! free speech.

The small group on the Parkman Bandstand threatened no one. One of the rallys organizers, a 23-year-old libertarian named John Medlar, had insisted vigorously that its purpose was not to endorse white supremacy. The rally Im helping to organize is about promoting Free Speech as a COUNTER to political violence, he had posted on Facebook. There are NO WHITE SUPREMACISTS speaking at this rally.

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Indeed, nothing about the tiny rally seemed in any way connected with bigotry or hatred. One of the speakers was Shiva Ayyadurai, an immigrant from India who is seeking the Republican nomination in next years US Senate race. As Ayyadurai spoke, his supporters held signs proclaiming Black Lives Do Matter.

Call them Nazis, white supremacists or free speech advocates whatever label you prefer, they were the hunted and harassed Saturday on Boston Common.

But he and the others who gathered at the Parkman Bandstand had never stood a chance of competing with the rumor that neo-Nazis were coming to Boston. That toxic claim was irresponsibly fueled by Mayor Marty Walsh, who denounced the planned rally Boston does not want you here even though organizers were at pains to stress that they had no connection to Charlottesvilles racial agenda and intended to focus on the importance of free speech.

What happened on Saturday was both impressive and distressing.

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A massive counterprotest, 40,000 strong, showed up to denounce a nonexistent cohort of racists. Boston deployed hundreds of police officers, who did an admirable job of maintaining order. Some of the counterprotesters screamed, cursed, or acted like thugs at one point the Boston Police Department warned protesters to refrain from throwing urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles but most behaved appropriately. Though a few dozen punks were arrested, nobody was seriously hurt.

But free speech took a beating.

The speakers on the Common bandstand were kept from being heard. They were blocked off with a 225-foot buffer zone, segregated beyond earshot. Police barred anyone from approaching to hear what the rally speakers had to say. Reporters were excluded, too.

Result? The free-speech rally took place in a virtual cone of silence. Participants spoke essentially to themselves for about 50 minutes, the Globe reported. If any of them said anything provocative, the massive crowd did not hear it.

Even some of the rallys own would-be attendees were kept from the bandstand. Yet when Police Commissioner Bill Evans was asked at a press conference Saturday afternoon whether it was right to treat them that way, he was unapologetic. You know what, he said, if they didnt get in, thats a good thing, because their message isnt what we want to hear.

No, Commissioner Evans. It was not a good thing that people with a right to speak were effectively silenced by the operations of the police. The ralliers did nothing wrong. They followed the citys rules. They absorbed the slanders flung at them by the mayor and others. They didnt try to shut their critics down, and they werent the ones hurling urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles.

All they were guilty of was attempting to defend the importance of free speech. For that, they were unjustly smeared as Nazis and their own freedom of speech was mauled.

Boston was kept safe on Saturday. For that, city authorities deserve great credit and thanks. But in the course of preventing a riot, those authorities rode roughshod over the free-speech rights of a small, disfavored minority. That is never a good thing, whatever the police commissioner may think.

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A free-speech rally, minus the free speech - The Boston Globe

The First Amendment has been getting a workout lately, from white supremacist rallies and counter-protests to attempts to censor or block opposing viewpoints on college campuses.

The First Amendment is a broad guarantee of free and open discourse; its easier to list what isnt protected under the Bill of Rights than what is.

Unprotected speech includes obscenity, fighting words (those that inflict injury or are likely to incite an immediate breach of the peace), defamation (including libel and slander), child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats and solicitation to commit a crime. The nonprofit Newseum Institute notes that some experts also would add treason, if committed verbally, to that list.

Noticeably absent from the list is hate speech which the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled is protected, no matter how unpopular or bigoted, and speech that others find offensive or rude.

The First Amendment puts a great deal of responsibility for protecting free speech in the hands of the American people, counting on them to understand its importance and cherish it.

But when there are neo-Nazis and white supremacists holding rallies and issuing hateful, bigoted comments, it can be difficult for people to understand that protection of this is just as important as protecting words of peace, tolerance and brotherhood. For if one of these can be silenced, so can the other.

In recent years, there has been a troubling number of well-intentioned people wanting to silence speech they found hurtful or hateful or, on a lesser level, just obnoxious.

Some object to far-right speakers on college campuses, some object to far-left demonstrators. Some Register-Guard readers have objected to conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, others have said they would be willing to give up Goldberg if liberal columnist Paul Krugman also disappeared. (Editors note: We intend to continue publishing both.)

Banning, or censoring, other viewpoints is not the way to unite what seems to be an increasingly divided country. In the instances of true hate speech neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others of their ilk those who object have other options.

They, too, have the right to free speech, to stand up and peacefully protest. And they have the right to ignore hate groups: While their speech is protected, people do not have to provide these groups with a venue or an audience. Depriving hate groups of attention is to deprive them of oxygen, making them less newsworthy and less likely to garner attention.

As for speech and viewpoints that the hearer simply disagrees with, rather than attempting to silence or block it, a better option is to listen. Listen to the concerns, listen to the fears and frustration, listen to the hopes and the proposals. People of good will can have different views when it comes to the causes and cures for social and economic ills. But they also can find common ground in their concerns or experiences and that can be the start of bridging the divide between people. That is what free speech is meant to do.

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Freedom of speech is for all - The Register-Guard

Generally speaking, anyone can say anything online. But, lately, things have started to get complicated. Last week, after neo-Nazis and white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, the neo-Nazi blog the Daily Stormer disappeared from the Internet. GoDaddy, the registrar of the sites domain, had discontinued its service. The Daily Stormer switched its domain to Google, which promptly shut it down as well. The site is now back up, on the dark Web, with its publisher pleading victimhood on social media. (I am being unpersoned.) What happened to the Daily Stormer wasnt a violation of the First Amendmentprivate companies are allowed to stifle speechbut it enraged people on the right, many of whom were already deeply skeptical of the puppet masters in Silicon Valley. Before any of this happened, a pro-Trump activist named Jack Posobiec was organizing a multicity March on Google, calling the company an anti-free-speech monopoly. (Last week, Posobiec announced that the march had been postponed, citing threats from the alt-left.)

Jack Conte is not an alt-right activisthes a bald, bearded musician from San Franciscobut he, too, once resented the titans of Silicon Valley. A few years ago, Conte was trying to make a living on YouTube. His music videosfunk covers of pop songs, homemade robots playing percussion padsoften went viral. I made a video that took many, many hours and cost me thousands of dollars, Conte said. My fans loved it. It got more than a million views. And I made a hundred and fifty bucks from it. I realized, Clearly, there is a problem with how stuff on the Internetwhat we now call content, what used to be called artgets monetized. Conte co-founded his own tech company, Patreon, a Web site that allows artists and activists to get paid directly by fans and supporters. A creator posts a description of what she intends to makea comic strip, a podcastand patrons sign up to fund it, each chipping in a few dollars a month. Patreon takes a five-per-cent cut. The company now has about eighty employees and a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar valuationbig enough that many Web denizens consider Conte a new kind of puppet master.

Last month, Lauren Southern, a right-wing activist and pundit who was earning a few thousand dollars a month on Patreon, received an e-mail from the companys Trust and Safety team. Here at Patreon we believe in freedom of speech, it read. When ideas cross into action, though, we sometimes must take a closer look. Southern, a videogenic Canadian in her early twenties, whose book was blurbed by Ann Coulter, was known for videos like White Privilege Is a Dangerous Myth. Her Patreon page now reads This page has been removed.

Southern had participated in an anti-immigration action in the Mediterranean Sea, in which a motorboat tried to prevent a ship from bringing refugees to Europe. In an apologetic YouTube video, Conte insisted that Southern had been banned not for her politics but for her risky behavior. I didnt expect to convince everyone, and thats O.K., he said.

Predictably, Southerns fans were not pleased. Youre an idiot and a beta cuck, one commented. Some called for lawsuits. Others linked to a copycat site called Hatreon. (Motto: A platform for creators, absent thought policing.) Southern set up her own site, patreonsucks.com. Big liberal silicon valley companies want me to become a friendly little vlogger that spouts all the right lines, she wrote. I wont let that happen. She made a YouTube video directing followers to her new site, adding, As for Patreon, you guys can suck my balls.

Then came Charlottesville. Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Unite the Right rally, had a Patreon page (three backers, generating thirty-three dollars a month). It was swiftly removed for violating Patreons rule against affiliations with known hate groups. Meanwhile, another Patreon user, the progressive activist Logan Smith, began sharing photos of the torch-wielding mob on his Twitter handle @YesYoureRacist. He urged people to help him identify the participants: Ill make them famous. Online vigilantes complied, and several marchers lost their jobs. A few people were incorrectly identified, causing nonparticipants to receive death threats. Doxingpublishing someones private information onlineis against Patreons rules. Smith claims that his activism wasnt doxing. If these people are so proud of their beliefs, then they shouldnt have a problem with their communities knowing their names, he said last week.

Patreon disagreed, and Smiths page was removed. It doesnt matter who the victim is, Conte said. It could be a convicted murderer. If someone is releasing private information that an individual doesnt want to be made public, then thats doxing. And we dont allow it. (One person tweeted at Patreon, He is identifying nazis and you are stopping him at the request of nazis .) Conte went on, Weve been getting it from all sidesof course. I get it. Taking away someones income is a hugely onerous thing, and we dont take it lightly. He sighed. Weve dealt with a huge range of stuff in the past few years, a wider variety than I ever would have imagined. But the fact that were talking about swastika flags right now? It just makes me sad.

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The Fight Over Free Speech Online - The New Yorker

The Left is mounting an all-out assault against the freedom of speech, and is using Charlottesville as its Reichstag Fire moment to try to crush all dissent.

Several days ago, I received an email that set in motion a chain of events leading to my website, Jihad Watch, being dropped from PayPal. After an immense public outcry, the Jihad Watch PayPal account was restored -- not that I ever intend to use it again. But this episode illustrates the Lefts determination to silence all of its foes rather than debate them, and these fascists wont rest until no one dares oppose their agenda.

The email that started this incident has ominous implications far beyond the incident itself. Far-Left journalist Lauren Kirchner sent similar emails to other counter-jihad sites as well -- here are her questions, along with the answers I sent her:

Yes, certainly I do. For years, Leftists and Muslim groups with numerous ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood have smeared as hate all attempts to speak honestly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism.

In reality, it is not hateful, racist or extremist to oppose jihad terror, and the claim that it is [is] not only libelous but insidious: the intent has clearly been to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror, and it has worked, as illustrated by the neighbors of the San Bernardino jihad murderers, who saw suspicious activity at their home but didnt report them for fear of being racist.

2) We identified several tech companies on your website: PayPal, Amazon, Newsmax, and Revcontent. Can you confirm that you receive funds from your relationship with those tech companies? How would the loss of those funds affect your operations, and how would you be able to replace them?

The intent of your questions, and no doubt of your forthcoming article, will be to try to compel these sites to cut off any connection with us based on our opposition to jihad terror. Are you comfortable with what youre enabling?

Not only are you inhibiting honest analysis of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, but youre aiding the attempt to deny people a platform based on their political views. This could come back to bite you if your own views ever fall out of favor.

Have you ever lived in a totalitarian state, where the powerful determine the parameters of the public discourse and cut off all voice from the powerless? Do you really want to live in one now? You might find, once you get there, that it isnt as wonderful as you thought it would be.

3) Have you been shut down by other tech companies for being an alleged hate or extremist web site? Which companies?

No. This is a new thing.

First came the ridiculous claim that opposing jihad terror was hate, and now comes the other shoe dropping: the attempt to cut out the ground from under the feet of those who hate. You can only hope that you arent similarly defamed one day; perhaps if that does happen, you will realize (too late) why the freedom of speech is an indispensable element of a free society.

4) Many people opposed to sites like yours are currently pressuring tech companies to cease their relationships with them -- what is your view of this campaign? Why?

Nazis will be Nazis. Fascists will be fascists. Today they call themselves Antifa and the like, but theyre acting just like Hitlers Brownshirts did, when they shouted down and assaulted anti-Nazi speakers. Now the violent thugs work in a more genteel fashion: they just pull the Internet plug on those they hate. You, Lauren Kirchner, are aiding and abetting a quintessentially fascist enterprise. Authoritarianism in service of any cause leads to a slave society despite the best intentions of those who helped usher it in.

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Free Speech: The Left Moves In for the Kill - PJ Media

The events in Charlottesville last weekend have provoked understandable fear and outrage. Potential sites for future alt-right rallies are on edge. Texas A&M University, the University of Florida and Michigan State University have all decided to cancel or deny prospective events by white nationalist Richard Spencer. All cited safety concerns. All raise serious First Amendment issues.

Even though weve been called free speech absolutistssometimes, but not always, as a complimentwe will not pretend that Spencers speaking cancellations make for a slam-dunk First Amendment lawsuit. Yes, hateful, bigoted and racist speech is fundamentally protected under the First Amendment, as it should be. However, if were honest about the law, we have to recognize that Spencer faces toughthough not insurmountablelegal challenges.

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First, he is not a student at any of the aforementioned universities and was not invited to the campuses by students or faculty. He was seeking space on campus that is available to the general public to rent out. In at least some cases, courts have found that public colleges have a somewhat freer hand to regulate the speech of non-students on campus who are not invited by students or faculty.

Second, although a general, unsubstantiated fear of violence is not enough to justify cancelling an approved speaking event, recent violence in Charlottesville and the fact that one of the organizers of the Texas A&M rally used the promotional tagline TODAY CHARLOTTESVILLE TOMORROW TEXAS A&M make security concerns more concrete, at least in the short term. The more concrete the security concerns are, the easier it is to justify the cancellation or denials.

Third, as David Frum, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern point out, judges might decide cases differently when protesters are liable to show up brandishing guns, as happened in Charlottesville. Bad facts make bad law, so the saying goes. The general legal standard now is that if a public college opens itself up to outside speakers, it cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination. Most cases of prior restraint censorship will fail in court under this standard. But in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy in Charlottesville, judges may look differently at these facts.

And that should trouble us: If a court decides in favor of the prior restraints, it could set a precedent that would do considerable harm to the free speech rights of speakers, students and faculty far beyond Spencer.

But what happens in a court of law is one thing. What happens in the court of public opinion is perhaps more important. As the famous jurist Learned Hand once said, Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

And, unfortunately, there is evidence that freedom of speech needs a pacemaker.

If your social media newsfeed doesnt provide ample anecdotal evidence that free speech is suffering a public relations crisis, look to the polling: A recent Knight Foundation study found that fewer than 50 percent of high school students think that people should be free to say things that are offensive to others.

The New York Times opinion page, for its part, has run three columns since April questioning the value of free speech for all, the most recent imploring the ACLU to rethink free speechthe same ACLU that at the height of Nazism, Communism and Jim Crow in 1940 released a leaflet entitled, Why we defend civil liberty even for Nazis, Fascists and Communists. The ACLU of Virginia carried on this honorable tradition of viewpoint-neutral free speech defense in the days before the Charlottesville protests. However, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that the ACLU will no longer defend hate groups seeking to march with firearms.

And how is the birthplace of the 1960s free speech movement faring? In the wake of the riots that shut down alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos speech at the University of California, Berkeley on February 1, multiple students and alumni wrote that the violence and destruction of the Antifa protests were a form of self-defense against the violence of Yiannopoulos speech. Watching videos of the protest, it is fortunate nobody was killed.

Whats to account for this shift? One of our theories is that this generation of students comprises the children of students who went to college during the first great age of campus speech codes that spanned from the late 1980s through the early 90s. This is when colleges and universities first began writing over-broad and vague policies to regulate allegedly racist and sexist speech. Although that movement failed in the court of law, these codes have stubbornly persisted, and the view that freedom of speech is the last refuge of the three Bsthe bully, the bigot and the robber baronfound a home in classrooms.

When we speak on college campuses, our explanations of the critical role the First Amendment played in ensuring the success of the civil rights movement, the womens rights movement and the gay rights movement are often met with blank stares. At a speech at Brown University, in fact, a student laughed when Greg pointed out that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was a steadfast defender of freedom of speechas if it were impossible for a black icon of the civil rights movement to be a free-speech champion.

However, we dont fault students for holding these opinions. The idea of free speech is an eternally radical and counterintuitive one that requires constant education about its principles. Censorship has been the rule for most of human history. True freedom of speech is a relatively recent phenomenon. It perhaps reached its high point in the United States in the second half of the 20th century.

Most Americans claim that they venerate free speech in principle. So do most world leaders. Even censorial dictators like Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan sometimes feign support for it. Despite this, its common for people to have their exceptions in practice: their I believe in free speech, but responses. But even the free speech, but responses seem to be falling out of favor. In the last few yearsand especially after Charlottesvillewe have observed increasing squeamishness about free speech, and not just in practice; also in principle.

So how do we respond to the calls for censorship after Charlottesville?

For most of our careers, the charge what if the Nazis came to town? has been posed as a hypothetical retort to free speech defenses. (Godwins law extends to free speech debates, too.) But the hypothetical is no longer a hypothetical: In Charlottesville, neo-Nazis carried swastikas through the streets and revived the Hitler salute.

If you were to listen to scholars like Richard Delgado, the response should be to pass laws, to put people in jail, to do whatever it takes to stop the Nazi contagion from spreading. Its a popular argument in Europe and in legal scholarship, but not in American courts.

There are a few problems with this response that free speech advocates have long recognized. For one, it doesnt necessarily work; since the passage of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism laws in Europe, rates of anti-Semitism remain higher than in the U.S., where no such laws exist. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League found that rates of anti-Semitism have gone down in America since it first began measuring anti-Semitic attitudes in 1964.

Whats more, in the 1920s and 30s, Nazis did go to jail for anti-Semitic expression, and when they were released, they were celebrated as martyrs. When Bavarian authorities banned speeches by Hitler in 1925, for example, the Nazis exploited it. As former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier explains in his book Defending My Enemy, the Nazi party protested the ban by distributing a picture of Hitler gagged with the caption, One alone of 2,000 million people of the world is forbidden to speak in Germany. The ban backfired and became a publicity coup. It was soon lifted.

We cannot forget, too, that laws have to be enforced by people. In the 1920s and early 30s, such laws would have placed the power to censor in the hands of a population that voted in large numbers for Nazis. And after 1933, such laws would have placed that power to censor in the hands of Hitler himself. Consider how such power might be used by the politician you most distrust. Consider how it is currently being used by Vladimir Putin in Russia.

What does history suggest as the best course of action to win the benefits of an open society while stemming the tide of authoritarians of any stripe? It tells us to have a high tolerance for differing opinions, and no tolerance for political violence. What distinguishes liberal societies from illiberal ones is that liberal societies use words, not violence or censorship to settle disputes. As Neier, a Holocaust survivor, concluded in his book, The lesson of Germany in the 1920s is that a free society cannot be established and maintained if it will not act vigorously and forcefully to punish political violence.

But we should not be so myopic about the value of freedom of speech. It is not just a practical, peaceful alternative to violence. It does much more than that: It helps us understand many crucial, mundane and sometimes troubling truths. Simply put, it helps us understand what people actually thinknot even if it is troubling, but especially when it is troubling.

As Edward Luce points out in his excellent new short book The Retreat of Western Liberalism, there are real consequences to ignoring or wishing away the views that are held by real people, even if elites believe that those views are nasty or wrongheaded. Gay marriage champion and author Jonathan Rauch reminds us that in the same way that breaking a thermometer doesnt change the temperature, censoring ideas doesnt make them go awayit only makes us ignorant of their existence.

So what do we do about white supremacists? Draw a strong distinction between expression and violence: punish violence, but protect even speakers we find odious. Let them reveal themselves.

As Harvey Silverglate, a co-founder of our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, says, its important to know who the Nazis are in the room.

Why?

Because we need to know not to turn our backs to them.

Greg Lukianoff, an attorney, is president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Nico Perrino is director of communications for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast.

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Why Even Nazis Deserve Free Speech - POLITICO Magazine

Following the violence in Charlottesville, Internet businesses have been disassociating themselves from far-right political groups. PayPal decided to prohibit users from accepting donations to promote hate, violence and intolerance; 34 organizations were affected by the ban. Earlier, both GoDaddy and Google refused to host The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site. Spotify announced that it would remove any streaming music that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like. Dating site OkCupid deleted the profile of a white supremacist who was featured in a Vice TV segment about the Charlottesville, Va., rally, barring him for life.

Most Americans wont worry much about neo-Nazis losing access to the public forum we call the Internet. Their ideas are repugnant, and we did fight a war against their kind not that long ago. End of story?

Not really. Experts, such as Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, say that for technical reasons a small number of tech companies may soon largely determine what can and cannot be online. Some argue that Silicon Valley is abusing its monopoly power over the Internet to suppress free speech. These critics would have Congress regulate the companies as a natural monopoly in order to restore basic rights.

Is there truly such a monopoly over the Internet? After reading that Facebook employees were suppressing conservative articles, Andrew Torba created Gab, a social-networking service open to voices from the right. Gab isnt as popular as Facebook, but its existence does show that the dominant companies do not have a stranglehold on speech.

In any case, these decisions to deny service do not violate the freedom of speech. The First Amendment applies only to government actions. The man posting at @realdonaldtrump, arguably acting as a private citizen exempt from the First Amendment, may block comments critical of his posts. If the same man posts at @WhiteHouse, he is a government official and may not abridge the freedom of speech by blocking critics. PayPal and Google are private corporations, not the government. Moreover, in our nation businesses usually have no obligation to serve others if they do not wish to do so. That too is part of the free market.

Still, Americans in general and conservatives in particular have reason to suspect the tech companies might not be neutral toward content on the Internet. The James Damore case in which a Google engineer circulated a memo suggesting the tech giant hired and promoted based on gender and race indicates the leaders and employees of Google have strong leftwing political views. Indeed, Silicon Valley is known to lean to the left. Its not implausible to imagine that censorship of certain views might ensue.

What then can be done to protect free speech without the courts?

If [internet companies] use their power to exclude in an arbitrary and political way, the nation will be worse off and the companies may suffer and not just at the bottom line.

Markets will do part of the job. These companies are unlikely to deny service to mainstream political voices. After all, a person evicted from a service is no longer a paying customer, and their eviction might convince others to depart. Driving diversity critics out of Google would forego considerable revenue. Many people, not just extremists, have reasonable doubts about aspects of diversity policies.

Fear of the government will also constrain Internet censorship. Critics want to make Internet companies into public utilities because alt-right extremists have been denied service. Imagine what would happen if more legitimate voices were evicted from Google and the federal government responded by forcing the companies to behave better.

No one should want that. Law professor Danielle Citron has suggested several ways Internet companies can protect speech online.

First, affirm a commitment to American norms about free speech. The Internet giants operate globally, subjecting them to European regulations that offer less protection for free speech than does the United States. Europeans punish speech offensive to groups or religions (so-called hate speech) that we protect. American law draws the liberty line for speech at incitement to violence.

The companies mentioned promoting hate and violence as justification for evicting the alt-right. They seem to be following European norms. So far as the companies have discretion, they should affirm their support for the more liberal American norms. They should clearly define speech that will lead to being banned from a platform. That definition should focus on a close connection between problematic speech and violence and not on ambiguous terms like hate speech.

Second, companies should enact private due process for their regulation of speech. Clear definitions of the rules are essential in avoiding arbitrary and personal decisions about banning speech. The process of applying such rules should also be public. That could mean a formal public statement by the company of the rationale for banning some users of their social networks. It might also mean being public about how a company goes about identifying and prohibiting problematic speech. Such transparency about rules and methods will be open to public comment and inevitably criticism. It may also build trust among critics who fear arbitrary and politicized attacks on political speech.

Third, Internet companies should appoint an ombudsman to inform and report on their regulation of speech. They would act as a voice for free speech inside a company, a voice that should be dedicated to American norms on speech.

Internet companies are not the government. They can exclude speech from their domains without violating the First Amendment. But if they use their power to exclude in an arbitrary and political way, the nation will be worse off and the companies may suffer and not just at the bottom line.

John Samples is vice president and publisher at the Cato Institute.

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So, just how guaranteed is your freedom of speech online? - New York Post

Sentinel Editorial Board

From time to time at pivotal points in U.S. history, Americans have been challenged to reassess the meaning and the gravity of one of the greatest gifts in our democracy: our right to free speech.

Freedom of speech is the concept of the inherent human right to voice ones opinion freely and publicly with the exceptions of defamation (lying) and incitement (encouraging others to violence or panic) without fear of censorship or punishment.

As the First Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press[.]

But just because you can say something, doesnt mean you should or that there arent consequences for your words.

Every citizen is held responsible for the exercise of this right, meaning careless comments and unguarded remarks can land you in trouble if you do not exercise your rights responsibly. For example, you can be fired from your job over your speech.

The right to free speech only protects people from government interference. Private sector companies are a whole different story, and private companies are typically free to discipline employees for speech, such as comments posted on social media. (For public employees, the law is a bit more complex, although not all speech and action is protected.)

This is not to call for censorship, but it is to call for taking personal responsibility for minding our mouths.

And in a world where the online realm inserts distance, anonymity and speed into our social interactions, it makes it acceptable for many to dehumanize others. But the internet does not remove the person at the receiving end of your interaction. That person sitting in front of the screen, reading your words, is still very much real.

And they have the freedom of speech to respond, which could come in the form of a civil lawsuit if the subject of your speech believes you have defamed him or her published false and malicious comments.

The First Amendment exists to allow all of our voices to be heard, not to grant one voice the right to drown out all others, columnist Allison Press wrote in the Technician, the student newspaper of North Carolina State University in 2015. The First Amendment is not there to be used as an excuse for a poorly formulated opinion, an offhand sexist slur, or a rude retaliation. The First Amendment does not excuse you from basic respect, from critical thought, from kindness. Your First Amendment right should not be held higher than your sense of humanity.

Inflammatory speech anything short of inciting or producing imminent lawless action usually is followed by free-speech absolutists insistence on the right to offend, insult or humiliate. However, it has ramifications and repercussions that have the potential to reach deep and cost dearly.

Each of us has the ability to heap verbal fire on the tinder.

Freedom of speech does not mean you get to say whatever you want without consequences. It simply means the government can't stop you from saying it. It also means others get to say what they think about your words something to consider beforehand.

Likewise, freedom of speech does not equate to access to platform, meaning we dont have a fundamental right to have our words published by a private institution, say a newspaper. You can shout your words on the street corner, start up a blog, launch your own publication, fire off on your Facebook page, but you cant compel or force another person or business to publish your comments.

If there were such a rule, it most certainly would abridge the rights of others (see First Amendment definition above).

Its not an easy concept to navigate when we live in a world where we can have a thought and have it composed and published in less time than it takes to brew a K-cup.

Being responsible is hard, hard work, writer and playwright Carla Seaquist wrote in the Huffington Post in 2015. The reptilian exists in all of us, in responsible people, too, but its our responsibility to subdue that beast the struggle of civilization and its discontents and speak and act in ways that, for the greater good, enhance human dignity.

Perhaps thats something weve lost somewhere along the way remembering that were human and that our words wield immense power. And with great power comes great responsibility.

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Our View: With freedom of speech comes great responsibility - HollandSentinel.com

The denial of first amendment rightsled to the political violence that we saw yesterday. That was how Jason Kessler, who organized last weekends far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, explained the actions of an extremist who rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one of them. Like many on the far right, Kessler was claiming that displays of hate needed to be protected as free speechor else.

The US constitutions first amendment protects free speech much more strongly than in most democraciesa German-style law against holocaust denial would never stand in the US, for exampleand Americans support the right to say offensive things more strongly than other nations, a Pew survey found last year. But for a long time, free speech was a core concern of the left in America, not the right.

When the National Review [a leading conservative magazine] was first published in the 1950s, the vast majority of articles addressing free speech and the first amendment were critical of free expression and its proponents, says Wayne Batchis, a professor at the University of Delaware and author of The Rights First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech & the Return of Conservative Libertarianism. Today, review of its contents reveals the precise opposite.

What prompted the shift, Batchis says, was the rise of a concept that quickly became a favorite target of the right: political correctness. As Moira Weigel wrote in The Guardian last year, the concept rose to fame in the late 1980s. After existing in leftist circles as a humorous label for excessive liberal orthodoxy, it was co-opted by the right and framed as a form of limitation of free speech.

In 1990, New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein (paywall) used political correctness to refer to what he perceived as a growing intolerance on university campuses for views that diverged from mainstream liberalism. In a span of only a few months, stories about political correctness (some even deeming it a form of fascism) became commonplace in columns and on magazine covers. Before the 1990s, Weigel reports, the term was hardly ever used in the media; in 1992, it was used 6,000 times.

The idea became a centerpiece of right-wing theory, eventually leading to the popularity of the Tea Party and the election of a president, Donald Trump, who made the shunning of political correctness a political trademark.

But fighting political correctness wasnt the only thing that encouraged conservatives to embrace free speech. Money was also an incentive. Over the past decade the party has increasingly opposed any form of campaign-finance regulation, arguing that political donations are a form of free speech. Its reward came in the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United, which allowed companies and trade unions to give unlimited donations to political causes. Liberals commonly oppose this view on the grounds, Batchis says, that spending money should not be treated as a form of speech.

In the event, both Republicans and Democrats have benefited from that ruling. Indeed, in last years election, Hillary Clinton raised $218 million from super PACS, the fundraising organizations that sprang up in the wake of Citizens Unitednearly three times as much as Donald Trump. During the primaries, though, the candidates for the Republican nomination collectively raised close to $400 million (paywall) from super PACs.

Conservatives have supported freedom of speech more consistently than liberals, even when its speech that goes against their views, according to Batchis. My research does suggest that even on hot-button issues like patriotism and traditional morality, many on the right have moved in a more speech-protective direction, he says. By contrast, progressives have been more likely to advocate constraints, particularly on speech that was seen as harmful to racial minorities and women, he says.

Still, there are exceptions to this rule on both sides. Many liberals still hold to the ACLU-style civil libertarian tradition even in the face of hate speech, says Batchis, while moralistic conservatives have advocated limitations on free speech such a ban on flag burning.

In the wake of Charlottesville, the California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union declared that the First Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence. If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in protected free speech. And indeed, direct threats arent protected (pdf, pp. 3-4) by the first amendment. But to count as a threat, speech has to incite imminent lawless action, in the words of a 1969 Supreme Court ruling; merely advocating violence is allowed. That is why neo-Nazis are allowed to march, and to cast themselves as free-speech champions.

Excerpt from:
Is hate speech protected by American law? Quartz - Quartz

In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism. Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflares CEO: Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldnt be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.

We agree. Even for free speech advocates, this situation is deeply fraught with emotional, logistical, and legal twists and turns. All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. But we must also recognize that on the Internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with. Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group. In the Civil Rights Era cases that formed the basis of todays protections of freedom of speech, the NAACPs voice was the one attacked.

Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no onenot the government and not private commercial enterprisesshould decide who gets to speak and who doesnt.

Earlier this week, following complaints about a vitriolic and abusive Daily Stormer article on Heather Heyerthe woman killed when a white nationalist drove a car into a crowd of anti-racism demonstratorsGoDaddy told the sites owners that they had 24 hours to leave their service. Daily Stormer subsequently moved their domain to Googles domain management service. Within hours Google announced that it too was refusing Daily Stormer as a customer. Google also placed the dailystormer.com domain on Client Hold, which means that Daily Stormers owner cannot activate, use or move the domain to another service. Its unclear whether this is for a limited amount of time, or whether Google has decided to effectively take ownership of the dailystormer.com domain permanently. Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, subsequently dropped them as a customer.

We at EFF defend the right of anyone to choose what speech they provide online; platforms have a First Amendment right to decide what speech does and does not appear on their platforms. Thats what laws like CDA 230 in the United States enable and protect.

But we strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous. Thats because, even when the facts are the most vile, we must remain vigilant when platforms exercise these rights. Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world. And at EFF we see the consequences first hand: every time a company throws a vile neo-Nazi site off the Net, thousands of less visible decisions are made by companies with little oversight or transparency. Precedents being set now can shift the justice of those removals. Heres what companies and individuals should watch for in these troubling times.

Domain registrars are one of many types of companies in the chain of online content distributionthe Internet intermediaries positioned between the writer or poster of speech and the reader of that speech. Other intermediaries include the ISP that delivers a websites content to end users, the certificate authority (such as EFFs Lets Encrypt) that issues an SSL certificate to the website, the content delivery network that optimizes the availability and performance of the website, the web hosting company that provides server space for the website, and even communications platformssuch as email providers and social media companiesthat allow the websites URLs to be easily shared. EFF has a handy chart of some of those key links between speakers and their audience here.

The domain name system is a key part of the Internets technical underpinnings, which are enabled by an often-fragile consensus among many systems and operators. Using that system to edit speech, based on potentially conflicting opinions about what can be spoken on the Internet, risks shattering that consensus. Domain suspension is a blunt instrument: suspending the domain name of a website or Internet service makes everything hosted there difficult or impossible to access. The risk of blocking speech that wasnt targeted is very high.

Domain name companies also have little claim to be publishers, or speakers in their own right, with respect to the contents of websites. Like the suppliers of ink or electrical power to a pamphleteer, the companies that sponsor domain name registrations have no direct connection to Internet content. Domain name registrars have even less connection to speech than a conduit provider such as an ISP, as the contents of a website or service never touch the registrars systems. Registrars interests as speakers under the First Amendment are minimal.

If the entities that run the domain name system started choosing who could access or add to them based on political considerations, we might well face a world where every government and powerful body would see itself as an equal or more legitimate invoker of that power. That makes the domain name system unsuitable as a mechanism for taking down specific illegal content as the law sometimes requires, and a perennially attractive central location for nation-states and others to exercise much broader takedown powers.

Another lever that states and malicious actors often reach for when seeking to censor legitimate voices is through denial-of-service attacks. States and criminals alike use this to silence voices, and the Net's defenses against such actions are not well-developed. Services like Cloudflare can protect against these attacks, but not if they also face direct pressure from governments and other actors to pick and choose their clients. Content delivery networks are not wired into the infrastructure of the Net in the way that the domain name system is, but at this point, they may as well be.

These are parts of the Net that are most sensitive to pervasive censorship: they are free speechs weakest links. Its the reason why millions of net neutrality advocates are concerned about ISPs censoring their feeds. Or why, when the handful of global payment processors unite to block certain websites (like Wikileaks) worldwide, we should be concerned. These weak links are both the most tempting, and most egregiously damaging places, to filter the Net.

The firmest, most consistent, defense these potential weak links can take is to simply decline all attempts to use them as a control point. They can act to defend their role as a conduit, rather than a publisher. And just as law and custom developed a norm that we might sue a publisher for defamation, but not the owner of a printing press, or newspaper vendor, we are slowly developing norms about who should take responsibility for content online. Companies that manage domain names, including GoDaddy and Google, should draw a hard line: they should not suspend or impair domain names based on the expressive content of websites or services.

Other elements of the Net risk less when they are selective about who they host. But even for hosts, theres always a risk that othersincluding governmentswill use the opaqueness of the takedown process to silence legitimate voices. For any content hosts that do reject content as part of the enforcement of their terms of service, we have long recommended that they implement procedural protections to mitigate mistakes, or are pressured by states to secretly censorspecifically, the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability. The principles state, in part:

These are methods that protect us all against overbroad or arbitrary takedowns. Its notable that in GoDaddy and Googles eagerness to swiftly distance themselves from American neo-Nazis, no process was followed; CloudFlares Prince also admitted that the decision was not CloudFlares policy. Policies give guidance as to what we might expect, and an opportunity to see justice is done. We should think carefully before throwing them away.

It might seem unlikely now that Internet companies would turn against sites supporting racial justice or other controversial issues. But if there is a single reason why so many individuals and companies are acting together now to unite against neo-Nazis, it is because a future that seemed unlikely a few years agothat white nationalists and Nazis now have significant power and influence in our societynow seems possible. We would be making a mistake if we assumed that these sorts of censorship decisions would never turn against causes we love.

Part of the work for all of us now is to push back against such dangerous decisions with our own voices and actions. Another part of our work must be to seek to shore up the weakest parts of the Internets infrastructure so it cannot be easily toppled if matters take a turn for the (even) worse. These actions are not in opposition; they are to the same ends.

We canand we mustdo both.

Continued here:
Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression - EFF

Photo Joshua Wong during an October 2014 protest outside the offices of Hong Kongs chief executive. Credit Tyrone Siu/Reuters

To the Editor:

Re Three Young Voices Versus a Superpower (editorial, Aug. 15):

The three students were convicted because their disorderly and intimidating behavior broke the law during a protest. They were found guilty based on evidence presented in a fair and open trial.

Under Hong Kongs common law legal system, like others around the world, both the prosecution and the convicted can seek an appeal of sentence. The court will consider the case independently, fairly and openly. There is simply no basis to imply that political motive or the students political views are the reason for the appeal.

Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are protected in Hong Kongs Basic Law, our constitutional document, and underpinned by the rule of law and an independent judiciary. Hong Kongs judicial independence is ranked eighth globally by the World Economic Forum (the United States is 29th).

Your eagerness to label the alleged kidnapping case of Howard Lam, a member of Hong Kongs Democratic Party, as a brazen crackdown is also wide of the mark. Independent journalists have published evidence that contradicts his allegations. Mr. Lam has since been arrested on suspicion of misleading the police by false information.

CLEMENT LEUNG, WASHINGTON

The writer is Hong Kongs commissioner to the United States.

See the rest here:
Free Speech and Assembly in Hong Kong - New York Times