Talk:Freedom of speech
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Misc
Is it really neccessary for "Freedom of information" to redirect to this page? They really are seperate issues.
French Academy
The article about the Académie Française links to this article. The link is in reference to how the Academy's rulings don't stop French people from putting English words into their web pages and other private writings, because that would violate their freedom of speech. Anyways, because of this link, if someone has the time or the knowledge of French law, it would be nice to see a section about freedom of speech in France added. That, is, unless the section on the EU freedom of speech is comprehensive enough for France (since it's an EU member). -- Aaron W.
- The section deals with the Council of Europe members, of which the European Union is a strict subset. I added a discussion of the French law.
- Note that the main issue with the French Academy is not even the constitutional requirement of free speech, but that its rulings have no statutory or regulatory values. David.Monniaux 12:20, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Obscenity
This page should mention the controversy about obscenity and legal issues surrounding it; we could really use a page about it. --Daniel C. Boyer
Freedom of speech in the US
There are many de facto restrictions on freedom of speech in the United States; so many, in fact, that it can barely be said to exist any more. An example is the very small First Amendment zones to which protestors are restricted at a great distance from "President" Bush or whoever else they are protesting. The existence of First Amendment Zones shows what is the converse, that the First Amendment is only in effect in these tiny little areas. --Daniel C. Boyer
The paragraph about the United States does not define freedom of speech differently than the opening paragraph. However, freedom of speech in the U.S. is not exactly "the right to freely state one's opinions and ideas." Explained more accurately, freedom of speech in the U.S. exists because speech is protected (by the Constitution) from government suppression. Freedom of speech is not protected in the U.S. within private clubs and institutions or necessarily in homes. This article needs to better express this. Kingturtle 07:04 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)
Should, and how should, claims that (U.S.) state laws providing for involuntary commitment might, but do not necessarily (if diagnosis of the person as "mentally ill" and the upholding of that diagnosis in a court challenge to the commitment, was made solely on the basis of speech or writing, or could not have been made without that speech or writing, clearly the restriction of liberty is based on the speech or writing; the fact that the excuse is that the person is "mentally ill" is not relevant any more than it would be if it were against the law to have seditious thoughts, and if one expressed these thoughts orally or in writing it was "the thoughts" for which one was deprived of liberty, not the speech or writing, regardless that the only way the thoughts could be discovered was the speech or writing -- involuntary commitment laws clearly deprive people of liberty (and that the cases are "civil" does not matter under the due-process standard twice specified in the Constitution, as all that matters is the deprivation of liberty for the hospitalized individual) and restrict "crazy" speech), violate the First Amendment, be mentioned in this article? --Daniel C. Boyer
Wow. That statement is so incoherent that I can see why involuntary commitment laws are needed. Looks like someone skipped linguistics or grammar class.
--Coolcaesar 14:16, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Americans deeply cherish their right of free speech and take it for granted. They are usually shocked when they learn that the governments of most First World countries exercise direct censorship powers over their publishers
What is "direct censorship"? To me, it implies that the executives of these governments review publications, or send the police to close down publications that they disagree with. Which "First World" countries do that? This would certainly run afoul of the ECHR.
Furthermore, a recent study [1] (http://ydr.com/story/opinion/58726/)[2] (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&u=/usatoday/20050131/ts_usatoday/usstudentssaypressfreedomsgotoofar&printer=1) indicates that about one third of American highschool students approve of government censorship of newspapers. Therefore, the statements about Americans cherishing their right to free speech sounds overblown.
I'll therefore alter the sentence. David.Monniaux 12:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
By direct censorship, I was referring to government institutions like the Office of Film & Literature Classification in Australia, the Defense, Press, and Broadcasting Advisory Committee in the U.K., the Ontario Film Review Board in Canada, and the Media Development Authority in Singapore.
There are no direct equivalents in the U.S., thanks to the Pentagon Papers case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that the government cannot tell newspapers "you can't publish that." This precedent has been consistently followed, most recently in the Kobe Bryant case, in which Justice Breyer strongly implied that the trial court had to get rid of its gag order immediately (which was what happened on remand), or else Breyer would take up the appeal again and do it himself.
I concede that the statement about Americans cherishing free speech was overblown. As modified I think it sounds about right.
--Coolcaesar 14:16, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I now understand. I added some bit about the MPAA, which, effectively censors US movies. There can be a long debate about whether it is better to have a private organization control the displaying of movies in almost all movie theaters inside a country through rankings, or whether it is preferrable to have rankings made by some official commission. Both have pros and cons (one would prefer no direct government involvement, but at least rulings by goverment commissions can be appealed before the courts). David.Monniaux 14:43, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
NPOV dispute / Limited Geog. Scope
The neutrality of this page is disputed.
This page is extremely US centric, perhaps (except for the first paragraph) it should be moved to Freedom of speech (United States) Alex756 23:18 May 2, 2003 (UTC)
Yes, it is incredibly US centric, for example "The right to freedom of expression is not considered unlimited; States may still punish (but not prohibit) certain damaging types of expressions". I don't think "states" is referring to countries, but the states of the USA.--Deadworm222 14:25, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
- Per the comments here, it looks like this article deserves {{Limitedgeographicscope}} rather than {{NPOV}}. I made the change. Feco 21:09, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
French laws on journalism
"The Human Rights Court has also targetted the French laws on journalism as being incompatible": there should be further discussion of this. --Daniel C. Boyer 20:42 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- I removed the sentence. It seems that nobody here can point out to the case or to the specific laws, so I think that this very vague sentence does not belong in the article.
- There are not, as far as I know, notable French laws on "journalism". There are some regarding the press, libel and slander (defamation). Perhaps this is what the sentence alluded to. But if it is, it should be said clearly, and say what was being criticized. David.Monniaux 11:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Freedom of speech (Canada)
I integrated Freedom of speech (Canada) with this article because I see no reason for them to be separate until this page gets too big. The following is from Talk:Freedom of speech (Canada): Tuf-Kat 22:38, Jan 15, 2004 (UTC)
Removed reference to Quebec. Unless I'm mistaken, Quebec languages laws were ruled in violation of the Charter, whereupon Quebec repassed the laws under the Notwithstanding Clause.
Yes, I telescoped two stages in this complex jurisprudence and it appears confusing, but you will see below in my amended comments I am not sure you should have just deleted my entry. When I wrote the initial entry I was thinking about the very first case that same before the Court on this issue, i.e. Ford v. Quebec(AG) (1988) 2 SCR 90.
First, I believe that the Supreme Court invalided the sign law that prevented people in Quebec from having English on their signs, then Quebec used the not-withstanding clause, but this was viewed as controversial.
here is an excerpt of that 1988 decision that basically allowed bilingual signs in Quebec because (among other reasons) art. 1 could not be used to prevent it:
- The Attorney General of Quebec relied on what he referred to as the general democratic legitimacy of Quebec language policy without referring explicitly to the requirement of the exclusive use of French. In so far as proportionality is concerned, the Attorney General of Quebec referred to the American jurisprudence with respect to commercial speech, presumably as indicating the judicial deference that should be paid to the legislative choice of means to serve an admittedly legitimate legislative purpose, at least in the area of commercial expression. He did, however, refer in justification of the requirement of the exclusive use of French to the attenuation of this requirement reflected in ss. 59 to 62 of the Charter of the French Language and the regulations. He submitted that these exceptions to the requirement of the exclusive use of French indicate the concern for carefully designed measures and for interfering as little as possible with commercial expression. The qualifications of the requirement of the exclusive use of French in other provisions of the Charter of the French Language and the regulations do not make ss. 58 and 69 any less prohibitions of the use of any language other than French as applied to the respondents. The issue is whether any such prohibition is justified. In the opinion of this Court it has not been demonstrated that the prohibition of the use of any language
- page 780
- other than French in ss. 58 and 69 of the Charter of the French Language is necessary to the defence and enhancement of the status of the French language in Quebec or that it is proportionate to that legislative purpose. Since the evidence put to us by the government showed that the predominance of the French language was not reflected in the "visage linguistique" of Quebec, the governmental response could well have been tailored to meet that specific problem and to impair freedom of expression minimally. Thus, whereas requiring the predominant display of the French language, even its marked predominance, would be proportional to the goal of promoting and maintaining a French "visage linguistique" in Quebec and therefore justified under the Quebec Charter and the Canadian Charter, requiring the exclusive use of French has not been so justified. French could be required in addition to any other language or it could be required to have greater visibility than that accorded to other languages. Such measures would ensure that the "visage linguistique" reflected the demography of Quebec: the predominant language is French. This reality should be communicated to all citizens and non-citizens alike, irrespective of their mother tongue. But exclusivity for the French language has not survived the scrutiny of a proportionality test and does not reflect the reality of Quebec society. Accordingly, we are of the view that the limit imposed on freedom of expression by s. 58 of the Charter of the French Language respecting the exclusive use of French on public signs and posters and in commercial advertising is not justified under s. 9.1 of the Quebec Charter. In like measure, the limit imposed on freedom of expression by s. 69 of the Charter of the French Language respecting the exclusive use of the French version of a firm name is not justified under either s. 9.1 of the Quebec Charter or s. 1 of the Canadian Charter. (emphasis added)
- I've re-read Ford v. Quebec (A.G.) carefully (since you have accused me of inaccuracy) and the ratio decendi of one branch of this case, IMHO states that the unlingual provisions of sign bill were invalid because they could not pass the reasonable limits test on Art. 1. How can we get an article going about this very complex area of Canadian Charter jurisprudence (after all look at all that American stuff on constitutional law! Shame on us Canadians!) Alex756 03:40 May 3, 2003 (UTC)
Here is a link to Ford if you would like to read it: http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1988/vol2/html/1988scr2_0090.html
Freedom of speech in Africa
I will post a section on freedom of speech in Africa tonight. --Sesel 21:27, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Shouting "fire" in a cinema.
See
Syd1435 09:37, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)
Quebec ban on English signs is counter-productive.
As an almost english only speaker, it would be awful to live in a Quebec if all the signs were French only.
If however, the signs were given an english translation using smaller but readable-at-a-distance letters, and with the words in the pair of sentances paired off (as far as possible), then every time I would look at a Dual language sign, I would have the opportunity for a quick French lesson.
Surely that would be useful. Why make it hard to learn the French?
It is a bit like road signs using both the words and the international symbols.
Believe it or not, it can sometimes be useful to have French words with English equivalents, since the French word might be given a special meaning (usually involving some flair). For example:
- email (english)
- spam (english) worthless email
- couriel (french) email
- couriel (english) quality email
Syd1435 09:54, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)
- Perhaps, but Wikipedia is not a site of discussion of public policies. David.Monniaux 20:43, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Vlaams Blok, now Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest party) in Belgium
Belgium’s biggest party (Vlaams Blok) has been banned. The Establishment has not only voted draconian laws against free speech, but the Establishment has also installed the Thought Police to apply these draconian laws. Is that enough to mention such an event?
By founding a new party (costs 2 million dollar) the Flemish democratic uprising is not yet crushed.
See at: http://vdare.com/misc/belien_041109_belgium.htm and http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/39/ and http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/54/
Johan
Flanders 11/2004
German law on the swastika
How would German law regarding the swastika relate to the use of the fylfot in heraldry, which, although of very similar appearance, has no such symbolism? --Daniel C. Boyer 16:34, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
freedom of speech in the arab world
once you start to search for a description of freedom of speech in the arab world, things will get mixed up and become opaque.and that's because of the totlitarian regimes that strongly control all the aspects of the citizen's everyday life. in these countries the word [freedom] became a taboo that everybody is running away from.people are actually forced to say that they're happy,free and can do whatever they want. in fact, the de facto rulers of those nations have shown no mercy towards those who tryed to say the truth or even a part of it.and the actual generations in these countries are not even aware of their rights. they've grown up with that fear of speaking about the generous perfect gouvernor,and in some cases,they believe they're living in heaven and that other nations are going in wrong direction.exaples are so clear in saudi arabia,libya and tunisia to name but a few.