Monthly Archives: June 2017

Actions are different from words, and words are not violence. This is the position of the free speech absolutist.

Though it's tempting to assume American newsrooms are made up entirely of free-speech hardliners after all, freedom of speech is enshrined specifically in this country's founding documents that would be assuming too much.

As this week has shown, there are a number of media personalities who believe President Trump's ugly press criticisms may be responsible for any future acts of violence against journalists.

"What I worry about more than anything else is that there are people in the country [who] are going to hear over and over again from the president, that the reporters [and] journalists are enemies of the state," Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffery Goldberg said this week during a panel discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

He added, "And someone, God forbid, but someone is going to do something violent against journalists in a large way, and then, I know where the fault lies. We're heading in that direction and it's quite frightening."

Goldberg's concerns are shared by more than just a few in the press.

CNN's Clarissa Ward suggested elsewhere this week that Trump's newsroom criticisms may embolden people abroad to attack, and possibly murder, foreign correspondents.

"[A]t what point does this become dangerous? And I'm not just talking about dangerous in terms of tearing at the social fabric, I'm talking about dangerous as in a journalist gets hurt, because I can tell you working overseas in war zones, people are emboldened by the actions of this administration, emboldened by the all-out declaration of war on the media," she said during a panel discussion.

She added in a question directed at CNN's Chris Cillizza, "If I'm getting it in the neck, Chris, I can only imagine what a person like you is dealing with. At what point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris?"

Cillizza, who lives and works in that notoriously dangerous war zone known as Washington, D.C., responded, "I don't want to say we're past that point."

Playboy White House correspondent Brian Karem begged to differ, saying, "We are past that point."

"I think it is already dangerous what the Trump administration is doing, which is Brian's point," Cillizza agreed.

Just to be clear, everyone on that media panel is an American. There was not even the slightest pushback against the idea that words spoken by one party are responsible for actions of another.

Words matter, of course, as there is a great deal of power in what our leaders say. Words can elevate, and they can diminish. Words cannot, however, be held responsible for the wrongdoings of others.

If we argue that rhetoric is to blame for certain acts of violence, then shouldn't the natural conclusion to that line of thinking be that certain types of speech ought to be banned or regulated so as to protect against possible future harm? Wouldn't it be irresponsible not to regulate this type of speech if it is indeed responsible for violence caused to others? This is all rubbish, of course, as the speech-can-kill line requires that one subordinate personal responsibility to external factors not directly involved in specific actions. It frees the criminal from the crime.

This is the sort of thinking one would expect from underdeveloped college students, not professional journalists.

American media benefit enormously from the free speech protections included in the U.S. Constitution. Let's show our appreciation by not attributing the terrible actions of others to our freedom to speak freely.

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You're not helping free speech when you suggest Trump is going to get journalists hurt - Washington Examiner

The Supreme Court of Canada issued an order to Google Wednesday: Stop showing search results for a company accused of fraud, not just in Canada, but throughout the world. Yes, that includes everybody reading this in America.

But the courts ruling that the Alphabet. Inc., (GOOG, GOOGL) search subsidiary de-index the companycould also invite other courts including those in countries not as nice as Canada to issue their own global takedown demands for other sites, whichcan easily lead to free speech beingsquashed.

And U.S. companies that want to do business in those other nations will have little choice but to comply. Too bad, eh?

This story started with a lawsuit filed by Barnaby, British Columbia-based Industrial-networking vendor Equustek Solutions Inc., alleging that a competitor, Datalink Technologies Gateways Inc., had started selling its technology as its own.

A lower court told Datalink to knock it off, but thefirm then fled the province to an unknown location while continuing to hawk its wares online.

Equustek asked Google to stop sending people to Datalinks sales pages, and Google complied. But as Datalink kept moving the offending sales pitch from one page to another, Equustek asked Google to stop pointing people to Datalinks site entirely and to do the same around the world.

An appeals court granted that request, and Canadas Supreme Court upheld that while rejecting free-speech arguments in a 7-2 ruling.

This is not an order to remove speech that, on its face, engages freedom of expression values, it is an order to de-index websites that are in violation of several court orders, Justice Rosalie Abella wrote. We have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods.

Googles press office released a statement in response: We are carefully reviewing the Courts findings and evaluating our next steps.

The traditional view of trying to keep something off the internet, as Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmorepoints out is,The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

But multinational corporations, unlike internet packets, operate in fixed locations. They have employees that can be arrested, assets that can be seizedand bank accounts that can be hit with fines.

Having any one country tell a company doing business there that it must take something offline within that country has always been a risk, and sometimes tech firms have opted not to run accept such demands Googles decision to pull out ofthe booming Chinese marketover government censorshipis a perfect example of this.

But Canadas Supreme Court has flipped this script with its globally-binding ruling. Daphne Keller, a director of Stanford Universitys Center for Internet and Society, called it much more far reaching than most in an email.

And the underlying offense here, an intellectual-property violation, is far from being something everybody can agree on as being beyond the pale worldwide. Said Keller: I am in tons of discussions about this, and the one point of consensus is global removal of child pornography.

Further, this isnt just any rogue judicial body engaging in global grandstanding. The Canadian Supreme Court is well respected around the world, and this ruling will carry some weight elsewhere, emailed Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Geist, who had earlier urged the court to adopt a narrower remedy, said the judges should have limited their ruling to Googles google.ca Canadian site.

The courts ruling is a mess all around. It wont actually solve the problem of people finding undesirable content online for the same reasons that the European Unions right to be forgotten doctrine cant.

Like the EUs RtbF, Canadas ruling doesnt encompass every search engine and says nothing about social media, with its proven ability to send massive amounts of people to a site. Nor can it stop individual people or sites from pointing to offending pages something that can become more likely after a dose of publicity.

The problem looms much larger for everybody else online. Canadian judges may be a reasonable lot, but if they see fit to assert global jurisdiction, so can any other countrys judges.

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In France, privacy regulators have fined Google a token amount for not honoring a right-to-be-forgotten request worldwide. (Memo to French president Emmanuel Macron: This is not a good look for will not help your startup nation ambitions.)

Libel laws are far friendlier to plaintiffs in the United Kingdom; imagine British courts deciding that their rulings must now apply worldwide?

And on Monday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan got a court order demanding that Twitter (TWTR) close the account of American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin. What if he forced Google to stop linking to attacks on him?

Whats hate speech in France is free speech in the U.S., explained Pamela Samuelson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Whats fair use in the U.S. may be infringing in Spain. Whats defamation in Australia or the UK may be protected speech in the U.S.

In every case, the result will be courts overseas deciding what we as Americans can find online. And then maybe U.S. courts will return the favor, and the internet as a whole can get meeker and shallower, one ruling at a time.

More from Rob:

Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.

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A ruling against Google in Canada could affect free speech around the world - Yahoo Finance

Campus police said they had very specific intelligence regarding threats that could pose a grave danger to the speaker, attendees and those who may wish to lawfully protest the event, according to court documents.

The university proposed an alternate date for the Coulter event, but the College Republicans noted it was during Dead Week when few students would be on campus, and that Coulter had only signed onto the initial plan. They said UC Berkeley had canceled the event, violating their free speech rights and discriminating against conservatives.

In the new response, UC Berkeley begged to differ: Plaintiffs First Amendment free speech claim fails because the relevant venues were limited public forums and the alleged restrictions were reasonable and viewpoint neutral.

The university also laid out the process it plans to follow to create a new campus event policy. The administration will seek extensive input from the public and student groups, the response said.

On Thursday, Young Americas Foundation released a statement on UC Berkeleys response, calling it bizarre.

Berkeleys response laughably alleges that its actions welcoming prominent liberals, including Maria Echaveste, a top aide to President Bill Clinton and Vicente Fox Quesada the former president of Mexico, while simultaneously denying equal access for students attempting to host David Horowitz and Ann Coulterare viewpoint neutral,' the statement said.

The organization also criticized Cals plan to develop an event policy with input from the public.

The very idea that a free speech policy is open to discussion or negotiation is absurd. UC-Berkeley administrators should base any policies protecting students constitutional rights on the Constitution itself, the statement said.

The conservative groups, represented by attorneyHarmeet K. Dhillon, filed their suit against UC President Janet Napolitano, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, UCPD Captain Alex Yao and other Cal officials in U.S. District Court in Northern California in April. The groups are asking fora jury trial, an injunction stopping UC Berkeley from restricting the exercise of political expression on the UC Berkeley campus, and damages for attorney fees.A court date is set for August 25.

Amid the tension between the conservative groups and Cal officials, Coulter threatened to come to Berkeley anyway on the initially proposed date, April 27, implying she would speak outdoors. She did not end up coming, saying the students who had supported her had failed to guarantee her safety.

UC Berkeley set up barricades around Sproul Plaza that day, and UCPD turned out in force. Little action ended up occurring on campus, but members of the far-right, including many who came from out of town, held a free speech rally in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. The event was peaceful, in large part because counter-demonstrators did not show up to confront the protesters, except for a brief interaction between anti-fascists and the far-right at the end of the day.

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UC Berkeley says free speech lawsuit is unfounded - Berkeleyside

RALEIGH North Carolina lawmakers have given the green light to a bill protecting free speech at public universities.

In a 34-11 vote, House Bill 527, Restore/Preserve Free Speech, passed the Senate on Wednesday.

The House, which passed H.B. 527 in April, on Thursday voted 76-35 to concur with the Senates revised version of the bill.

H.B. 527 requires the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to adopt a uniform speech policy for all campuses in the UNC system. It also directs the board to form a Committee on Free Expression. That body would enforce the speech policy across all UNC campuses.

The bill is headed to Gov. Roy Coopers desk.

Virginia, Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Kentucky, and Tennessee have passed bills protecting campus speech, said Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan research and litigation organization.

FIRE helped Lt. Gov. Dan Forest the main backer of the project write the bill.

The General Assemblys passage of this bill is a great step toward restoring and preserving free speech on our university campuses, Forest told Carolina Journal. Our public universities should be places where free expression occurs, and this bill makes it clear that the marketplace of ideas is back open on campus.

H.B. 527 is a solution in search of a problem, but free speech always should be a priority for public universities, said Sarah Gillooly, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

In the rare circumstances where there is an issue with the stifling of free speech on campus, appropriate remedies exist and are working, Gillooly told CJ.

We will continue to monitor the implementation of H.B. 527 to ensure it protects the speech of all students, including counter protesters. In a country that protects and values the right to free speech, the answer to speech we dont like is more speech not censorship.

North Carolina is now a leader in the fight to protect campus free speech, FIRE spokesman Daniel Burnett said.

FIRE divides public and private universities into three rankings: red light, yellow light, and green light. Red-light schools are the worst offenders of free speech. Green-light schools are the best at upholding First Amendment rights.

North Carolina takes top billing nationally for the number of universities with First Amendment protections. UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, N.C. Central University, UNC-Charlotte, and East Carolina University are ranked as green-light schools. Duke University, a private institution, also has a green-light rating.

As of last year, only one UNC school UNC-Chapel Hill was rated as a green-light campus.

The U.S. has 32 green-light schools, 28 of them public.

Free speech legislation similar to North Carolinas H.B. 527 is pending in Michigan and Wisconsin, Cohn said.

California, New York, and Washington also are considering First Amendment protections for state campuses.

Evergreen State College, a public liberal-arts university in Washington, became a hotspot for controversy in May after Bret Weinstein, a progressive biology professor, protested the colleges suggestion that white students and faculty leave campus for a day.

Outrage ensued.

Students gathered outside Weinsteins office and shouted vulgarities. Some occupied the office of the colleges president, George Bridges, even going so far as to escort him to the bathroom.

Other on-campus protests turned violent.

During a June 15 demonstration by Patriot Prayer, an alt-right group of nationalists and populists, its leader Joey Gibson was struck in the head and pepper-sprayed by a group of 200 Evergreen students dressed as ninjas.

Evergreen is ranked as a red-light school. Washington has no green-light campuses.

FIRE is ready to work with any college or university that wants to follow North Carolinas example and protect First Amendment rights, said Laura Beltz, the organizations policy reform program officer.

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Originally posted here:
Bladen Journal | Campus free speech bill heads to governor - Elizabethtown Bladen Journal