Should anything be off limits? In Germany it is illegal to say the Holocaust did not happen. Someone in scotland was just arrested the other day because he tweeed something racist about the soccer player that nearly died during a game. Every country is different, but many countries in Western Europe you can be prosecuted for things you can not be here.

I don't think so. Which is not to say that people shouldn't be held accountable for what they say.

This.

No.

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I am actually not sure about this..

If a guy with huge bunch of followers says he hopes this person is killed but does not order it and then that person is killed, can he be charged with anything?

Sure. He can potentially be charged with any number of crimes.

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I believe that's inciting.

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[quote="Bunz"]A cosign from you is good because you hate everything. [/quote]

as people continue to get dumber we might want to consider a cap

certain things are already controlled like protests, or slander, or intimidating people, and i think that makes sense. so i guess no, i dont believe you ought to be able to say anything anywhere to anyone without legal repercussions where its appropriate.

saying something racist may not cross the line, but shit it just fucking might. if you make it a civil offense to slander people, at the very least it seems somewhat legit to make racist remarks a civil offense. and i think intimidation is a criminal offense. so i mean, i dont think its totally unjustified.

Does that also include remarks against gays or disabled people? Or old people?

I agree with slanderous remarks but don't think that because something is offensive it should be legislated.

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@cash
i think it could legitimately turn into that at some point. if, say 100 years into the future, overt/verbal racism has been eliminated - i imagine living in that world the next thing people might be thinking about is gayness or retardedness or something. i think thats strange but fine.

going in a different direction: i think one reason why that may be a law in europe, though, is because racist intimidation is more of a problem there in some places. like i think it is a regular thing for soccer fans in some areas to chant racist remarks and wear white hoods to hate on the black players. the institutions may espouse equality but maybe thats not a reality even in the paper shuffling welfare state sense.

The recent Rush Limbaugh episode is highly instructive as to why these types of efforts are shortsighted. If you lose your war to silence someone, not only do they return; they come back stronger.

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Can words cause measurable harm? If they can, why treat them differently to harmful physical actions? I think laws against things should be based on how harmful they are. I'm talking about harm, rather than offence, which I think is more subjective.

There is a difference between saying something offensive and harrassing someone. If someone who lives on my street sees me driving by and says "nigger" he shouldn't go to jail. If everyday he stand in front of my house yelling "nigger" then after a reasonable amount of time he should be arrested because he is now interfering with my everyday living. If someone is on tv with a neo-nazi show he shouldn't be arrested. But if leads a neo-nazi group to protest and block Jews from entering a church then they should.

The only part of freedom of speech that I feel should be punished is when its used to harass someone.

Not a chance in hell we're ever going to legislate speech the way the Borks do. I'm okay with that too.

That said, while it's not even remotely a free speech issue, I do think the FCC is backwards as fuck. The FCC censors words like "shit" and "fuck" under the condition that these words are "indecent" and therefore somewhat damaging to society.

If you accept the position that some words are damaging to society (kinda a dubious claim, imo), then I think words like "slut" "whore" "fag" etc. are unarguably more damaging to society than a word like "shit." It's just kinda crazy that someone like Limbaugh can call some woman a slut and whore for days straight but would get fined if he used the word "shit."

So too it goes for the "protect the children" claptrap about keeping words like "shit" off television, whereas slut and fag are apparently okay (the later being not uncommon on Comedy Central, for instance).

I could never understand the FCC's reasoning with the words they choose to censor. Its gotta be either all or nothing in a situation like that to me.

^^^ Yeah. Agreed.

good point.

@popeye
i agree, the fcc is sleeping on the job of what is actually worthy of censorship (in my opinion not much but certainly the fuck/slut situations), as well as the mpaa, obviously.