The conversation on free speech in the US is so completely incoherent. Chuds act like you're allowed to say anything in the US, like motherfucker have you heard of libel laws? Ag gags? Laws against written child pornography? Perjury? False advertising? Issuing threats? Conspiracy? Incitement to violence? The espionage act? Fraud?
Like you were never allowed to say whatever you want that's literally never been a thing.
This old canard, a favourite reference of censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It’s repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations. The phrase is a misquotation of an analogy made in 1919 Supreme Court opinion that upheld the imprisonment of three people—a newspaper editor, a pamphlet publisher and a public speaker—who argued that military conscription was wrong. The court said that anti-war speech in wartime is like “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic,” and it justified the ban with a dubious analogy to the longstanding principle that the First Amendment doesn’t protect speech that incites people to physical violence. But the Supreme Court abandoned the logic of that case more than 50 years ago. That this trope originated as a justification for what has long since been deemed unconstitutional censorship reveals how useless it is as a measure of the limitations of rights. And yet, the crowded theatre cliché endures, as if it were some venerable legal principle.
Justice Holmes' famous quote comes in the context of a series of early 1919 Supreme Court decisions in which he endorsed government censorship of wartime dissent — dissent that is now clearly protected by subsequent First Amendment authority. Socialist Party of America chair Charles Schenck was prosecuted and imprisoned under the Espionage Act.
After Holmes' opinion in the Schenck case, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship.
Oh, and notice that the court’s objection was only to "falsely shouting fire!”: if there is, in fact, a fire in a crowded theatre, please let everyone know.
Yeah but, like, what is your point? It's obviously not that the phrase should be retired because I didn't use that phrase.
Furthermore, origin of the phrase seems kind of irrelevant if nobody knows it. As it stands the phrase is used to illustrate that there are obvious and good limits to free speech, which there are.
Sorry for seeming dense, but sounding off about "censorship apologists" does kind of make you sound like the very person this post is about?
First amendment only applies for rich people. The minute you say something that hurts one of these freeze speech warrior's feelings, they'll call their lawyers on speed dial.
I actually have never found once that they do, but even if they did then at least now we're talking about reality and you can start to have a discussion about banning hate speech or something on its merits.
In my experience most chuds have never even thought about all the limits to free speech and think it's a binary between having hate speech and free speech or banning hate speech and not having free speech.
The conversation on free speech in the US is so completely incoherent. Chuds act like you're allowed to say anything in the US, like motherfucker have you heard of libel laws? Ag gags? Laws against written child pornography? Perjury? False advertising? Issuing threats? Conspiracy? Incitement to violence? The espionage act? Fraud?
Like you were never allowed to say whatever you want that's literally never been a thing.
Just so you know, the "fire in a crowded theater" argument was used to sentence an anti-war socialist to a long prison term.
And the judge who made it later regretted doing it, bigtime.
I'm not sure exactly what your point is - do you think it should be legal to yell fire in a crowded theatre?
This old canard, a favourite reference of censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It’s repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations. The phrase is a misquotation of an analogy made in 1919 Supreme Court opinion that upheld the imprisonment of three people—a newspaper editor, a pamphlet publisher and a public speaker—who argued that military conscription was wrong. The court said that anti-war speech in wartime is like “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic,” and it justified the ban with a dubious analogy to the longstanding principle that the First Amendment doesn’t protect speech that incites people to physical violence. But the Supreme Court abandoned the logic of that case more than 50 years ago. That this trope originated as a justification for what has long since been deemed unconstitutional censorship reveals how useless it is as a measure of the limitations of rights. And yet, the crowded theatre cliché endures, as if it were some venerable legal principle.
Justice Holmes' famous quote comes in the context of a series of early 1919 Supreme Court decisions in which he endorsed government censorship of wartime dissent — dissent that is now clearly protected by subsequent First Amendment authority. Socialist Party of America chair Charles Schenck was prosecuted and imprisoned under the Espionage Act.
After Holmes' opinion in the Schenck case, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship.
Oh, and notice that the court’s objection was only to "falsely shouting fire!”: if there is, in fact, a fire in a crowded theatre, please let everyone know.
Yeah but, like, what is your point? It's obviously not that the phrase should be retired because I didn't use that phrase.
Furthermore, origin of the phrase seems kind of irrelevant if nobody knows it. As it stands the phrase is used to illustrate that there are obvious and good limits to free speech, which there are.
Sorry for seeming dense, but sounding off about "censorship apologists" does kind of make you sound like the very person this post is about?
First amendment only applies for rich people. The minute you say something that hurts one of these freeze speech warrior's feelings, they'll call their lawyers on speed dial.
When you bring this up they just pivot to “we have the least restrictions of any country in the world”
I actually have never found once that they do, but even if they did then at least now we're talking about reality and you can start to have a discussion about banning hate speech or something on its merits.
In my experience most chuds have never even thought about all the limits to free speech and think it's a binary between having hate speech and free speech or banning hate speech and not having free speech.