Hacker News Reader

Comment by dschuler | Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com