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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

The irony that freedom of speech is more protected in Germany than in the US.

There is actually _less_ legal protection for speech in Germany than the US.

For instance, it's against the law to insult a government official like a cop (Beamtenbeleidigung). This could mean saying something like "damn cops" in earshot of the police - it doesn't take much.

You could argue that courts aren't as accessible in the US as they should be without deep pockets (rightfully so), but fundamentally free speech _is_ much better protected in the US.

> Beamtenbeleidigung

In Austria and Germany insulting a government official is handled by the same law as insulting a normal citizen is (except for that also the superior can file charges for subordinates).

[German] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamtenbeleidigung

According to the one law in this link (German law §90 StGB), offending the president of Germany carries a penalty of anywhere from 3 months to 5 years prison. This can even apply in private matters.

Speaking of Austria, blasphemy laws still apply there and were upheld by an EU court when challenged two years ago [1].

[1] https://humanism.org.uk/2018/10/29/european-court-of-human-r...

People talk a lot about the UK's strict defamation laws, but the German concept of "Beleidigung" goes much much further. It's against the law to give someone the middle finger, for example.

It seems like the concept of psychological injury is treated as a second class event where often it can leave scars for years or even lifetime.

Could you expand on what you mean by that? I assume you don't mean someone giving someone else the middle finger.

This is an extreme, but for example telling someone mean things can have a lasting impact.

Certainly, that’s true. There are many ways to hurt others with words, even avoiding definitions that would be against the law in Germany.

This is a bit personal, but my brothers and I grew up in Germany with a father who was verbally and emotionally abusive. However, he didn’t break any laws regarding offensive speech at least.

Ironically legislating against offensive speech protects people from superficial harm of “offense”, causes a chilling effect by curtailing “offensive” speech (what can you say about a corrupt cop in Germany or France without breaking the law?), and does little to prevent actually emotionally abusive speech.

Obviously my views are biased by my own experience, but I think the US is two _centuries_ ahead of the curve here while Europe still struggles with the ghosts of former monarchs.

Current monarchs even. In the Netherlands just a few years ago, people were jailed for spray painting and shouting 'Fuck de Koning'.

No that case was dropped [0]. The logic of that law is that you shouldn't be allowed to insult someone who does not have free speech himself, and so cannot defend himself. But it's pretty much a dead letter.

[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2038180-fuck-de-koning-roeper-niet-la...

The case was dropped, but only after he was arrested and put in a cell; I don't know the intricacies of this, a cell probably is not a jail. But "behind bars" is what I meant.

I dunno if it's a "second class event"; I'd say it's just tricky to adjudicate. there are a lot of ways to seriously hurt someone's feelings that should not be illegal.

That has to do with order. Insulting people is not considered orderly, hence the possible penalties. You can however insult people using the language twisted the right way and not pose yourself at risk. I wouldnt call this concept reduction of free speech, when in fact all it takes away is the liberty to insult someone in certain ways.

> I wouldnt call this concept reduction of free speech, when in fact all it takes away is the liberty to insult someone in certain ways.

But that's plainly a curtailment of speech. A rose by any other name, etc., etc. Perhaps the restriction is just in your view, but it is what it is.

> You could argue that courts aren't as accessible in the US as they should be without deep pockets (rightfully so)

Are you saying that it's ok/good for people with less money to have worse access to courts than people with more money? If so, why?

I read the last part of the sentence (rightfully so) in the best case to refer to the argument that courts aren't as accessible as they could be, rather than the current state being right. Ambiguous but probably well meant.

Good catch, I should clarify - one could rightfully argue that free speech is not available to all if the legal system is not affordable to everyone. It’s a serious shortcoming of the justice system.

It's still listed in the law that you're not allowed to insult royalty, but that does not appear to be enforced. For example, see Böhmermann insulting Erdogan on national TV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair

https://archive.org/details/SchmhkritikAnRecepTayyipErdoanzd...

Here's a transcript: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

Imagine doing such a poem about Trump in the US. I believe the author would be punished much more harshly than this guy, who even managed to keep his job...

the text doesn't load for me in the translated version for some reason so I can't comment directly on the poem.

it's hard to imagine any legal action taken against someone who wrote an insulting poem about trump though. people say stuff like "I hope he dies" on social media every day.

I have a hard time believing that a CNN announcer would keep his/her job after saying this about Trump on national TV:

"His dick stinks badly like kebab, even a pig's fart smells nicer. He is the man who beats girls while wearing rubber masks. Most of all he likes to fuck goats and oppress minorities."

But like Wikipedia says, Böhmerman retained his job. In my opinion, that's the difference. A higher level of tolerance for speech that most people disagree with.

Germany only revoked their lèse-majesté law in 2017.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-revokes-lese-majeste-law/a-390...

Famously, games in the Wolfenstein series are pretty heavily censored in Germany:

https://kotaku.com/wolfenstein-2-has-a-strange-workaround-fo...

As a European, I can't find any irony in that. It seems completely normal to me.

And why exactly would that be ironic?

One of 4chan's favorite past times is discussing which country has more freedom of speech. It always ends in a massive flamewar and I can only recommend not to repeat that here.

I was asking where the irony would be coming from, and not whether the attached statement was factual.

That's not ironic. They spilled blood over it much more recently than we have.

They did?

I don't think it'd be ironic, but it's also not true. It's obviously not a free speech issue, and Germany has laws regarding copyright and circumvention of constraints. I doubt a large company would have taken the same route, uberspace is just generally pretty cool and user friendly.

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