Freedom of Speech rights - I will prob tick off someone with this post.

How does this work if you walk up to a Police officer and call him a fat pig? Will your constitutional rights be respected?

You can have a small percentage of my mortgage if you want?

Making threats, yes, there would be a case against you. But have you never seen the Nazis or Klan march and speak? Like it or not, they have the right to preach their hate. In fact, they usually have police protection to keep those who would use violence to silence them from harming them.

The policeman in such circumstances might invoke his right to shoot first and ask questions later!!!!!

Personal insults may or not be protected. But I have told a police officer to his face that in my opinion he was a low intelligence mouth breather who only worked for the government because he couldn't hack it in the real world. I walked away with no harm done to me in any way. Oh he made some threats, but when I didn't back down, he did.

..and you've only got to look at what Westboro Baptist Church get away with.

Of course there is. If I wanted to call you an arsehole, I could. If i wanted to declare my undying admiration for you, I could. The thread would get get locked, quite rightly, but I can still say what I like until then.

We all have freedom of speech, but sadly sadly not everyone has realised that just because you have the right to say something this doesn't mean you have to say it.

That isn't free speech. By that logic, Stalin-era Russia had free speech. Sure, I would be dissapeared at worst or sent to Siberia if I was too valuable to dissapear, but I could say whatever I want until they caught me.

Whether you agree with their viewpoints or not, they have the same rights as anyone else to say what they like.

Isn't religious freedom different from freedom of speech?

Broccoli

That depends on whether or not I like what they're saying, or believing

Hahaha. Only if another nation has more. 30% DOES happen to be the majority. No other nation has a higher percentage.

Quite different if you are inciting harm on a person or group. But you've just changed your argument here. I think the poster was correct. Hate speech is protected--but not on this board. Everyone play nice!

I'm not sure LL has the right to banish you to the Gulags or Siberia. This is just not what these forums are for. Try the SL blog

since we're talking US law here...
as has already been noted, free speech applies to the government, and is certainly not applicable to private establisments, or their premises, as well as being subject to TOS for use.

that said even in the real world, intentional and direct harrassment designed to be insulting, inflamatory, or libel, to a specific entity (like say LL) can be qualified as "fighting words" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words and not covered by free speech doctrines

Er... Actually not. Minority means less than 50% or not having the controlling interest. While the US may have more than anybody else, we're certainly not the majority.

I only poked back on Brocolli because she said the US has a _small_ percentage of SL, which it absolutely does not.

The cornfield is a lot warmer than Siberia.

They've done it before. People have been banned from the forums for what they've said, either temporarily or permanently. Technically my in-game account is even at risk.

Yes, but you'd have to be either a real arsehole, very stupid, or both to be banned from these forums.

I'm not saying I disagree, given the ones I know of who've been banned...

The point is PUBLIC.............private can make their own rules. Freedom of speech applies only to PUBLIC.

I'm done.

I am no fan of being overly politically correct, but I do believe freedom of speech has its limits. At the time the freedom was granted common sense was common (*Shocked face*) however this is no longer as common as it should be. Freedom of speech is intended to entitle the people to expressing their common sense opinions, not the right to be total A'holes because they choose to. This seems to be something that has been lost and tried to be replaced with this politically correct crap, personally I favor common sense even though that requires more cognitive ability than many these days are willing to put to use.

Honestly at the rate things are going many will no longer bother with internal monologue and blurt out every single thought soon.

Sorry I still have a rather low opinion of our species.

Let me first talk about what "free speech" actually means, and then I'll transition to how it relates to the question in the original post. There seems to be a lot of misinformation floating around here. Let's clear it up right now.

I see a lot of posts in this thread stating that "free speach is derived from the First Amendment" or "the right free speech is given to Americans by the Constitution." Everyone should understand that not only is this completely backwards from the actual truth, it's also a very dangerous way of thinking.

The truth is the Constitution exists not to "give us rights". Its purpose is to stop the government from taking away the rights we already have. Rights are not "given". They are inherent to what it means to be human.

By simple merit of being a living person, you automatically have the right to speak freely, just as you have the right to breath, the right to think, the right to have blood in your veins, etc. The Constitution does not need to "give" any rights to you; you are born with your rights, and would be whether the Constitution had ever existed or not. The primary function of the Constitution is to declare that the US government cannot lawfully take those right away from any of us.

There's tremendous danger in believing that your rights are granted you by a piece of paper. Anything so given could also be taken away just easily. Rights, by definition, do not and cannot fit that description. Your rights are YOURS because you are human. You have them by default. They are an inherent property of what it means to be a human being, and nothing and no one can take them away. They were not given to you by a document, or by a government, any more than was your arm or your leg or your head.

You have all those things simply because you are human. To take any of them away would be to inflict grievous harm upon you. That is why we have a Constitution, to make sure the government absolutely cannot do that.

Everyone, please understand this. When you say things like "the Constitution gives me rights", you empower those who would seek to destroy your rights. If the thinking ever becomes that a piece of paper can grant rights, then it just as easily can be said that a piece of paper could take rights away. In truth your rights are inherently yours, no matter what ANY paper has to say about it.

Even if the Constitution were shredded tomorrow, and the US nation were to fade into the pages of history, you'd still have your rights. Others might possess the force to take away your various freedoms, but they can never take away the inherent rights that entitle you to those freedoms. It's very important that everyone realize this. The minute you don't is the minute you become a conquered people.

Also understand that while the Constitution exists to describe what the government can and cannot do, it doesn't and can't say anything at all about what you, an individual, can or can't do. That's not its purpose.


As for the question in the original post, it's crucial to understand the difference between rights and privileges. Privileges, unlike rights, are things that are given, and they can be taken away.

Driving a car, for example, is a privilege, not a right, which is why you're not allowed to do it by default. You need to earn that particular privilege (by getting a license, buying insurance, etc.) If at any point you abuse the privilege (drive drunk, let your insurance lapse, be unsafe about it, etc.), it can be taken away from you, and you won't be allowed to do it anymore.

Using Second Life is another example of a privilege. You don't automatically have any right to use SL. It is a privately owned service, which by default has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Should its owner (Linden Lab) grant you the privilege of using it, then they have every right to ask that you follow their rules. If those rules happen to include things they don't want you to say, then so be it. If you don't like it, you're free to leave, and perhaps more importantly, if they don't like you, they're free to kick you out.

This is completely different than if the government were trying to quash your right to free speech. They can't do that, and the Constitution is there to remind all of us every day of that fact. But that has nothing to do with the granting or taking away of privileges by private organizations or individuals. Again, rights and privileges are two different things.

Think of it kind of like visiting your neighbor's house. You do not automatically have any right to set foot on his property unless he invites you over. While you're there, he has every right to expect that you'll follow his rules. If you don't want to follow those rules, whatever they happen to be, then you must leave. It's that simple. The privilege of being in his house is no longer extended to you if you're unwilling to do what it takes to maintain it.

So, do you have the right to "say whatever the frak you want in SL"? Absolutely. But if you say or do something that breaks the rules, and its owners decide they don't want you in it anymore, do you have the right to stay? Absolutely not. They have every right to kick you out of "their house" at any time, for any reason, or for no reason. It's theirs, not yours.

Absolutely not true, for the exact reasons that you stated in your post. If you have the right to go where you want to go, then you have the right to drive a car. Our government has a nasty habit of denying our rights, and then selling them back to us as privileges. Just about every instance of the government requiring you to have a "license" to do something is almost always a case of the government denying a right (to work, to use your own property) and selling it back as a privilege.

(Which does not change the fact that no person has the "right" to force a private party to provide the platform for that person's speech, absent a legally enforceable contract.)

Yes, but all you are doing there is delineating one set of things one should always be allowed to do no matter what ("rights" and another set which one shouldn't ("privileges". There really isn't any intrinsic difference between the two, apart from the coincidental; it is all negotiation and power relations. Why should I have the right to free speech but not to drive (or take whatever drugs I wish)? Without enforcement, "rights" are simply an idea, and their only meaning depends on how many other people accept that idea and are willing to fight to see it enforced.

Thus for a US citizen, it is quite reasonable to refer to the Constitution, since the US seems to have fallen into the odd situation of having the protection of certain behaviours enshrined in its legal system. The Constitution is clearly not magic and is just another legal document, but it still holds some practical force.

I don't think ANYONE wants me to say whatever the frak I like ...