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Comment by greggman | Hacker News Reader

I had a hard time getting the point of this article at the end about why he shouldn't have written the original story. Anyone have an insight or some other way to get that point across?

All I can imagine is the guy who didn't want the story told was upset because it reminded him his wife was longing for that other guy but otherwise it's really hard (as a dumb american) for me to understand why that story would bug anyone. And it's certainly hard for me to understand why the author would get banned by the island rather than just hated by the guy who brought up his wife's innocent history.

I loved the article. Well written and certainly compelling to read and fascinating all the way through. I'm just wondering what I missed or some other way to see it and truly grok it.

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It was the revalation that what he, and evidently you, think is innocent, is not de facto true. It was not innocent to them, and he realized that he was warned of this but didn't respect it.

It illustrates a great point about freedom of speech: You are free to say what you want, but that does not mean it's without consequences.

Free speech means that even though your speech can have consequences, but those consequences can't come from the government, as was the case here.

It doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a government, a corporation, or an individual who's stopping you speaking. The first amendment only applies to the government, but the first amendment is only one part of free speech.

I disagree. It makes big difference weather its government or somebody else.

Government has too much power(guns) so it must be checked, and strict rules on what they can and can't do established.

On the other hand private entities, should be allowed to say for them self what you can or can't do with their equipment (work PC's, phones) and on their premises (digital and physical: homes, offices, blogs, forums, ... ). This is fundamental for private ownership to have any meaning.

And if you don't like rules that this private entity has established you can go elsewhere. (anti monopoly law's should ensure you have that option ; but they are not always perfect or applied)

So freedom of speech should only apply to governments.

In practice these days we have a lot more choice of government (there are dozens of reasonable countries you can move to without changing your lifestyle too much) than of particular corporations (avoiding apple, google and microsoft would involve substantial changes to most people's lifes).

Ownership doesn't have to be absolute to have meaning. You've always been forbidden from using your property in illegal ways (e.g. just because you own a knife doesn't mean you have the right to stab someone with it; just because you own a field doesn't mean you're allowed to bury toxic waste there).

Free speech means you are free to say what you want, but you may be violating a law, and that may have consequences. It's "freedom of speech" to systematically call the mayor of your town gay, do it enough and you might be charged with defamation. In other words, "free speech" does not protect you against breaking the law.

In any case, my point simply is that whatever you say, there will be consequences, however backwards they may be. I used "free speech" as an example here, because he was entirely within his right to write it - it just had a consequence (that may or may not be illegal in it self, but that is unknown).

You've got it entirely backwards here - the entire article was about an island in which freedom of speech does not exist. If he'd been free to say what he wanted (and he did very, very little of that), then he wouldn't have been banned from the island.

He was asked kindly by a man on the island not to publish anything embarasing about his wife. The writer thought the story would entertain others and improve his book so he disregarded that request. The islanders decided that someone who wasn't open to reasonable requests from them wasn't welcome on their island.

Indeed, it would _hurt_ his wife. It sounds like a place I'd like to go to.

> I had a hard time getting the point of this article at the end about why he shouldn't have written the original story.

You really do sound like the lawyers in the story suggesting he sue to get readmitted. I'm sure it's not just Americans, but Americans in particular really do often look completely oblivious to the opinions, usages, general culture and way of life of the other, non-American people they encounter abroad. Edit: just look at the other posts in this discussion, talking about "the first amendment" when the whole story had nothing to do with the US at all (the UK, and presumably Tristan as well, don't have anything close to a law safeguarding free speech).

Maybe just because they make up a large amount of the tourists in the world, and therefore also a large part of the oblivious tourists as well.

When tourists showed up on Kerguelen island (which isn't comparable to Tristan as the population isn't permanent, but those who stay there for a full year are indeed the ephemeral natives of the place) it was always the Americans that were full of themselves, had their weird expectations and got angry when we couldn't get them fizzy water, or anything fizzy but not Orangina, or "ok just get me a beer right... wait, no not this shitty French beer". Or who wanted to touch the albatross chicks. Or bring home a gentoo egg. Or... "who are you to tell me not to do that? Call your manager right now."

Somehow even French government officials, for all their disconnectedness and abuse of the limited resources not intended for them, or most other foreign tourists, could at least get a sense of the place, and understanding of the people, at the very worst they were aware that they did not understand everything.

Wow, this is sounding very anti-American now that I'm reading this again. But my experience of tourists on a few remote islands really taught me that Americans often seem completely unprepared to meet places and people that aren't either America and American, or completely devoted to catering to their every wish and expectation.

You don't have to understand why people think differently than you do. But when they do and you are their guest, just listen to them and accept that they are different people in a different place, with different rules and different means. It's easy for me to understand how one guy could turn the few hundred inhabitants of his island against one foreigner.

As a Brit I was struggling to see why it would have offended so much.

I had a few hypotheses on this:

- There is more to the story, and the public part was enough for islanders to deduce the full story given what they knew. E.g. she had a child to the sailor who was raised by someone else, or she had an abortion.

- Extra marital sex was so taboo in their culture than a story that even implied it might have happened would be a scandal.

- The husband simply found the story offensive, and had enough influence in the community to get the journalist banned.

> And it's certainly hard for me to understand why the author would get banned by the island rather than just hated by the guy who brought up his wife's innocent history.

They're all one big family.

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