If you're wondering about the case law that has led to the current state of the first amendment in the US check out this fine podcast series by Ken "Popehat" White. No, really, it's interesting.
Regulator said Rappler violated foreign-ownership rules
By Jake Maxwell Watts Jan. 15, 2018 4:23 a.m. ET 3 COMMENTS MANILA, Philippines—A popular news website that has been critical of the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was shut down by the country’s securities regulator, a move the company called harassment. The nation’s Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement published on its website Monday that it had found Rappler Inc. liable for violating constitutional requirements on foreign-ownership limits and revoked the company’s certificate of incorporation.
The case against Rappler has been highly contentious in the Philippines, where Mr. Duterte and his supporters have hit out repeatedly against mainstream media companies he says have unfairly covered a bloody war on drugs that has killed thousands of people in the past year and a half. In an online statement addressed to readers, Rappler said the SEC’s actions were “pure and simple harassment, the seeming coup de grace to the relentless and malicious attacks against us since 2016.” The company said it had been consistently transparent and complied with SEC regulations, submitting requirements “even at the risk of exposing our corporate data to irresponsible hands with an agenda.” Rappler said it would contest the SEC’s ruling. The government said in a statement that it respected the SEC’s decision and that Rappler was free to exhaust “all available legal remedies” in contesting the regulator’s actions.
The six-year-old news company, founded by local media executive Maria Ressa and others, had achieved unusual success with its online news offerings in the Philippines and Indonesia, geared toward a young, social-media-savvy readership. But since Mr. Duterte was elected in 2016, the online-only publication has come under sustained attack by pro-government bloggers, on social media, and by Mr. Duterte himself.
YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, THE official Twitter account of Brazil’s Federal Police (its FBI equivalent) posted an extraordinary announcement. The bureaucratically nonchalant tone it used belied its significance. The tweet, at its core, purports to vest in the federal police and the federal government that oversees it the power to regulate, control, and outright censor political content on the internet that is assessed to be “false,” and to “punish” those who disseminate it. The new power would cover both social media posts and entire websites devoted to politics.
“In the next few days, the Federal Police will begin activities in Brasília by a specially formed group to combat false news during the election process,” the official police tweet stated. It added: “The measures are intended to identify and punish the authors of ‘fake news’ for or against candidates.” Top police officials told media outlets that their working group would include representatives of the judiciary’s election branch and leading prosecutors, though one of the key judicial figures involved is the highly controversial right-wing Supreme Court judge, Gilmar Mendes, who has long blurred judicial authority with his political activism.
Among the most confounding aspects of the Twitter announcement is that it is very difficult to identify any existing law that actually authorizes the federal police to exercise the powers they just announced they intend to wield, particularly over the internet. At least as of now, they are claiming for themselves one of the most extremist powers imaginable — the right of the government to control and suppress political content on the internet during an election — with no legal framework to define its parameters or furnish safeguards against abuse.
Proponents of this new internet censorship program have suggested they will seek congressional enactment of a new law to authorize the censorship program and define how it functions. But it is far from clear that Brazil’s dysfunctional Congress — in which a majority of members face corruption charges — will be able to enact a new statutory scheme before the election.
Tellingly, these police officials vow that they will proceed to implement the censorship program even if no new law is enacted. They insist that no new laws are necessary by pointing to a pre-internet censorship lawenacted in 1983 — during the time Brazil was ruled by a brutal military dictatorship that severely limited free expression and routinely imprisoned dissidents.
A top police official just yesterday warned that, absent a new law, they will invoke the authorities of one of the dictatorship era’s most repressive laws: the so-called Law of National Security, which contain deliberately vague passages making it a felony to “spread rumors that caused panic.” Yet he complained that the old dictatorship-era law is inadequate in part because it is too lenient, providing “only” for “months” in prison for those who disseminate “fake news,” which he called a “very low punishment.”
That 1983 legal framework was used by Brazil’s military dictatorship to arrest dissidents, critics, and democracy activists. That they are now eyeing a resurrection of this dictatorship-era censorship law to regulate and censor contemporary political expression on the internet — all in the name of stopping “fake news” — powerfully symbolizes how inherently tyrannical and dangerous are all government attempts to control political expression.
THE MOVE TO obtain new censorship authority over the internet by Brazilian police officials would be disturbing enough standing alone given Brazil’s status as the world’s fifth most populous country and second-largest in the hemisphere. But that Brazil’s announcement closely follows very similar efforts unveiled last week by French President Emmanuel Macron strongly suggests a trend in which governments are now exploiting concerns over “fake news” to justify state control over the internet.
if i were you i'd listen/watch to the entire video
after that i'd share it (if possible)
in essence free speech allows ideas/thoughts to come out where they can be heard/examined and challenged if necessary
regards
While watching this, it made me think about the hyperbole police that inhabit this place. They have gone out of the way to put restrictions on how arguments are presented and accepted here. I even googled it to make sure my oars were in the water.
hy·per·bo·le hÄ«ËpÉrbÉlÄ/Submit noun exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally. ... Hyperbole is an extreme exaggeration used to make a point. It is like the opposite of “understatement.” It is from a Greek word meaning “excess.” Hyperboles can be found in literature and oral communication.
And then there is the satire police ...
A few years ago in meat space, I was accused of yelling at a person simply because I was disagreeing with them (quietly).
I'm heartened to see that there still some people unafraid to take the arrows shot at them by the so called tolerant who are actually intolerantly in denial about their own intolerance. . Soon we will see that Colonel Saunders Kentucky Fried Chicken will be denounced and run out of business because it is a racist, white supremacist relic of the Old South that offends everyone, whether they are offended or not, because it now only takes one person to be offended anymore to justify the claim that everyone is offended. Surprised it hasn't happened already, actually ...
Flemming Rose isn't going to watch the decline of free speech without a fight. In 2005, while an editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Rose commissioned twelve cartoons about Muhammad to encourage artists to overcome self-censorship. Extremists responded to the cartoons with attacks on western embassies and riots, resulting in the deaths of over 200 people.
Now Rose has written The Tyranny of Silence, a defense of his decision to publish the cartoons and a guide to unfettered expression in the 21st century. "I'm not willing to sacrifice freedom of expression on the altar of cultural diversity," he says.
Rose is no rogue provocateur. He is one of the planet's most committed defenders of free speech, the open society, and enlightenment values of tolerance and human rights.
Funny how these words do not care about the beliefs and opinions of those they are protecting, they just are......or aren't applied.
Flemming Rose isn't going to watch the decline of free speech without a fight. In 2005, while an editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Rose commissioned twelve cartoons about Muhammad to encourage artists to overcome self-censorship. Extremists responded to the cartoons with attacks on western embassies and riots, resulting in the deaths of over 200 people.
Now Rose has written The Tyranny of Silence, a defense of his decision to publish the cartoons and a guide to unfettered expression in the 21st century. "I'm not willing to sacrifice freedom of expression on the altar of cultural diversity," he says.
Rose is no rogue provocateur. He is one of the planet's most committed defenders of free speech, the open society, and enlightenment values of tolerance and human rights.
Beating a people into submission doesn’t happen overnight. It proceeds in stages, and requires long-term leveraging of institutions and appeals to moral authority to justify ever-increasing levels of government coercion. Fortunately, it’s not a one-way street, and there are ways to fight back.
Playing the long game against such institutions requires character, perseverance, and courage. Few exemplify these virtues as much as famed civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate, whom I interviewed for RealClear Radio Hour. You can listen to our conversation here.
Harvey Silverglate looks and sounds like a character actor straight out of central casting if you were to ask for “a rumpled New York Jewish lawyer who talks like Moses if he had gone to Harvard.” And like Moses—if he were to spend 50 years as a litigator—the fire in his belly burns undiminished. There is nothing he relishes more than a righteous fight.
A foundation helps Twitter and other social media enforce left-wing ideology
Summary: The free speech-averse John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation aspires to leverage social media and educational testing in order to strengthen elite control of all aspects of society and culture. The philanthropy promotes politically correct censorship on popular websites like Twitter and Facebook, but for more insight into the organization, focus on the left-wing MacArthur board chairman who has long been a heavy-hitter in textbook publishing.
If a child receives progressive political indoctrination in schools but runs home to watch lectures by conservatives who were refuting the messages taught in the schools, the school’s indoctrination would not hold. This is why the Left feels the need to control all aspects of social interaction. If students are being pummeled with similar political messaging nonstop in school, in the social media on their smart phones, in their video games at home, even at comedy clubs and music venues, it’s likely the children will end up enthralled to the ideology in the constant messages.
That, it would seem, is MacArthur’s end game—control of all aspects of society and culture.
I don't understand the article. Reddit did not reveal VA's identity, a separate media entity did. Which, if I remember correctly, is also free speech. People have the right to publish material many people find odious. They do not have the right to be protected from the consequences of their actions.
If the article I read about VA is correct, he was promptly fired from his job. Just as he had feared: he begged the reporter not to reveal his identity. Too late, scumbag.
Yes, the guy from Gawker outed the troll. Then in retaliation moderators on Reddit blocked all links to Gawker on Reddit. Reddit's CEO is now merely clarifying their views on free speech.
Reddit has been shaken up by Gawker’s expose of Texas programmer, Michael Brutsch, also known as a mean-spirited troll Violentacrez on the sprawling internet community site. (...)
I don't understand the article. Reddit did not reveal VA's identity, a separate media entity did. Which, if I remember correctly, is also free speech. People have the right to publish material many people find odious. They do not have the right to be protected from the consequences of their actions.
If the article I read about VA is correct, he was promptly fired from his job. Just as he had feared: he begged the reporter not to reveal his identity. Too late, scumbag.
Reddit has been shaken up by Gawker’s expose of Texas programmer, Michael Brutsch, also known as a mean-spirited troll Violentacrez on the sprawling internet community site. (...)
Think you have the right to speak freely via cellphones, websites and social media? Well, the companies that provide you with access to the Internet don’t.
The framers drafted the First Amendment as a check on government authority — not corporate power. But whether we’re texting friends, sharing photos on Facebook, or posting updates on Twitter, we’re connecting with each other and the Internet via privately controlled networks.
And the owners of these networks are now twisting the intent of the First Amendment to claim the right to control everyone's online information.
Right before the Fourth of July,Verizon filed a briefwith the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that expressed this intent in no uncertain terms. The brief was part of the telecom company’s bid to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s Net Neutrality rules, which prohibit carriers from blocking or discriminating against Internet users’ content...
