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We don’t push back on the process, we push back on the principle. The point of the principle of free speech is not that all speech is beneficial but that we ca

• rhizome 7y ago
  Where do you stand on falsely claiming "fire" in a crowded movie theater?
  • mjevans 7y ago
    Depends on how false false is. If someone actually believes there to be a fire that's one thing. If someone is clearly doing it with intent to cause harm to others, then that's a crime and they should be charged with such; after the fact. I'm against installing verbal filters on everyone just in case someone might shout 'fire' in a crowded place with intent to cause harm.
    • rhizome 7y ago
      If someone actually believes there to be a fire that's one thing You don't have to wonder, there are long defined and continuously refined standards in operation. But it's irrelevant to the thread, so we don't need to detail them here.
  • solotronics 7y ago
    I'm not a lawyer but am pretty sure it would fall under any number of other laws if someone was to get hurt or you caused a disruption. There doesn't need to be a separate law protecting you from someone saying something you find objectionable. - disturbing the peace ( if nobody got hurt ) - causing bodily harm by criminal negligence - inciting to riot
  • ghda 7y ago
    This has always struck me as a weird sort of edge case, because the hypothetical situation is pretty disconnected from all the other situations where people might seek restrictions on free speech that it doesn’t really matter which way I go. If I say that yes, I suppose we can carve out some sort of exception for people who directly cause harm to life and limb by falsely proclaiming the existence of immediate dangers in crowded areas, then this doesn’t seem like a slippery slope — I am not forced to then admit we should also start censoring anything else outside that very narrow category. If, on the other hand, I say that free speech should apply even to those shouting fire in a crowded theatre, am I worried that this is going to suddenly become a major danger? Are psychopathic pranksters going to start causing fatal stampedes at every opening night? No, because it’s not something that actually happens; anyone shouting fire in a crowded theatre would probably just get shushed and escorted out by ushers; at worst they’d provoke an orderly evacuation through the plentiful emergency exits that theatres tend to have nowadays. So I guess I’ll go for the second option — refuse to carve out the exception and accept the risk of the occasional unnecessary evacuation. There are other small and well established edge-case restrictions on free speech I am willing to accept, mind you, eg market manipulation or giving false statements to police. But I don’t see the classic fire-in-theatre one as being relevant to anything.
    • rhizome 7y ago
      There are other small and well established edge-case restrictions on free speech I am willing to accept, mind you, eg market manipulation or giving false statements to police. But I don’t see the classic fire-in-theatre one as being relevant to anything. This contradicts the point you were making before, which I was responding to, where no agency is qualified to establish limits, so I guess this part of the thread is over. HOWEVER refuse to carve out the exception and accept the risk of the occasional unnecessary evacuation You're still hung up on theaters, not to mention a whole whack of cherry-picked hyper-specific scenarios. Look into the Hillsborough Disaster some time. Or here's an on-point example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster ...would that be no fault of anybody in the free-speech society you are advocating? Maybe pulling a fire alarm would have to be established as a form of speech first, but I bet that could be done.
  • topspin 7y ago
    I'm old enough to remember when conservative pundits would pose similar challenges when discussing which forms of contemporary music needed to be outlawed. So where I stand is that I've learned to associate anyone offering the fire in a crowded theater argument as another advocate of the prevailing moral panic.
    • rhizome 7y ago
      Well, then let's take your favorite other-example! My point is not to relitigate the "fire" standard or any individual case, but to point out that The point of the principle of free speech is not that all speech is beneficial but that we can’t possibly trust any agency with the power to decide what is and isn’t. those agencies already exist! So, in order to execute GP's preferences, what agencies shall be eliminated? I find that tends to focus the debate and reveal the parts that are based in reality and those that aren't. Perhaps I should stay away from recognizable cases or be sure they aren't lightning rods, knowing that people are going to get hung up on the specific example. It's hard to do that, though.
    • int_19h 7y ago
      The "fire in a crowded theater" argument was created by advocates of the prevailing moral panic, in fact. The panic in question was anti-war and anti-draft propaganda by socialist parties in the USA during WW1, and the phrase originated in a Supreme Court ruling that said that it's legal for the federal government to imprison people for speaking such horrible things. It never ceases to amaze me how common this trope remains in defense of censorship, given that it was designed as a slippery slope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
      • topspin 7y ago
        > The "fire in a crowded theater" argument was created by advocates of the prevailing moral panic I know.
  • jakeogh 7y ago
    Bad decision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM
  • Asooka 7y ago
    Next to the fire exit