Daily Archives: February 21, 2015

Denmark shooting: Gunman targets Copenhagen free speech debate
For more Latest and Breaking News Headlines SUBSCRIBE to http://goo.gl/jnhDo4 A manhunt is underway after at least one person was killed and three police staff were shot and wounded at a free...

By: News Watch

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Denmark shooting: Gunman targets Copenhagen free speech debate - Video

Copenhagen Shooting Valentine #39;s Day Shooting At Free Speech Event VIDEO
1 killed, 3 cops wounded in Copenhagen as police search for two gunmen in free speech event shooting: reports. There were about 30 bullet holes in the window of the Krudtoenden cafe in Denmark....

By: Ekego Pasdcl

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Copenhagen Shooting Valentine's Day Shooting At Free Speech Event VIDEO - Video

Police Kill Suspect in Denmark Shootings
Danish police shot and killed a man early Sunday suspected of carrying out shooting attacks at a free speech event and later at a Copenhagen synagogue. (Feb. 15) Subscribe for more Breaking...

By: Associated Press

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Police Kill Suspect in Denmark Shootings - Video

Copenhagen Attack Witness Inna Shevchenko Debates Scholar Tariq Ramadan on Religion and Free Speech
http://democracynow.org - Danish police have shot and killed a man they say carried out attacks on a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhag...

By: democracynow

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Copenhagen Attack Witness Inna Shevchenko Debates Scholar Tariq Ramadan on Religion and Free Speech - Video

If you said something really controversial, or created an incredibly offensive page on Facebook, whats the worst that could happen? In other words, what is Facebooks recourse?

It could block your content. It could remove your page. It could suspend your account. Facebook cant throw you in jail.

Facebook cannot violate your First Amendment rights to free speech because Facebook isnt bound by the nations oldest set of laws to protect your free speech rights. Facebook is a company with the ability to set its own rules on what kind of content it wants on its site. End of story. Facebook can say that its all about protecting free speech and if it wanted to protect the idea of true free speech, then it could. But that would be a choice. Facebook doesnt owe you First Amendment protections.

Should Facebook remove certain content if it feels its a danger to public health? Let us know in the comments.

This has been said over and over again, but it bears repeating because were about to get into another Facebook censorship debate. No, Facebook hasnt done anything. Instead, a rather prominent figure from a rather prominent publication has suggested nay demanded that Facebook shut down an entire group of people on the site because what they say is a danger to the public at large.

TIME magazines editor-at-large Jeffrey Kluger has just called on Facebook to shut down the anti-vaxxers.

One thing that would helpsomething Zuckerberg could do with little more than a flick of the switch, as could Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and the other bosses of other sitesis simply shut the anti-vaxxers down. Really. Pull their pages, block their posts, twist the spigot of misinformation before more people get hurt, he says.

His argument is that Facebook supposedly bans content thats harmful, specifically a direct threat to public safety. He says that the anti-vaccination movement is just that a direct threat to public safety. Thus, Facebook should just yank their pages and block their posts before more people get hurt.

Its not as if the folks at Facebook arent clear about the kinds of things they will and wont allow on the site, providing a brief listing and a detailed description of what are considered no-go areas. You may not credibly threaten others, or organize acts of real-world violence, is one rule, so nobody would get away with posting instructions for, say, how to build a pressure cooker bomb. There is nothing in the regulations that specifically prohibits trafficking in bogus medical information, but the first section of the policy statement begins, Safety is Facebooks top priority, and then goes on to say We remove content and may escalate to law enforcement when we perceive a genuine risk of physical harm, or a direct threat to public safety, says Kluger.

Do you think the anti-vaccine movement is a direct threat to public safety? I do. But if I didnt, it wouldnt matter. The point is that Facebook can pull every single anti-vaccination page off its site and you shouldnt really bat an eye. You shouldnt cry censorship! and you should bitch about Facebook and free speech.

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Reminder: Facebook Doesnt Owe You Free Speech

Reddit, the long-time haven of weirdos, perverts and miscreants the Internet over, has been, from its beginning, the mainstream bulwark for free speech online.

But in a strange twist that perfectly illustrates the current culturewide debate around online speech, a group of disgruntled users has begun an exodus off the site claiming, against all odds, that Reddit is censoring them as a matter of corporate policy.

This is, for the record, the same Reddit that defended Violentacrez, the Texas man who ran forums on beating women and sexualizing underage girls. The Reddit that allowed rampant speculation about the Boston bombing, even when it became dangerous. The Reddit that, just this past fall, supported a booming trade in stolen celebrity nude photos, and still, even now, hosts a variety of racist, misogynistic, homophobic and otherwise NSFL content that I dare not link to.

If this isnt enough free speech, what is?

To understand that question (let alone the answer to it), you have to start with a working knowledge of Reddits labyrinthine depths. The site is, for the uninitiated, basically a social news service divided into tens of thousands of themed forums, called subreddits. Users submit links, photos and in-jokes to the forums, which are voted up or down by other users.

The forums themselves are run by volunteer moderators, or mods, who can basically make and enforce rules as they see fit. In general, corporate Reddit Advance Media-owned Reddit, $50-million-funding-round Reddit, only-35-employees Reddit doesnt step in unless the company is at risk of being sued.

The core philosophy, co-founder Alexis Ohanian explained in a book on Reddits early days, was giving the people what they want. Whatever they want. Accordingly, each forum looks a little different. In r/aww one of my personal favorites mods ban slurs, harassing comments and anything sad. In r/thefappening, where users shared the celebrity nudes that ruled Septembers news cycle, slurs and harassing comments were basically the norm. (And that was, on its own, pretty sad.)

We will not ban questionable subreddits, Reddits CEO, Yishan Wong, wrote in the aftermath of that catastrophe. You choose what to post. You choose what to read. You choose what kind of subreddit to create and what kind of rules you will enforce. We will try not to interfere not because we dont care, but because we care that you make your choices between right and wrong.

That echoed Reddits official line on the Violentacrez scandal in 2012: We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits.

That said, Reddit doesnt necessarily stand for absolute free speech i.e., free speech above/to the detriment of every other human right in existence. Its important to note that corporate Reddit does explicitly prohibit five types of speech, including child pornography, personal information and requests for up-votes, which manipulate post rankings. It also allows, and even encourages, individual moderators to make their own rules, which can range from dont post the same thing twice to no disrespectful commentary.

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How the Reddit exodus illustrates the state of free speech on the Web

Friday, February 20, 2015

By Stephen Lee Byrd, S.B.

The News-Press just will not let it go about the illegals controversy and its derogatory speech toward Latinos. The latest was Andy Caldwells Guest Opinion which I would love to rebut point-by-point, but no one will extend me anywhere near the space he got in which he makes a number of specious criminal allegations, that he never really lays out factually, and just calls a councilmember a bunch of pejorativenames.

To my knowledge, the pro-Latino dissidents have exerted their right to assemble (in De la Guerra Plaza) and their free speech rights, but have not involved the government at all. What use of the power of government to crush and silence others? If the daily paper is going to wail and gnash its teeth about its own free speech rights, the bottom line is that the paper needs equally to respect the free speech rights of the pro-Latino dissidents. They have a right to speak up and say that the journalistic choices made were disrespectful, lacked a civil tone, and were bogus. Equally, the daily needs to respect my free speech rights by not censoring and suppressing my critical responses of January 6, 20, and 24. Free speech rights are not just for newspaper editors and owners. They are truly a two-way street. Otherwise its the pot calling the teakettleblack.

The continued reckless, combative, and confrontational rhetoric of the daily about this will remind us of the Rev. Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland or Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia vs. Bosnia (and later Kosovo). They too recklessly fanned the flames of inter-ethnic tension into a campaign of ethnic cleansing and ended up ripping apart their communities. Do not think it cannot happen here. As ye shall sow, thus shall yereap.

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Whose Free Speech?

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) Wading into the volatile issue of invoking God at graduations and ball games, the Kentucky Senate on Thursday passed a bill touted as providing a guide to public schools on the religious and political free-speech protections of students.

A leading supporter, Kent Ostrander, executive director of The Family Foundation, said after the Senate's 30-4 vote that the bill would put "a stake in the ground for free speech and religious liberty" for students.

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Student free-speech bill passes Ky. Senate

OPINION: The problem with defending free speech is that if you go to bat for the dead and heroic cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, you also have to defend Hollywood's right to make jokes about killing the leader of North Korea and a daft heavy metal band's right to insult a chunk of the public simply because they feel like it.

It was apt that the story about the Canterbury Museum's display of an offensive anti-Christian T-shirt broke on Black Friday. On February 13, the world learned that among the hundreds of collectable shirts in the T-Shirts Unfolding show, there was an infamous one produced by UK band Cradle of Filth in the 1990s.

On the front of the black shirt, there is a picture of a sexualised nun. On the back, in large white letters, the slogan "Jesus is a c...".

The T-shirt was ruled objectionable in 2008 by the Office of Film and Literature Classification which said that it degraded and demeaned women and represented Christians as "inherently inferior to other members of the public". It crossed the censorship threshold and was "injurious to the public good".

If you own one, you risk up to five years in jail. An Invercargill retailer was fined $500 in 2012 for owning eight, which were then destroyed.

The shirt is not just a problem in New Zealand. There have been several convictions in the UK, with one man pleading guilty to the arcane crime of religiously aggravated offensive conduct. The judge in that case told the 35-year-old to "grow up".

Even Cradle of Filth's drummer was charged with creating a public disorder after being caught in his band's shirt. But you expect that kind of tomfoolery from an attention-seeking metal act. What about a responsible institution like the Canterbury Museum?

"We bent over backwards to follow the letter of the law," says Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright.

We met in his office on Wednesday morning. There had been an incident at the museum just the day before when a woman got past a guard and into the small booth where the T-shirt is displayed in a perspex case. She produced a can of paint and began spraying the case black. The paint was cleaned off and the matter is now with the police, Wright says.

There is a strong element of deja vu about all this. The display case containing Tania Kovats' Virgin in a Condom, which featured a condom on a statue of the Virgin Mary, was attacked in 1998 when it was in a show of contemporary British art at Te Papa.

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The filth and the fury