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Comment by tomflack | Hacker News Reader

My country had women's suffrage before yours. My country had a great transformation from a primarily racist white society to one where all have equal rights. I too can openly criticize my government and people aren't disappeared off the streets. I won't be saying which country I'm talking about as it is irrelevant.

Everything in social justice the United States has achieved my country also has, with our different free speech values.

I don't presume to say one is better or worse, but I do consider it totally arrogant the attitude Americans display when talking down about other country's free speech values.

Which are different. Not necessarily worse.

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> different. Not necessarily worse.

> I too can openly criticize my government and people aren't disappeared off the streets

In the UK, you can't. That's the main point of the article. Criticism of government results in criminal penalties in the UK. That's the whole point of what the article says. That's the definition of "not being able to exercise free speech."

(Okay, you won't be "disappeared off the streets." You'll be given a fair trial before an impartial court, convicted, and sent to jail. But the relevant idea is having a criminal penalty for criticism of government, not the precise form of the penalty.)

>In the UK, you can't. That's the main point of the article.

Criticising the government isn't what landed these people in jail, it's that the British public found their posts offensive. Look at the examples given in the article again; burning poppies on remembrance sunday, tasteless comments about murdered children, and a tactless joke about bombing an airport.

You've read into the article a problem that doesn't exist.

> the British public found their posts offensive

For any given piece of speech, it's not hard to find someone who's offended by it. So that's a terrible standard for free speech rules, unless you want to have a country of silence.

> You've read into the article a problem that doesn't exist

You may have a point. Let's examine the examples:

1. The airport bombing comment is probably the easiest to call unprotected speech. Even on first reading of the article, I thought "That sounds like an actual threat...Let's see what else they have."

2. The comment about the soldiers could also be considered a physical threat, but it's more of a stretch; "I hope X dies and goes to hell" isn't nearly as strong as "I'm going to kill X".

3. I can't find the specific wording of the comment regarding the murdered children.

4. That leaves us with the poppy-burning; but it seems like this would be a clear case of protected speech in the US.

That's a grand total of one correctly classified instances of unprotected speech (1), one incorrectly classified instance of protected speech (4), and two for which the correct classification is unknown or shaky (2-3). That is, if you take "correct" to be "protected speech according to US law," which is the only classification of protected-vs-unprotected speech I'm familiar enough with to do this analysis.

The data indicate that the UK might have a systematic problem correctly classifying instances of protected speech, but you're right; that certainly isn't a clear-cut conclusion from the article.

This article is bullshit and your comments are offensive ignorant bullshit. You threaten to blow up an international airport on Twitter in the US, even as a joke, and see how well your authorities respond to it! See if your First Amendment rights count for anything when essentially threatening an act of terrorism. I'm not saying that the British response was the right one - I signed the petition to drop the case as it was preposterous - but to pretend that the US would act any differently is ludicrous, First Amendment rights or otherwise.

Yours is a country that wanted to extradite a man with Aspergers to potentially face capital charges for 'espionage' (hacking NASA looking for information about aliens) out of spite because they were made to look foolish by him.

Listen my friend, pontificate when you are pure. Don't make assumption about things based on 'articles' written by hacks with a blatant political agenda that you don't fully understand, lest you end up looking like you do - a sanctimonious prat. Yes ad hominem, because this once it's warranted.

Has someone in the US been convicted of a crime for joking about blowing up an airport? In a state or federal court? Or, has someone in the US been held for, say, a month or more awaiting a charge for same?

Try it and see. However, if anything happens as a consequence, you are on your own.

I do think that the court prosecutions in the UK against Twitter and Facebook users have gone too far and that this is a worrying trend.

Overall, the UK has good freedom of speech (not perfect, but then which country has?).

As others have pointed out, you can criticise politicians and the government in the UK without of fear of criminal penalties (unless your language is threatening or racist).

I think in the UK, we tend to show a little less deference towards politicians and high-ranking officials than in the US. And that means people are not afraid to be critical face-to-face with politicians (without fear of reprisals). For example, here's Nick Clegg (the deputy Prime Minister) facing a bunch of angry students who don't mince their words

http://youtu.be/88fQ2RIoqQA?t=1m44s

That's not supported by the content of the article. You can certainly criticize the government in the UK, but what you can't do is inflame public sentiment without consequences. I somewhat prefer the US approach, but there's some value in the UK approach too. The public interest and the government's interest are most certainly not considered to be the same thing by the judiciary.

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