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Comment by alphaalpha101 | Hacker News Reader

The USA doesn't have freedom of speech in any meaningful sense. You only have to look at the way peaceful protestors are treated to see that. The Occupy Wall Street protesters were treated horrifically.

As more and more formerly public places are privatised and the veneration of private property as an ideal above all others continues, the USA is simply running out of places where you're even allowed to protest. And that's not even considering so-called 'free speech zones', as if free speech is limited to a fucking place.

This is free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikoi#/media/File:Hikoi_FS.JPG

In the USA these people would be arrested for blocking a road.

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Blocking a road is not free speech. Preventing people from going into a building is not free speech. This is just private citizens attempting to restrict the right of movement of other private citizens.

The right to publish any media, no matter how obscene or political, is free speech. And the US has the closest to free speech of any major country.

> The right to publish any media, no matter how obscene or political, is free speech. And the US has the closest to free speech of any major country.

When it comes to freedom of the press, Reporters Without Borders rates the US quite poorly - it's down at #43, with the UK at #40. When it comes to anglo cultures, the highest any of the 'five eyes' gets is New Zealand, at #13.

There is a difference between law and implementation.

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

That ranking has little to do with free speech. In most of the countries with the best scores blasphemy is illegal.

And in the US, there are states where an atheist is legally barred from being governor. And you can be pretty sure that blaspheming in the nations listed with the best scores will be more acceptable than blaspheming in the religiose US.

As I said, there is a difference between law and implementation.

Also, it's not true that the top-scorers have blasphemy laws - most of them don't have one at all at the moment, and the ones that did were mostly used in the early part of last century (and rarely at that). Even Germany's 'blasphemy' law is actually a 'disturbing the peace' law; you're not going to go to jail for saying 'christ' when you hit your thumb with a hammer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law

> no matter how obscene

Not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Diana

> or political

Also not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason_laws_in_the_United_Sta...

I'd recommend reading up on these:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_of_...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_broadcasting_in_...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

I was just defining what free speech was, not saying the US has 100% free speech now, or that the US had good free speech pre-internet.

>Blocking a road is not free speech. Preventing people from going into a building is not free speech. This is just private citizens attempting to restrict the right of movement of other private citizens.

It's a march. It's a protest. Protesting is free speech. Of course it's free speech.

>The right to publish any media, no matter how obscene or political, is free speech. And the US has the closest to free speech of any major country.

No, that's freedom of the press. Freedom of speech is about protesting.

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