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Comment by stuart78 | Hacker News Reader

The issue is who gets to define 'hate' or any other limited category of speech. You might feel that Canada's limits are benevolent, but the existence of such laws codifies the avenue of their corruption. The risk is that such limits grow more and more restrictive until disagreement is unacceptable.

Personally, I'll continue to defend the US model. Speech should have no legal limits, but that doesn't meant it doesn't have civic consequences. Those who disagree are free to do so publicly, repeatedly and loudly.

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> I'll continue to defend the US model. Speech should have no legal limits

And honestly this is the weirdest fucking thing: there’s _plenty_ of legal limits to free speech in the US, and yet there’s this loud section of Americans who believe the particular lines drawn in the US were etched in stone or something.

> there’s _plenty_ of legal limits to free speech in the US

Not really? The limits are essentially directly inciting violence, directly threatening, and knowingly aiding someone in the commission of a crime (ie literally coaching someone else on how to break the law). That's not "plenty", that's really the bare minimum (and exactly how it should be, from my perspective at least).

Edit: Crap, just realized I forgot about our ridiculous obscenity limitations. Those shouldn't exist IMO, but to be fair about the only thing that's managed to run afoul of them so far is literal bestiality porn. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/15/) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/535/234.html)

Right, apart from incitement to violence, words liable to cause breach of the peace, threatening speech, obscenity, defamation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, campaign financing, speech by government employees, many forms of national security related speech, and instruction on how to make weapons, what speech is banned?!?

Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood and have caused measurable harm if I understand correctly. That really seems like the absolute minimum of limitations to me if we're going to have a hope of maintaining a functional democracy. (We've got laws against false advertising as well ...)

Campaign financing - Notorious for enjoying minimal regulation in the US relative to other developed countries. Again I'm not sure how else a functional democracy is supposed to be maintained?

Invasion of privacy - I'm a bit fuzzy on this one. Are you referring to things like HIPAA, or to something else? Bear in mind that such regulations only apply to the professionals who are already authorized to view the data. To me it seems similar to the confidentiality you enjoy when talking to an attorney.

I already noted that I disagree with the existence of obscenity restrictions. The other ones you mention (national security, government employees, emotional distress) are fairly nuanced and quite limited as far as I understand. The vast majority of restrictions seem to boil down to the generic idea of knowingly and intentionally working to break some law that isn't itself related to speech.

I just can't seem to get too worked up over such a practical set of restrictions myself. Does it bother you that you can't legally incite a mob, or intentionally teach an aspiring terrorist to manufacture explosives? Or do you just object to my characterization of that as being a minimal set of restrictions? But if that isn't minimal, then what is?

> Defamation - A famously high bar in the US. It has to be a knowing and intentional falsehood

No, it doesn’t. Even the narrow standard applied when a public figure is the subject (“actual malice”) can be satisfied either by the speaker/publisher knowing the material is false or speaking/publishing it with reckless disregard for whether it is true or false.

I don't think there should be any limitation on the right to freedom-of-speech except that strictly necessary to be compatible with other natural rights, like the right to your life. The classic ban on shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater can be justified entirely on this ground, because that utterance may cause people to be trampled when people panic. It is not clear that libel laws can be defended on similar grounds, or such grounds at the very least would severely limit the reach of libel laws.

> except that strictly necessary to be compatible with other natural rights

Sure, and that’s exactly the basis for it in most rich free countries. You’ll find some social and historic wrinkles, but there’s very little you can’t say in Canada that you can say in America.

The Canadians don’t make a whole dog and pony show over MY FREE SPEECH RIGHTS though, which is why Canadian politics is a little less completely beholden to special interests, why hate speech is illegal there, and why you don’t get direct-to-consumer pharma advertising there.

The non-seriousness of Canadians about free speech is part of the reason I was happy to move to America. I used to defend hate speech laws (as in formal public debate), but in hindsight I was naive about putting the power to define hate speech in a political process. Such laws and their brethren in private organizations that nominally exist to promote public discourse, are used to silence opposition and therefore I find them repellent.

> The classic ban on shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater can be justified entirely on this ground

Falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is currently allowed per the Supreme Court [0], as of Brandenburg v. Ohio [1], as it is not an incitement to imminent, lawless behavior. The "classic ban", incidentally, was actually a ban on speech opposing the draft during WW1. The "falsely shouting fire in a theater" analogy was created by judges to justify banning anti-draft leaflets.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

> the existence of such laws codifies the avenue of their corruption

As a practical example, consider China's recent "security" law that allows only "patriots" to run for political office.

For something a bit closer to home, looking at various ToS and codes of conduct reveals how wildly definitions of "hate speech" vary in the US alone.

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