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Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

> Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater has been widely accepted as harmful speech and as such is not free.

So if speech is harmful it can be banned? That's an interesting new exemption.

Freedoms, rights, and laws don't exist in a void. At least in the United States, they exist to better the welfare of the people. It's not a "new exemption" - jails do exactly that: limit one person's rights and freedoms to maintain those of others.

A very interesting, very old exemption. Its been around for generations, and is pretty much the entire topic around all issues of what is allowable and what is not.

So Holocaust denial should be banned because it's harmful?

That's the law in Germany.

Which is a bad law, it simply opens the door for banning other "harmful" speech that somebody gets to decide for everybody else. It's the old shameful joke that no one reads history so they keep repeating it.

The legacy of Nazi Germany is a national shame. Millions of people cannot be un-murdered. It could have also resulted in much worse conditions for Germans and national sovereignty (like America's domination of Japan's postwar constitution).

Banning holocaust denial is the national equivalent of recoiling one's hand after touching a hot stove. Most Germans really, really do not want to go back there.

I'm not saying they need or will go back there. I'm saying that the act of banning one type of speech always leads to a group with power and not so honorable intentions the ability to ban speech they don't like. The law is already there for that.

No right is unlimited, and that isn't new. You waive your rights when they directly endanger other people's rights. You don't have a right to life if you're about to kill someone, you don't have a right to liberty if you're a danger to the public, you don't have a right to free speech if your speech is directly harming people.

These are very basic and very old exemptions.

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