Comment by af78
13 days ago
That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states. Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either.
Moreover, in practice, there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...:
USA: 0.89 France: 0.96 Germany: 0.94 Czechia: 0.96 etc.
> there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA
A quick look at Steam says otherwise. All the games that credit cards companies pressured to get removed from Steam, were already long gone in Germany. Because that's the level of government censorship that is completely normal in Germany.
The only reason why one might get the idea that Germany ain't so bad is because Germany doesn't do (much) Internet censorship, so we have access to the much less censored outside world. If German law would apply worldwide half the Internet would be wiped out.
Germany has a rich history, particularly in the gaming industry. Not the best example for "EU countries" since most of their censorship was blood and gore and anything related to Nazi symbolism, which was a plague of video games in the 1980s-2000s, since they were always the bad guys in video games, leading to heavy censorship in video games. In 2018, they lifted it significantly, and the list of censored or banned video games in Germany is relatively short.
Including things like "media bias" and other dubious criteria in freedom of speech rankings is obviously skewed.
Whatever the ECHR might say what I wrote in my previous comment is factual. In Europe "freedom of speech" comes with a long list of small print.
In fact, this is so embedded that the article of the ECHR you quote provides for restrictions and even states that they are "necessary": "subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"." QED
The distinction is academical. As I wrote, freedom of speech is not absolute in the USA either, think copyright law or gag orders etc. And arguing about this day after Colbert's show is cancelled...
The internet will never run out of idiots arguing that there is no freedom in the EU and freedom of speech is a uniquely US thing. The German constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech? Doesn't matter. The US limits plenty of types of speech? Who cares.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex...
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech.
> Under Title 18 Section 871 of the United States Code it is illegal to knowingly and willfully make "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States." This also applies to any "President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect."[45] This law is distinct from other forms of true threats because the threatener does not need to have the actual capability to carry out the threat; thus, for example, a person in prison could be charged.
7 replies →
Yeah, what trump did, spreading lies, hate and falsely accusing wouldn't work in the EU.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
> Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
Freedom of stupidity has to be the most basic right in a free society. Imagine if stupidity wasn't allowed!
11 replies →
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."
[dead]
It may do so in some of their written papers, but in practice I risk going to prison if I dare say some things. Soon enough it will be illegal for me, the grandkid of a devout communist party member, to say that I agree with what my grandad believed in, it is already illegal to do that in the Czech Republic.