Comment by rafram
3 days ago
> Shouting FIRE in a full venue
"Crowded theater"? In any case, yes, that's a popular understanding of limits on free speech in the US, but it's actually been superseded twice - first by "clear and present danger," then by "inciting or producing imminent lawless action." These days, it's probably (I am not a lawyer) legal to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater under many circumstances.
> Sadly, the recent developments in US show pretty well how freedom of speech cannot be measured by "How many specific laws are there about things I cannot say?".
There are no laws preventing you from saying anything in the US, unless you are specifically, directly inciting people, at that moment, to do things that break other laws. That's the point. You can't measure it in terms of degrees of restrictions; the US has none, and all European countries have at least some. The latter approach opens the floodgates to restrictions on any kind of speech that the government doesn't like. The US Constitution prevents that from ever happening.
> There are no laws preventing you from saying anything in the US, unless...
Sounds like there are some of those laws. You covered them with "unless"
This is a common refrain from people in countries without freedom of speech, used to argue that the US doesn't AcKtUalLy have freedom of speech.
The idea that "freedom of speech" in the US is not philosophically and fundamentally different than "freedom of speech" in, for example, the UK or Germany, is not an opinion grounded in reality regardless of what legal minutiae you can point to.
Well what are the differences then?
So far all we have is the statement that Germany has some speech laws, but the US has no speech laws except for the speech laws that it has, which is a grammatical trick, not an actual difference, because it's saying both countries have some speech laws.