The term speech is very broadly defined in law. A purely physical act can be speech in a certain context. It does not have to literally involve an exchange of words.
Many protests may turn into riots, that does not suddenly mean that the people involved in the violence are no longer expressing an opinion.
The term speech is very broadly defined because there are a lot of ways to convey meaning. Some of them then become ambiguous and you have to resolve those ambiguities and that gets messy. But only the messy cases are messy. Riots characteristically aren't a messy case, they're violence in the same way that publishing a newspaper article is speech.
Moreover, if you mess up the messy cases then you should try to do better but society will probably survive, whereas if you censor in the cases that are pure speech or don't punish the actions that are pure violence, you're the baddies.
Riots are characteristically very much a messy case, because not everyone joins a protest with the same intentions. Some will join a protest intending a purely peaceful display of dissent, while others seek violent confrontation.
On top of that repressive regimes will routinely declare otherwise peaceful protests a riot at the first sign of violence. Sometimes there are even saboteurs within the protest that try and lure out violent incidents in an attempt to get the protest to be declared a riot.
Finding the right balance between allowing demonstrations and keeping the peace and order is one of the most challenging aspects of democracy.
The term speech is very broadly defined in law. A purely physical act can be speech in a certain context. It does not have to literally involve an exchange of words.
Many protests may turn into riots, that does not suddenly mean that the people involved in the violence are no longer expressing an opinion.
The term speech is very broadly defined because there are a lot of ways to convey meaning. Some of them then become ambiguous and you have to resolve those ambiguities and that gets messy. But only the messy cases are messy. Riots characteristically aren't a messy case, they're violence in the same way that publishing a newspaper article is speech.
Moreover, if you mess up the messy cases then you should try to do better but society will probably survive, whereas if you censor in the cases that are pure speech or don't punish the actions that are pure violence, you're the baddies.
> Riots characteristically aren't a messy case
Riots are characteristically very much a messy case, because not everyone joins a protest with the same intentions. Some will join a protest intending a purely peaceful display of dissent, while others seek violent confrontation.
On top of that repressive regimes will routinely declare otherwise peaceful protests a riot at the first sign of violence. Sometimes there are even saboteurs within the protest that try and lure out violent incidents in an attempt to get the protest to be declared a riot.
Finding the right balance between allowing demonstrations and keeping the peace and order is one of the most challenging aspects of democracy.
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