Clandestine Internet Censorship in India 134
nooyi86 writes "China and the Middle East block sites in order to suppress political or social dissent. Website blocking in India, on the other hand, is driven by national security-related paranoia, or hate speech that may lead to violence. The state must save its citizens from propaganda of both the extreme right and the extreme left. Shivam Vij has posted a comprehensive profile of Internet censorship in India."
Re:The reason doesn't matter... (Score:2, Interesting)
>You do still have the freedom of speech to be an ignorant fuck and say what you just said, don't you?
I know of a few situations where freedom of assembly is abridged, but in general I agree with you.
You cannot gather together with 75 other ignorant fucks on public land without getting permission from the government first. And you cannot do this at all unless you are willing and able to designate one of those 75 people as an individual who can take responsibility for the entire group. This sounds reasonable to some people, but it is completely contrary to the entire premise of the founding principle that drove the First Amendment into existence.
I have personally had my rights abridged by action related to this rule, and the experience has caused me to cease my support of the rulemaking process in the Federal Government.
I have personally been cited, had automatic weapons pointed at me, and threatened with up to five years in prison for doing nothing at all except peaceable assembly among a very loosely affiliated group. It will be impossible to convince me that this is not a total violation of my rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, but the government has consistently inisted otherwise. Until CFR 251 and 261 are changed such that they do not abridge the right of the people to peaceably assemble on public land, I will not accept the premise that no fundamental loss of civil rights has been suffered by the people.
http://prop1.org/rainbow/ [prop1.org]
Maybe you have not had the diligence to see your rights being abridged, or maybe you have not had the misfortune of being among a group that was targeted by the government, but that doesn't mean everyone has been so careless or so lucky.
Re:In the US you can freely spew "hate speech" (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that simply is not true. Almost all speech in the US is legal. It is REALLY hard to cross the line. The only way they can put you away is if you are inciting an imminent crime. If you tell your lover to go kill your husband, you could get in trouble, anything short of that and you are safe.
The Folly case is a good example of this. Folly pretty blatantly is hitting on some underage kids (by Florida age of consent laws, not DC) in the e-mails that have been released to date. While he is in trouble in congress for ethical violations, he isn't in any legal trouble yet. In order to nail Folly with a crime, he has to do more then be a sketchy bastard. He has to be taking blatant active steps to get a kid to go have sex with him before he is in any sort of legal trouble. So, he can legally tell a 15 year old buy that he wants to ram him in the ass all night long, but that isn't illegal. He needs to tell a 15 year old boy to come to his house so that they can have sex in order to get into trouble.
I am not saying that the US is the most liberal democracy in the world. However, when it comes to free speech laws, the US is the most liberal nation in the world. Hate speech is a-okay unless you are advocating an imminent crime. Slander and libel are close to impossible prosecute, and against public figures it is almost literally impossible.
The only three possible exceptions I can think of that US has in its free speech laws are copyright violations, campaign contribution spending limits, and limits on holding multiple demonstrations in the same area. If you toss copyright into the real of free speech you could make the argument that the US could be more liberal in its speech laws, but even then copyright violations are civil violations that you can not go to jail for. The only other 'liberal' loophole is campaign donations. There is a limit to donations to campaigns and you could argue that this is inhibiting free speech, though even in that regards the US would still be considered more liberal then most of Europe. Finally, the US does prevent rival demonstrations from being held in the same area. A pile of bible nuts can't march around a gay pride parade telling them that they are going to be damned to hell, and a pile of democrats can't start shouting and waving signs during a Republican rally.
If you want to march around the White House with a BUSH IS A FUCKING NAZI SIGN and then cover the sign with swastikas, you can, and people do. The secret service will probably watch you like a hawk, but so long as you don't do anything stupid like block traffic, you will be fine. I have been to gay pride rallies with bible nuts next door waving signs about everyone being damned to hell, and to anti-KKK counter rallies next to a bunch of sad sack of shit "white power" rallies. Really, there are a lot of things to trash the US on, but free speech limits isn't one of them.