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Comment by Mvandenbergh | Hacker News Reader

If they'd just generally called for a riot that would be one thing (possibly still illegal), these guys set a particular time and place which is what did them in.

Blackshaw at least (because he actually showed up for his planned riot, the other chap didn't) would go to prison if he did this anywhere in the world. Even in the USA with its extremely strong protections for speech, inviting people to meet at a set place and time for the purpose of rioting is illegal.

Even Sutcliffe-Keenan (who at least was smart enough to delete his event from facebook after he sobered up) basically did the equivalent of calling a bomb-threat.

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Hey we're "having a riot" out by the McDonalds on Orangethorpe Avenue in Anaheim tomorrow at 4pm. Hope you can make it, assuming free speech still exists in the US, unlike the british police state we fought to free ourselves from.

PS come and get me coppers.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=laugh%20riot

Free speech does not include planning a riot, any more than it does threatening to kill someone. This is one of the few exceptions to otherwise very strong rights to say whatever you want.

If you decide to come to the riot, could you bring the desert plates? Just a sack of 500 paper ones would be fine.

Famous case from World War I. There was a socialist party guy, Charles Schenck, who thought war was a bunch of BS and the draft was slavery. He printed up 15,000 tracts and passed them out to people. Oliver Wendall Holmes, a fascist if there ever was one, said that criticizing the government was the same thing as "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" and you had no right to to such a thing that might bring about a riot. So they sent Schenck to prison.

That was the wrong decision. As you are wrong here.

The problem with this nonsense is it is provoking people to go from posting gag calls for rioting to realizing the situation is so bad rioting isn't enough. Armed revolution is what is needed. The violent overthrow of the government is inevitable at this point.

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