Mark Humphrys (politics)

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Anti-censorship - Not censorship


  Privacy (published information)

Superinjunctions

The "right to be forgotten"

Privacy in general

Hard cases

Libel

Noise

Behaviour

Spam

Copyright theft


Not censorship

Actually, this page covers things that are censorship as well as things that are not censorship. As well as things where I am not sure.

This page is discussion of borderline cases, hard cases, conflicts of rights, the definition of speech, the role of the law, and so on. I come down on different sides on different issues below. And on some of them, I am not sure.

As an adjunct to the Anti-censorship page.



Privacy (published information)

Invading people's privacy can often be a form of threat. "Doxing" and publishing the home address of people involved in political controversy is generally a type of threat, and an encouragement to others to target this person for attack or hacking or identity theft.

There are many reasons why people want privacy, but one of the main ones is fear of predators (burglars, thieves, stalkers, maniacs, terrorists) that will come into our lives and attack us, the more they know about us. A terrorist-linked group publishing home addresses of political opponents and police and prison officers should clearly be illegal.

But, as always with speech, where do you define the line? Some people use "privacy" to prevent people criticising them at all.





Superinjunctions

The idea of a "superinjunction" in UK law is an injunction against publication of something where the existence of the injunction may not be reported.



The Elton John superinjunction

The Elton John superinjunction of 2016 is a fascinating story. A celebrity millionaire pays UK lawyers to try to use UK law to get a celebrity sex story off the Internet. Best of luck.

The story in Wikipedia:

Arguably the story is of public interest, since Elton John has worked to normalise surrogate birth and gay parenting. Even if the sex story is of little interest, the censorship issue has become the main story.

We can all agree the secret is safe, whatever it is.




The "right to be forgotten"

The Court of Justice of the EU, in a ludicrous May 2014 ruling in the Mario Costeja González case, decided that there is a "right to be forgotten" - that almost anyone has the right to hide almost any information about them.

The EU tries to impose its more restrictive, Continental version of democracy and speech on countries with a much freer tradition of freedom of speech.

  


Spanish lawyer Mario Costeja González engaged in an epic legal battle to hide the above information.
He was unhappy that when you Googled his name you got a 1998 article detailing his debts and the forced sale of his property.
He could not sue the newspaper for printing facts, so he chanced his arm and sued Google, and in a ludicrous ruling, won in 2014 at the European Court of Justice.
Due to the Streisand effect, the above information will be linked to his name until the day he dies.



Mark Savage ran in the local elections in Ireland in 2014. He ran as an independent in Swords.
The above is election literature showing what he said about gays.
He objected to a Reddit thread slagging him off for it.
So he took a "right to be forgotten" case to ensure that when you Google his name no one will ever see the election literature or the Reddit thread again.




Privacy in general

Some private information is controversial even if it is not being published.

Should the police, for example, be allowed hold a DNA database of every citizen? The classic civil liberties position has always opposed DNA databases, compulsory ID cards, and other information the police may collect on the citizenry as a whole. But perhaps their opposition is becoming misplaced. Perhaps the proper, the honest, solution is to campaign freely and openly for more liberal laws (such as reforming the drug laws), so that no citizen, now matter how deviant their lifestyle, has anything to fear.

Civil liberties groups evolved in a situation where the state, by repressing and oppressing in various ways all sorts of groups - religious minorities, atheists, controversial writers, ethnic minorities, gays, unmarried mothers, contraceptive users, drug users - was the greatest threat to civil liberty. But if all these battles are won (and I agree the drug issue remains outstanding), maybe we should look again at the privacy of modern society - which allows serial rapists, abusers, thieves, muggers and burglars to operate uncaught for years. As conservatives have long pointed out, these people are a threat to civil liberty too. If there was a compulsory national DNA database, rape (and rape murder) could become virtually impossible. Even theft and burglary could be hard hit - with the citizenry using their own home DNA kits to hunt for evidence.

So how about the following:

  1. A DNA database of all citizens.
  2. Tag all violent offenders for life, so their whereabouts are always known (to a non-public computer). You can still live, and do what you like. All we ask is that we must know where you are.
  3. Or even tag the whole population, so it is known where everyone is. Make assault, rape, abduction and murder literally impossible.

Maybe civil liberties groups have it all wrong. Maybe this is the future of civil liberties - the end of crime, in a liberal, pluralist state.

In summary, if we ever do win the battle to create a proper liberal state, then maybe we will eventually come to see privacy as the greatest single threat to civil liberty. This is a long way off perhaps, but it's still something to think about.




Hard cases - Speech that encourages threats to other people's liberties

The only reason we're in favour of free speech is because we're in favour of freedom and liberty. So how about when the speaker doesn't believe in freedom and liberty for others, and threatens them? How about these hard cases:

  1. Intellectual arguments:
    1. A site that makes an intellectual case for racism / fascism or religious hatred.
    2. A site that makes an intellectual case for bestiality. Can such a case be made? I'm not sure. I can see that there is an argument that this is not necessarily the same as supporting torture of animals. After all, adult animals have sex all the time (at least with each other). See bestiality laws.
    3. Anyway, how about a site that does support torture of animals for sport or entertainment - hunting, circuses, dancing bears, and so on.
    4. A site that makes an intellectual case for pedophilia. This is not necessarily a site supporting aggressive rape. e.g. Say a site making an intellectual case against the criminalisation of early- to mid- teenage sex.
    5. Writing that does openly support aggressive pedophilia, including the rape of toddlers, such as the writings of Ayatollah Khomeini.
    6. A site supporting the aggressive rape of civilians in warfare (see also here), or a site supporting the killing of captured civilian women and children (see also here).
    7. In wartime, an intellectual argument supporting the enemy (e.g. the Iraqi resistance, or the IRA).

  2. Non-intellectual glamourisation of activities that threaten others:
    1. Almost every Hollywood action movie glamourises or condones things that would, in real life, threaten other people's liberties:
      1. Car driving - If Hollywood car chases were true-to-life, there would be dead passers-by in every film, just as real-life police and real-life joyriders do kill passers-by.
      2. Guns and fighting as a solution to all problems.
      3. Glamourisation of all forms of criminal abuse of others - bank and train robbing, assault, burglary, vandalism, arson, joyriding, art theft, kidnap, etc. - all have been glamourised, such as in the obnoxious The General. Oddly enough, say, rape or child murder is rarely glamourised.
      4. Glamourisation of police brutality, lack of due process, vigilante action, summary execution, etc.
      5. Glamourisation of the DEA.

  3. Practical advice in general, "How-to" do something:
    1. A site that gives practical advice on guns, explosives, etc.
    2. A site that gives practical advice on burglary, lock-picking, etc.
    3. A site that gives practical advice on joyriding, speeding, car races, car chases, etc.
    4. A site that gives practical advice on rape.
    5. A site that gives practical advice on torture, for foreign police forces.
    6. A site that gives practical advice to pedophiles - tells them where to meet children, etc.

  4. Real information:
    1. A site that tells motorists where speed traps are.
    2. A site that tells motorists where drink-driving checks are.
    3. A site that tells burglars what houses are empty, where old people live alone, and so on.
    4. A site that tells loyalist paramilitaries where Catholics live in each housing estate.
    5. A site that lists addresses of doctors that perform abortions.
    6. In wartime or in a time of genocide, a foreign media site linked to the enemy regime (e.g. Serb TV) and perhaps helping organise the genocide (e.g. Rwandan radio), or encouraging the enemy (e.g. Arab TV, jihadi videos on YouTube).
    7. In wartime, a home site telling the enemy where military targets and informants are (e.g. Wikileaks).


I'd like to say I have easy answers for all of these, but I don't. My instinct would be that most of 1. and 2. have to be tolerated as offensive speech, whereas most of 3. and 4. cross the border into directly threatening people. But I must say that it is hard to define the exact principles I am using.


Avoiding offensive speech

While we might allow speech like that in 1. and 2., you do of course always have the perfect right to find the speech disgusting, and you should be able to filter it successfully and completely out of your life. Indeed, this applies to any speech you don't like.

Part of the problem with offensive speech is that with many media, like TV or the cinema, we cannot run advanced personal filters - we simply have to sit there and get assaulted by what is coming next. But this is a personal technology problem, not a legal problem, and it can be solved by giving the individual more technology to put them more in control of their life.



Libel




Noise

The thing about noise is the choice of whether we have to hear the speech or not.

You have the right to say what you like. I have the right to filter your speech out of my life.




Behaviour

Speech is one thing, behaviour is another. Do you have a right to speak in public anywhere?

I support the right of political radicals and extremists to their publications and web sites, which we can all read in a non-threatening environment. But as to whether they should be able to rally and march down the roads of upset and intimidated residents is quite another question. Marches are behaviour, not pure speech.

Demos and marches are an odd form of speech, one that often interferes with those who do not want to hear it, in a way that, say, websites don't. It seems to me that demos and marches should be restricted to city centres, not residential areas, unless there is some good reason why they have to go to a particular place.



Spam

Spam is not a censorship issue. You can read all the ads you like at the spammer's site, if you choose to go there. Spam is the enemy of free speech, by trying to destroy discussion groups and mailing lists.

Before 1992, I sent a few unsolicited messages myself. It took some time for me (and others) to understand that this was a Bad Idea. The Internet was quieter in those days, and no one complained to me or flamed me, but I wish they had. I should have realised sooner that unsolicited messages had no future.

Now there are hundreds of millions of people online. If unsolicited direct-marketing commercial email is tolerated, eventually everyone will be receiving thousands or even tens of thousands of computer-generated email messages a day. Already over 90 percent of email is spam. Despite this, spam is still legal in the US. The only long-term solution is to make it illegal. In the meantime, it is up to the Internet to protect itself against these vandals.



Spam is the enemy of free speech

Just to be clear on that. I do support the government regulating the Internet by making direct-marketing email illegal. Spam is possibly the single greatest enemy of free speech on the Internet today:
  1. It makes people not take part in discussion groups for fear of sending their email address to spammers.
  2. It actually destroys the discussion groups by filling them with spam, so everyone leaves.
  3. It makes people not put their email address on their web pages, for fear of it being collected by spammers.
  4. It makes people run blacklists and filters on keywords for their incoming email, which may filter valid email messages as well.

I also would vote for making direct-marketing postal mail, direct-marketing telephone calls and direct-marketing faxes illegal.

By any reasonable standards of adult consent and privacy, drug dealing should be legal while direct-marketing should be illegal.



Copyright theft



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Banned in Iran: This site is banned in Iran.

Blocked on Twitter by the regressive left and Islamists: I love debate. I love ideas. But the Western left and their friends the Islamic right do not return the favour. Their response to opposing ideas, whether expressed politely or robustly, is often to block. See Who blocks me on Twitter.

I like debate. But I do have rules. See Who I block on Twitter.

Twitter is broken, 2016 to 2022: I am on Twitter at markhumphrys. Twitter was a great place for debate before 2016. You could meet everyone in the world, and argue about ideas. Starting in 2016, Twitter became increasingly broken. It became full of reporting and bans and censorship. In 2019, Twitter even started shadowbanning me for no reason that was ever explained, or could be appealed. By 2022, everyone was looking for a better place to debate.

Twitter is saved, 2022: In 2022 Elon Musk bought Twitter and started to end the censorship. It looks great so far. Twitter seems to be saved.