Alan Beban said:
No; just that constitutional freedom of speech doesn't grant you the
right to do or say anything. It simply grants you the right to be free
of governmental interference with most of your speech.
Semantics! No, it's not a grant of permission to do or say anything.
However, the absence of restrictions *permits* one to do or say anything as
long as one is willing to accept the consequences of doing so. Actually,
this always applies, it's just that freedom of speach means that there would
be no government-imposed consequences.
Now, we seem to have a difference of opinion about the limits of speach.
Your limits seem to be more restrictive than mine. Guess who wins in that
situation?
A misstatement of the law, but that's a bit off topic.
An intentional oversimplification. There are legal consequences of certain
types of speach: slander, defmation, propositioning, lying under oath, lying
to federal agents, and the example above. In some situations, fighting words
would also be against the law, but the chances of imminent coming to blows
from newsgroup posting is sufficiently remote as for that aspect of the law
not to apply. Hateful speach is protected.
A common confusion between the right to do something and the power to do
something, but that, too, should be the topic of a different
philosophical discussion.
Microsoft lacks the *power* to moderate its newsgroups? Perhaps it lacks the
interest to do so, but it has both the right and power to do so if it
chartered these newsgroups.
Yes, partly, but I mean something a bit more; that the effort to paint
your adolescent nastiness as a high-minded defense of the rights of man
is a tad nauseating.
Believe what you want to believe. Freedom of speach, in part, allows one to
express oneself in pure adolescent nastiness if one feels like doing so.
Freedom of speach doesn't mean much if it has to be nice & polite all the
time.
