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Comment by xaa | Hacker News Reader

If the laws were the same in the US, and I called Donald Trump an idiot, would I have to furnish an IQ test? If I wrote that Ballmer/Nadella was incompetent and Microsoft products are crap?

I guess the problem is that the nature of speech often results in opinion-based insults being interpretable as a literal factual claim, and that the benefits of people being able to express their opinions freely generally outweigh the potential reputational costs to insulted individuals.

It is really analogous to the ongoing debate in US universities about whether mere words can cause such a high degree of harm as to be actionable. I think they can cause harm, but that the chilling effects caused by restricting speech are almost always greater.

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> If the laws were the same in the US, and I called Donald Trump an idiot, would I have to furnish an IQ test? If I wrote that Ballmer/Nadella was incompetent and Microsoft products are crap?

You can say all of that in England.

Before someone can take a case of defamation through the courts they have to show there's actual or probable serious harm. (For for-profit companies that would be serious monetary loss).

The defences are that the comment is true; or that it's honest opinion, or that it's a matter of public interest, or that it's in a privileged publication (which includes peer reviewed journals).

When you say "Trump is an idiot" he can't show any harm at all, let alone serious harm; and it's an opinion that many people have.

When you say "Ballmer / Nadella are incompetent" either they personally have to show serious harm (and they can't) or Microsoft has to show serious financial harm (and it can't). And it's an opinion that while strongly held and expressed is expressed by many people.

> but that the chilling effects caused by restricting speech are almost always greater.

If I take a photograph of you and make a flyer saying "XAA RAPES CHILDREN" and spread that around your workplace and your local community you probably want a few methods to make that stop. One would be harassment law. Another would be defamation law. This is really the only kind of thing stopped by English law.

(Are you aware that the English law changed in 2013? Are you talking about the old law? I agree that was terrible.)

I am aware the law changed, now; admittedly I didn't until reading other replies to my OP. And I am not familiar with the nuance. We certainly have defamation laws in the US as well, so there's that.

I think criminalizing (or even "tortifying") lies is completely unworkable. This kind of edifice has to be full of exceptions to avoid immediately collapsing under its own weight. In the average political campaign (US or UK), how many lies are told that cause harm to a candidate's reputation or future employment prospects? One a day, conservatively.

The real linchpin is whether these laws are used in practice to protect the powerful from criticism, or normal people from vindictive harassment as you suggest in your example.

If your example actually happened, I think that first, people would ask the person claiming "XAA RAPES CHILDREN" for evidence. If the claimant failed to provide it, listeners would rightly view them as crazy. In any case, it is unlikely I could afford to prosecute it, especially if it caused me harm to the extent of causing me to lose my job or something.

Like everything in law, it's complicated and has pros and cons. My personal bias is to lean towards free speech if individual cases are in doubt.

>If your example actually happened, I think that first, people would ask the person claiming "XAA RAPES CHILDREN" for evidence.

This has happened. A national newspaper (yes, the one involved in phone hacking) began a campaign to name and shame child sex offenders.

A woman's house was attacked. Far from being a paedophile, she was in fact a paediatrician.

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