First, thank you for much better edge cases than the usual "fire in a crowded theater!" and "slander!". Yours are much more interesting to talk about.

The nuclear example is the easiest to dispose of, since it involves an actual property crime (essentially trespassing).

The others are trickier, but I think the distinction in question isn't about what they did or didn't say, but rather that they aided and abetted an actual property crime. For example, we prosecute the driver of the get-away car just as much as we prosecute the people who actually rob the bank at gun point. This isn't because driving people around is illegal or requires close scrutiny, but because they were knowingly a party to an actual property crime.

Or, for a similar example involving speech, imagine that I pull a gun on you in a darkened alley and say "Your money or your life." Obviously a crime, right? Now add that we happen to be actors in a movie and I am reading from a script when I do so. Obviously not a crime. That is to say, it's not the speech that makes such a thing a crime, it's the actual property crime behind it that does so.

From that perspective, we can see that slander and libel should not properly be considered crimes, since there is no property crime to back them up (you can't have a property right in your reputation, since that exists solely in the minds of others). It's the same with calling Mohammed a pedophile, telling the king of Thailand to piss off, or simply transmitting information to the public at large about how to build a bomb from household ingredients.

Oh and could you give us your address ? We would like to go to yours hours, neighbors, and family, and tell them how much a child porn producer you are. And when you scream libel, lies , we will again laugh at your face.

You can't have my address, but on the off-chance you manage to dig it up yourself, feel free to tell anyone you want anything you wish to about me, true or not. I stand by my position.

I should have been more clear, perhaps. "Consequences" meaning the logical consequences that flow from the stated position, not the consequences of the speech itself. I.e. if you say you believe in absolute freedom of speech, you can't back away when someone points out that such a position would make the distribution of child pornography legal. That's a logical consequence of believing in absolute free speech.

And obviously, speech will have consequences, even if they aren't legal ones. If you go to work and insult your boss, you might be fired. If I invite you over to my house, and you yell and swear at me and my family, I'll probably ask you to leave and not be your friend anymore. Those are consequences, but they don't involve violence, jail time, or censorship on the part of a government.

The person I was replying to stated that he had never seen anyone who said they supported absolute free speech and also understood and accepted the consequences of it. I stated that I support absolute free speech, and understand and accept the consequences of it. Now he can't say that any longer.

Your personal disagreement with me on my views is immaterial to the point and I'm not sure your style of "debate" is really going to change anyone's mind, but if that's the maximum level of discourse that you can mentally deal with, we can run with it I guess:

Freedom of speech ends the moment it involves the king!
Freedom of speech ends the moment it involves the Prophet Muhammed!
Freedom of speech ends the moment it involves speaking out against the government!
To support otherwise makes you Hitler!
Look up the history of Hitler. How does that work for you??

Is that more to your liking?

But hey, that's ok right?

It's not okay, but it also shouldn't be criminal. You can be opposed to someone doing something and also not want it to be criminalized (see: drug war).

But you said it should all be free... I'm confused...

Why? Because you wrongly assumed I would be outraged by your scenario? I am not.

So I reiterate: There should be no criminal penalties on any speech, information, or data transmitted from anyone, to anyone. What else ya got?

I'm yet to speak to someone who spouts nonsense about all censorship being wrong who actually understands and accepts the consequences that come with it.

Then let me be the first: There should be no criminal penalties on any speech, information, or data transmitted from anyone, to anyone.

If the major oil players stopped production cold, you wouldn't have so much of a "brief period of instability" as say, "mass societal collapse and widespread starvation".

Whether Exxon by itself would be enough to trigger a collapse is a good question, but I'd say the consequences there would still be somewhat worse than a "brief period of instability".

Well, yes. I think everyone must concede that the text of the section applies to the states and not the federal government. I was talking about interpretations stemming from the interplay of state and federal obligations related to money, not this passage by itself.

I wasn't making an argument one way or the other; I was clarifying what the AC was talking about. Your snark is appreciated, however.

That is to say, you have a certain interpretation as to the meaning of the words, and are not completely unaware of the words.

In the future, it might be best to just lead with your interpretation instead of snark about "double-secret probation editions" of the constitution. It would be more conducive to productive conversation that way.

A believe he's referring to Article 1, Section 10:

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Apparently, losing 70% of their market cap in one day and shopping themselves around frantically hoping to be "acquired" before they go bankrupt is just "day-to-day minutia" for their CEO.

the girl clearly violated a Court Order and also well-established law

Not as clear cut, actually. Here's Eugene Volokh's take:

An order barring a victim from revealing the names of her assailants is, I think, clearly unconstitutional, even when the assailants are juveniles. Oklahoma Publishing Co. v. District Court (1977) expressly rejected the notion that courts or legislatures may bar the publication of the names of juvenile offenders; that case involved a newspaper's publishing the name of the juvenile offender, which it learned from a court hearing, but the rationale applies at least as strongly to a person's publishing a name that she learned from the attack itself. Likewise, even when it comes to grand jury proceedings - probably the most historically secret part of the criminal justice system - Butterworth v. Smith (1990) held that, while a grand jury witness could be barred from revealing what he learned as part of the grand jury proceedings, the witness could not be generally barred from revealing information that he had learned on his own (even if that was the subject of his testimony).

Arguing about which party is "responsible" for our current economic woes is like arguing over which driver of the car is pushing down the gas pedal harder as it careens towards the cliff. In the end, it's the direction that matters, not how fast or slow we're headed there.

What we're seeing is nothing more than the death rattle of economies built on paper currency debt. It has happened before, and it will happen again.

I won't defend RMS's support for things like the GPL, because I do find him hypocritical on that point. It's one of the reasons I dislike the GPL, actually.

Additionally, my comment about the price of an infinitely reproducable good going to zero is still spot on, regardless of how much money was required to develop it. The price of something is not set by the cost of its creation, initial or otherwise, but by the intersection of supply and demand. The goal, then, is to sell things that are scarce. As an example, consider that the creation of art is a scarce good; charge for that (e.g. Kickstarter) and not for the copies after creation is completed.

And finally, I do not believe that you can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive. To believe such a thing is to believe that everybody who has ever organized the bits on a hard drive in a certain manner has a property right in my physical hard drive, such that they can demand that I not organize the bits on it in the same manner. Thus, these fake "intellectual property" rights are actually violations of real, physical property rights. If I own the pen, and I own the paper, I can damn well write whatever I please with them, regardless of what someone half a world away may have already written in the past.