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Weiye Loh

Free Speech under Siege - Robert Skidelsky - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

Law Freedom of Speech Discrimination Libel Political Correctness Truths Opinion

shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Breaking the cultural code damages a person’s reputation, and perhaps one’s career. Britain’s Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke recently had to apologize for saying that some rapes were less serious than others, implying the need for legal discrimination. The parade of gaffes and subsequent groveling apologies has become a regular feature of public life. In his classic essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill defended free speech on the ground that free inquiry was necessary to advance knowledge. Restrictions on certain areas of historical inquiry are based on the opposite premise: the truth is known, and it is impious to question it. This is absurd; every historian knows that there is no such thing as final historical truth.
  • It is not the task of history to defend public order or morals, but to establish what happened. Legally protected history ensures that historians will play safe. To be sure, living by Mill’s principle often requires protecting the rights of unsavory characters. David Irving writes mendacious history, but his prosecution and imprisonment in Austria for “Holocaust denial” would have horrified Mill.
  • the pressure for “political correctness” rests on the argument that the truth is unknowable. Statements about the human condition are essentially matters of opinion.  Because a statement of opinion by some individuals is almost certain to offend others, and since such statements make no contribution to the discovery of truth, their degree of offensiveness becomes the sole criterion for judging their admissibility. Hence the taboo on certain words, phrases, and arguments that imply that certain individuals, groups, or practices are superior or inferior, normal or abnormal; hence the search for ever more neutral ways to label social phenomena, thereby draining language of its vigor and interest.
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  • A classic example is the way that “family” has replaced “marriage” in public discourse, with the implication that all “lifestyles” are equally valuable, despite the fact that most people persist in wanting to get married. It has become taboo to describe homosexuality as a “perversion,” though this was precisely the word used in the 1960’s by the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse (who was praising homosexuality as an expression of dissent). In today’s atmosphere of what Marcuse would call “repressive tolerance,” such language would be considered “stigmatizing.”
  • The sociological imperative behind the spread of “political correctness” is the fact that we no longer live in patriarchal, hierarchical, mono-cultural societies, which exhibit general, if unreflective, agreement on basic values. The pathetic efforts to inculcate a common sense of “Britishness” or “Dutchness” in multi-cultural societies, however well-intentioned, attest to the breakdown of a common identity.
  • The defense of free speech is made no easier by the abuses of the popular press. We need free media to expose abuses of power. But investigative journalism becomes discredited when it is suborned to “expose” the private lives of the famous when no issue of public interest is involved. Entertaining gossip has mutated into an assault on privacy, with newspapers claiming that any attempt to keep them out of people’s bedrooms is an assault on free speech. You know that a doctrine is in trouble when not even those claiming to defend it understand what it means. By that standard, the classic doctrine of free speech is in crisis. We had better sort it out quickly – legally, morally, and culturally – if we are to retain a proper sense of what it means to live in a free society.
  • Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11
     
    Yet freedom of speech in the West is under strain. Traditionally, British law imposed two main limitations on the "right to free speech." The first prohibited the use of words or expressions likely to disrupt public order; the second was the law against libel. There are good grounds for both - to preserve the peace, and to protect individuals' reputations from lies. Most free societies accept such limits as reasonable. But the law has recently become more restrictive. "Incitement to religious and racial hatred" and "incitement to hatred on the basis of sexual orientation" are now illegal in most European countries, independent of any threat to public order. The law has shifted from proscribing language likely to cause violence to prohibiting language intended to give offense. A blatant example of this is the law against Holocaust denial. To deny or minimize the Holocaust is a crime in 15 European countries and Israel. It may be argued that the Holocaust was a crime so uniquely abhorrent as to qualify as a special case. But special cases have a habit of multiplying.
Weiye Loh

California ban on sale of 'violent' video games to children rejected - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Violence Children Video Games

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • "The First Amendment does not disable government from helping parents make such a choice here -- a choice not to have their children buy extremely violent, interactive games," he wrote. At issue is how far constitutional protections of free speech and expression, as well as due process, can be applied to youngsters.
  • Justice Clarence Thomas also dissented, saying the law's requirement of having parents purchase the games for their underage children was reasonable. "The freedom of speech as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors, without going through the minors' parents or guardians," he said.
  • The motion picture industry has its own self-monitoring ratings system, imposed decades ago after complaints that some films were too explicit for the general audience in what was seen and heard. The gaming industry says its ratings system roughly follows the same self-imposed guidelines, and ratings are clearly labeled on the packaging.
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  • Efforts in at least eight other states to restrict gaming content have been rejected by various courts. Video game makers have the support of various free-speech, entertainment, and media organizations. Nine states also agree, noting California's law has good intentions but would compel law enforcement to become "culture critics" and "distract from the task of policing actual violence." But 11 other states back California, saying they have enjoyed a traditional regulatory power over commerce aimed at protecting children, including such goods as alcohol and cigarettes.
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11
     
    The Supreme Court has struck down a California law that would have banned selling "violent" video games to children, a case balancing free speech rights with consumer protection. The 7-2 ruling Monday is a victory for video game makers and sellers, who said the ban -- which had yet to go into effect -- would extend too far. They say the existing nationwide, industry-imposed, voluntary rating system is an adequate screen for parents to judge the appropriateness of computer game content. The state says it has a legal obligation to protect children from graphic interactive images when the industry has failed to do so.
Weiye Loh

Can Creative Commons solve the digital rights problem? - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...he-digital-rights-problem.html

Creative Commons Copyright

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Creative Commons works by providing a framework for people to specify how their work can be used. Creators can use the Creative Commons website to choose the licence they want and generate the HTML code to include on their own website. The licences can allow people to copy it, remix it and share it and set various conditions under which those things can be done, for example allowing only non-commercial use of their work or allowing use only if they are credited as the source.
  • the licensing made possible new business models. She told the Telegraph that the existing system had failed because people saw the world as “either the chaos of piracy or the lockdown”. She added: “But the lockdown doesn’t work and it wouldn’t work even if it was ideal.”
Weiye Loh

Fukushima babies and how numbers can lie - Boing Boing - 0 views

www.boingboing.net/...fukushima-babies-and.html

Corporation Data Bias Information Capitalism Reality

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Over at Scientific American, Michael Moyer takes a critical look at an Al Jazeera story about a recent study purporting to show that infant deaths on the American West Coast increased by 35% as a result of fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown.
  • At first glance, the story looks credible. And scary. The information comes from a physician, Janette Sherman MD, and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, who got their data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports—a newsletter that frequently helps public health officials spot trends in death and illness.
  • Look closer, though, and the credibility vanishes. For one thing, this isn't a formal scientific study and Sherman and Mangano didn't publish their findings in a peer-reviewed journal, or even on a science blog. Instead, all of this comes from an essay the two wrote for Counter Punch, a political newsletter.
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  • Let's first consider the data that the authors left out of their analysis. It's hard to understand why the authors stopped at these eight cities. Why include Boise but not Tacoma? Or Spokane? Both have about the same size population as Boise, they're closer to Japan, and the CDC includes data from Tacoma and Spokane in the weekly reports.
  • More important, why did the authors choose to use only the four weeks preceding the Fukushima disaster? Here is where we begin to pick up a whiff of data fixing. ... While it certainly is true that there were fewer deaths in the four weeks leading up to Fukushima than there have been in the 10 weeks following, the entire year has seen no overall trend. When I plotted a best-fit line to the data, Excel calculated a very slight decrease in the infant mortality rate. Only by explicitly excluding data from January and February were Sherman and Mangano able to froth up their specious statistical scaremongering.
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Jun 11
     
    When you think about what information be skeptical of, that decision can't begin and end with "corporate interests." Yes, those sources often give you bad information. But bad information comes from other places, too. The Fukushima accident was worse than TEPCO wanted people to believe when it first happened. Radiation isn't healthy for you, and there are people (plant workers, emergency crews, people who lived nearby) who will be dealing with the effects of Fukushima for years to come. But the fact that all of that is true does not mean that we should uncritically accept it when somebody says that radiation from Fukushima is killing babies in the United States. Just because the corporate interests are in the wrong doesn't mean that every claim against them is true.
Weiye Loh

To Live in a Free Society do We Have to Tolerate Hate Speech? Geert Wilders Says Yes. |... - 0 views

utopianist.com/...-speech-geert-wilders-says-yes

Freedom of Speech Hate Speech Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Geert Wilders is, at best, a fear monger –  if you don’t believe me check out a speech he made in Nashville last month in which he explains that Muslim immigrants are trying to conquer Europe and soon no one will be able to wear a crucifix, women won’t be able to walk to streets without veils, etc… Plus he flat out says “Our Judeo-Christian Western culture is far better and far superior to the islamic [sic] culture.” However, Wilders does has a good point about free speech. Words can be dangerous, especially the words of a powerful politician, however free speech is vital to free societies. Speech isn’t always pretty, in fact, it is often ugly and offensive (see the comments below any YouTube video with an even slightly political message) but silence presents a different kind of danger.
  • Weiye Loh on 24 Jun 11
     
    In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who recently beat a hate-speech rap in his own country for his controversial views on Islam, tells us that no speech goes too far when it is in the interest of promoting political debate.  Wilders was brought to court for making inflammatory statements about Islam and now he is speaking out against the Dutch legislation
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