Comment Re:It's Hate Speech (Score 1) 245
I think you are miles away from reality. Try creating a website themed 'I hate Jews' and you will be behind bars before you click SUBMIT. There are thousands of Islamists that live and breath hatred towards India. There is a serious terrorist attack every other month. I think it is reasonable for the police to enagage in the nit-picking and say this speech is harmful to public safety and this one is not.
I don't think, in general, you can get away without making such value judgements. 'All speech must be free speech' is a fantasy. So is the notion of the perfect antidote to totalitarianism.
The reality does not have an 'easy' button - billion speeches require billion evaluations. Some of them are hate speeches and some of them are not. In this case, both the hate sites and the 'fan' groups of Bin Laden type characters (Dawood Ibrahim was responsible for sevaral severe bomb blasts in Bombay) were over the line and the only responsible thing to do was to ban them. I applaud Google for that (and I know I am in minority here).
In the end, Humans have always made value judgements - that's what makes us different from animals. It's an evolutionary advantage, so if anything, we will be seeing more of it. No set of 'Though must' and 'Though must not' have had stellar success yet. Somewhere in subconcious, people understand that being 'good' is a good thing. And that is the only thing that has been keeping the civilization going, not some utopian, extreme, totally-free-something-or-other fantasy.
Look at slashdot. It needs moderators.
I don't think, in general, you can get away without making such value judgements. 'All speech must be free speech' is a fantasy. So is the notion of the perfect antidote to totalitarianism.
The reality does not have an 'easy' button - billion speeches require billion evaluations. Some of them are hate speeches and some of them are not. In this case, both the hate sites and the 'fan' groups of Bin Laden type characters (Dawood Ibrahim was responsible for sevaral severe bomb blasts in Bombay) were over the line and the only responsible thing to do was to ban them. I applaud Google for that (and I know I am in minority here).
In the end, Humans have always made value judgements - that's what makes us different from animals. It's an evolutionary advantage, so if anything, we will be seeing more of it. No set of 'Though must' and 'Though must not' have had stellar success yet. Somewhere in subconcious, people understand that being 'good' is a good thing. And that is the only thing that has been keeping the civilization going, not some utopian, extreme, totally-free-something-or-other fantasy.
Look at slashdot. It needs moderators.
