10.04.09
Posted in Freedom of Speech at 5:29 pm by Clay
Congratulations, Glenn Beck — I now think of you as an enemy of freedom because you’ll try almost anything to shut down those who disagree with you.
Lacking expanded-basic cable, I was mostly unaware of Glenn Beck until recently. Perhaps you don’t know of him, either.
Well, evidently he’s a political talk show host who will make or repeat allegations, then expect a person to prove their innocence.
Someone evidently objected to his methods, and launched glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com discussing the allegations against Glenn Beck.
Now, this is an obvious parody site ripping into Beck because of the alleged damage Beck does to political speech.
Notice the key words “parody” and “political speech”? Either of those things would make it very difficult to overcome first-amendment concerns.
So, what was the seemingly obvious answer for Glenn Beck? Ask the World Intellectual Property Organization to give him the domain because people might think that Glenn Beck put up such a website.
The legal response to that claim is amusing on its own, and I’ll admit I don’t really have much to add — I’m just hoping to help Glen Beck out a bit with his personal Streisand Effect.
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05.30.07
Posted in Copyright/Trademark/Patent Law, Freedom of Speech, General at 7:52 pm by Clay
There’s an article on Slashdot today about McCain’s appearance at D5: All Things Digital conference. Despite the fact that it’s supposedly about “all things digital”, about half the questions are about the Iraq war. Being annoyed about the fact that an “all things digital” conference spent lots of time talking about Iraq, rather than, oh, digital things, I wrote a comment on Slashdot that sparked a nice conversation of mostly me ranting.
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04.12.07
Posted in Freedom of Speech, General at 9:41 pm by Clay
I imagine most of you have already heard about Don Imus getting fired for referring to the women on the Rutger’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”.
This incident has taught us a couple of things: First, use of the word “nappy” will get you branded a racist. Second, it’s perfectly okay to publicly discuss the relative merits of the physical beauty of women in all areas of life, just so long as you don’t include the slang word “ho”.
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02.16.06
Posted in Freedom of Speech at 6:14 pm by Clay
I’ve been mulling over the offensive-to-some-Muslims political cartoons. At some point I thought, “I can understand how these cartoons would be seen as highly offensive to people who believe that any image of their religious leader is a horrible sin. Perhaps newspapers are right to not publish such things, and perhaps I was wrong to post one of the images on Moderate Wacko.”
Now, having thought that, in no way have I wavered from my belief in press freedom. I believe that we need to allow all non-violent discussion to take place, because that’s the only way to arrive at the truth of things; if you take away debate, you might get things right, but there’s no “sifting and winnowing” of ideas.
That said, is it a good idea for a paper to print offensive images?
I thought about this for awhile longer, and realized that the question I really needed to ask was this: Is there a reasonable way to make a political cartoon that links being Muslim and being a terrorist? Well, instead of Mohammed, you could put in Osama bin Laden. But that doesn’t work; that’s linking Osama bin Laden with terrorism, and that would be like having a political cartoon linking Bush to the Republicans.
I’ve thought about this for awhile, and have yet to come up with any symbol of Islam that would get the same point across. If anyone can think of something, do say something.
So, having arrived at that conclusion, I also had to conclude that newspapers who believe unfettered debate is more important than protecting people from being offended should be reprinting these sorts of offensive comics, because otherwise the debate gets shut down.
One last thing I feel the need to address: Yes, we need political cartoons that link Islam and terrorism. Why? Because Osama bin Laden, the Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and so many others have already done so. The existence of so many organizations that are supported by such a broad range of people means that there’s something about the religion itself that is connected to terrorism.
Does this mean that all Muslims support terrorism? Of course not; if it had been possible, it would have been reasonable to have a political cartoon during the Crusades that had Jesus in a suit of armor with a few children impaled on his sword. Few people would argue that even most Christians of today would support a Crusades-like action, and I imagine a few hundred years from now Islam will look awfully different.
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02.06.06
Posted in Freedom of Speech at 11:37 pm by Clay
I’ve been reading more about the offensive reaction to the Danish political cartoons, and came across an article titled Rage over cartoon goes beyond politics at Newsday. At the end of the article was this:
To Westerners who wonder why Muslim sensitivities should trump their free speech traditions, Muslims respond with accusations of hypocrisy.
“I’m a very strong advocate of freedoms, but this is a deliberate provocation hiding behind the issue of free speech,” said Muslim commentator Muq.tedar Khan, a political science professor at the University of Delaware.
Khan said he rejects the claims of editors of the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which first published the cartoons last September, that they sought to test free speech, suggesting that the paper is allied with anti-immigration groups.
“The West likes to frame this as a free speech issue, but there are many categories of restricted speech: for instance, eight countries in Europe ban speech denying the Holocaust. You can call our prophet a terrorist, but you cannot question the Holocaust?”
Likewise, in this country, Khan said, hate speech directed at blacks, homosexuals and Jews is condemned, if not legally prohibited. “We will protect people on the basis of race on the basis of sexual preference. It’s only with Muslims that it’s no holds barred.”
And, of course, he’s absolutely correct: His reason why this type of freedom of speech should not be allowed is exactly as lame and anti-freedom-of-speech as hate crimes legislation is in the US.
The thing is, you can’t honestly be pro-freedom-of-speech unless there’s something out there that you really think is so awful that no one should read or listen to it, and you strongly oppose anyone who attempts to make that sort of speech illegal.
So he’s right, there’s plenty of hypocrisy about freedom-of-speech out there, but that doesn’t make his desire to stop such speech any less frightening or wrong.
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02.05.06
Posted in Freedom of Speech at 4:03 pm by Clay
At the risk of intentionally ticking off any Muslim readers I might have, there’s evidently been quite a controversy about some political cartoons, including this one:
Now, first off, let me say that I strongly believe in freedom of speech. In both directions. I believe that it is every muslim’s right to say that I’m going straight to hell for reposting a cartoon like this. I also believe it’s their right to go ahead and boycott any publication that disrespects their religion by being so blasphemous.
That said, they should not have the right to get a government to shut down any publication printing such things, and they should not be calling for violence(in a fire-in-a-crowded-theater sense) against the sinners.
Now, in a blatant attempt to make this post more offensive, why do we need cartoons like this? Because Islam is a big factor in producing a lot of terrorists. And, to be fair, Christianity is a big factor in producing Pat “Sharon-deserved-it” Robertson and Fred “Thank-God-for-IEDs” Phelps.
And, if you are Muslim or Christian(or Atheist, Jewish, pro-choice, pro-life, etc.) you have to defend your group, saying why it really shouldn’t include those people(or why those people are right). You shouldn’t get a free pass by being able to shut the discussion off, just as I shouldn’t get a free pass on being for the freedom of speech of NAMBLA(And I don’t mean Marlon Brando Look-Alikes.) and the KKK(Were oppressive white people really unable to spell back when the KKK was formed?). Muslims have to answer why exactly the Palestinians voted for an organization that, as a platform, calls for ethnic cleansing.
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