This disturbs me on the grounds of "bad habit" precedent alone. Getting accustomed to self-censorship is almost as bad as having it mandated.
A 'slippery slope' argument doesn't hold up for me in this particular case.
EDIT: alright, maybe not literally. But I maintain that the video is hate speech, and that a different standard on "censorship" should apply here.
What if you have someone release a highly critical video of a massively corrupt leader of a country and its citizens begin to rage over it when the rest of the world knows they are just uneducated and don't know any better? A farfetched situation, but still. This is essentially what is happening: masses of uneducated people in somewhat-developing countries are upset over others desecrating their sacred religion. How much longer is this kowtowing to animals going to continue?
Also: The UK for years[1] had laws dealing with Blasphemy (a crime that could only be committed against the Christian church) and laws that dealt with racial prejudice. Since Islam is not christian, nor a race, muslims were left unprotected.
You may argue that Christians and jews should not have those protections. I hope you'd agree that it's iniquitous for one group to be left out of the protection of the law.
[1] This was changed in 2006 with the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Act. Blasphemy was later repealed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_and_Religious_Hatred_Act...)
No set of beliefs should be so sacrosanct that the government must act to shield their fragile believers' minds from the criticism of others.
> No set of beliefs should be so sacrosanct that the government must act to shield their fragile believers' minds from the criticism of others.
Let's not forget that 3,500 people died (and 47,000 were injured) during "the Troubles" which had sectarian religious aspects. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles)
Is that true? The video is alleged to insult Muhammad who is revered in Islam, but does it slander individual, living human beings or classes of human beings.
In other words, while so-called "hate speech" is indeed offensive, not everything that offends some people is "hate speech".
For example, the recent mural by the Taiwanese businessman in Oregon (http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/12/13833952-china-as...) is clearly protected political speech, and obviously nobody died because of it. However, if it led to violent reactions in China that resulted in some deaths, should it be suppressed?
Now, religion could be argued to be in a different category; however, I have a hard time accepting that argument due to the politicization of religion. As long as a religion has political implications, speech critical of it should be protected in the same way other political speech is protected.
That doesn't mean you should be able to explicitly encourage violence against members of a religion, but it does mean that Southpark and a Danish cartoon should be allowed to parody religion to make a political point.
Obviously the middle east is very complicated place, but ultimately even people in a mob should be held accountable for their actions [1], so the blame lies with the killers, not the makers of a film; nor the leaders who espouse a hateful philosophy [2] that justified the killing, although I'd certainly blame them more than some film.
[1] See the widespread rioting and looting in the UK last year, some of which was justified by the perpetrators as political, but all of which was prosecuted as criminal.
[2] I mean, if one American does something you don't like, how does that mean you can (and should) kill another one (or more)? I want to think it's more nuanced than that, but I don't see how.
You say that it should be taken down because it 'caused the deaths of several people' - the implication is that belief systems deserve more protection if their adherents are more willing to commit murder in retaliation.
We know you can't control all the bees once you get them riled up, so you're still an asshole if you intentionally put others at risk.
Free speech may give the film-maker the right to be an asshole, but it doesn't change the fact that he's an asshole.
Muslims have (I could say religious extremists, but the killers are mulims) caused the death 6 or 7 by now, plus insane property damage.
And Google should not be required to remove or keep the video online. It is their service, which means it is their property.
But removing it means that the next time somebody else can claim that 'you did it with this movie' which could result in bad PR.
There's a lot of fallacious thinking going on here. There's probably some sophisticated name for this type of fallacy, but I don't know what it is. Just because the attackers were wrong for killing innocent people, doesn't make this hate video "right". False dichotomy, maybe?
Freedom of speech is about serving truth. It is an expression of the idea is that no one should be silenced for speaking about the truth. If someone is saying something demonstratively false, and that speech is endangering the public, then they should be silenced. This is the same reason you can't expect first amendment protection if you walk in to a theater shouting "FIRE".
So, to get this straight, speech is not protected by our first amendment ideology when it:
* Is demonstrably untrue
* Endangers the public
It's pretty easy to see that both of these conditions are met with regard to this video.
* Is demonstrably untrue
* Endangers the public
The first amendment guarantees freedom of religion.
First, we should be clear that the two conditions above are bound by a logical "AND", not "OR". This means that both must be true in order to circumvent first amendment protection.
Also, all expressions of "freedom of religion" do not endanger the public. First amendment protection is about acts, not ideologies. Ironically, it is difficult to prove the second condition until some negative consequence has already occurred. This is the case with many of our laws. Look how hard it is to stop a stalker prior to their actual assault on a victim.
Free speech is in principle the right to speak the truth; in practice it's the right to assert falsehoods which enables it.
* Much of the content of the Catholic mass is demonstratively false
* If any Catholic mass is celebrated, these atheists will attempt to murder the participants
By your ridiculous interpretation of the first amendment, the Catholic mass should now be silenced.
You've got it entirely backwards. In your scenario, the atheists would be risking their first amendment protections because they're the ones threatening to murder someone. Even in that case, it is unlikely that any law enforcement agency would garner enough support to actually silence them until they'd gone out and hurt someone. See also: Westboro Baptist. The day that anyone associated with Westboro acts on their hateful speech is the day that they'll be shut down.
The best argument against silencing this ridiculous video isn't the fact that it's full of false claims and nut-job ideology, but that there are serious doubts as to whether it is the "true" driving factor behind the attacks. There are suspicions that the attacks were orchestrated separately, and the video is just a red herring.
Can't you see the analogy between my scenario and this scenario? You make it sound as though if the video was the true motivating factor, then it should be banned. This is analogous with the Catholic mass in my scenario - by following the same logic, if the mass were the true driving factor behind the atheist's violence, then the mass should be banned. You can't let threats (or acts) of violence influence what is protected speech and what isn't.
"You can't let threats (or acts) of violence influence what is protected speech and what isn't."
We can, and we do. Look at the suicide of Tyler Clementi and the resulting sentencing of Dharun Ravi [1]. Look at the case of the anti-abortion wanted-posters [2].
The protection of free speech is not black and white. I understand that this makes people uneasy, but you can't have black & white distinctions in a population greater than one.
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_v._Dharun_Ravi
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence#Physicia...
No, the parallel was accurate. The guy in California threatened no one, and his freedom of speech is on the line because other guys, who disagreed with him, committed murder.
And what about fiction? What if the film just include(d|s) a line saying all the events are fictional? Should it still be silenced?
Maybe 1984 influenced me too much, but such arguments make me extremely uneasy.
- Is demonstrably untrue
- Endangers the public
It's pretty easy to see that both of these conditions are met with regard to this video.
Your statement is factually wrong on so many levels.
One, your understanding of what first amendment covers or doesn't cover is incorrect. Hate speech in particular is protected (which this video may or may not even be - I would call it distasteful but legitimate satire). This has been expressly addressed many, many times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States
Two, the words "demonstrably untrue" mean that someone has audiovisual proof of what happened. I am not agreeing or disagreeing with the video's interpretation of the history of Islam but fact is, no one has the video of Muhammad getting religion. This is why it's called "faith".
Three, inflammatory words = violence equation is no more valid than slutty dress = rape equation. Violence is always squarely on the perpetrators, however provocative the trigger may be. I don't see why Muslims - or people of other faiths - should get special treatment when it comes to their religious feelings being offended.
Why is that form of self-censorship acceptable to you?
You should research the "goatse" case right now for more information about this.
Youtube self-censoring "for the right reasons" now can easily lead to them censoring things in the future not only on the basis that it's "for the right reasons", but also because "we did it before, why not now?", which is among the worst excuses/reasons to do anything...
And Google will not not affected - it will be the thousands/millions of people who will not be able to watch the video (which will most likely be somewhat important - they wouldn't censor a cat playing with a tennis ball).
"Hello Bob. My word you're fat! And really rather ugly!"
No. We live our lives self censoring to some extent. We don't want to go out of our way to insult someone. There are some exception. We don't mind insulting people for humour. We really don't care about insulting people when politics is involved.
There are real reasons why religions need to be challenged. Some bits of religion do very great harm to many people.
Doesn't that mean we need to be careful with the offence we cause? Not to avoid any offence, but to make sure it serves some purpose? Causing offence to achieve a goal is probably acceptable. Otherwise you're just yelling "HELLO CUNTS!!!".
And to suggest that Youtube is censoring something is -in my opinion- vaguely ridiculous. They're choosing not to distribute a video. They're an international business and they suppress many videos every day. There are very many other online video services which could carry this film. I can't display nipples on Youtube. I can't display HoboFights on Youtube. Why should this video be any different?
I certainly agree that this video is not prudent, and hence will not achieve anything. It is quite another question whether this means a company like Google should judge this and take action on it without a court order.
The reason to call this censorship is because the decision not to distribute is probably politically motivated. Compared to the examples you cite, this video is very much relevant to public interests, i.e., people will want to know what all the fuss is about. This does not hold for your examples of 'hobo fights' and nipples.
It's not: those are also examples of censorship.
In your analogy, only you are censoring yourself. Nobody else is censoring you from shouting whatever you want to shout. It would be perfectly fine if individual users voluntarily chose not to upload certain clips.
An accurate rhetorical question would be: Do you shout "HELLO CUNTS!!!" every time you enter a building and before a single sound has emerged from your mouth someone gags you?
Don't property rights trump free speech rights? (IANAL) I.e., it's ok for you to shout whatever you want in public, but I get to throw you out of my house if I don't like what you're saying? Aren't Google just exercising their property rights in this case, common carrier considerations aside?
Legally? Free speech has a right is mostly about freedom from governmental interference. Private companies usually can censor whatever they want.
But I'm pretty sure people are discussing the moral aspect of this, not the legal. And one can consider that Google shouldn't do this, even if they have the legal right to do so.
As far as this particular offense goes, "piss Christ" and so on....
Some animals are more equal than others.
You read my post as "Google owes it to me to keep this content available", which is simply not the case.