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[Ed. Note: Behind the invective and political slant in this story is a subject that I think could lead to a fruitful discussion. "The price of liberty is constant vigilance." SoylentNews is a little corner of the 'net that tries to provide a venue for open discussion. Are our days numbered or threatened? What can be done? Just keep doing what we are doing?]
France has turned into one of the worldwide threats to free speech
Just over one year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two potentially invasive species to Washington. One was a tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians.
While our politicians in the United States may applaud Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore believers in free speech. It runs in our blood. Undeterred, however, Macron and others in Europe are moving to unilaterally impose speech controls on the internet with new legislation in France and Germany. If you believe this is a European issue, think again.
Macron and his government are attempting to unilaterally scrub out the internet of hateful thoughts. The French Parliament has moved toward a new law that would give internet companies like Facebook and Google just 24 hours to remove hateful speech from their sites or face fines of $1.4 million per violation. A final vote is expected next week. Germany passed a similar measure last year and imposed fines of $56 million.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @11:22PM
My intent is not to defend any country restricting freedom of speech, however some of us grow tired of people trying to get people to fight because of gender, race, color, ethnicity and religion. That's not what we should be ready to fight over. A civil war should be about corruption of people in power, invasion of privacy, private property or greedy and reckless coorporations. It should not be the people fighting itself.
These laws have their roots in the UN and other post world war two initiatives to prevent it from happening again. In 1965 the UN made a declaration to end racism, which many countries followed up on with laws. In my country the law in its first form came in 1939 to end the hate of world war two that had made it acceptable to treat groups of people like lesser humans. In 1971 it was modified to align with the UN declaration. In 1987 sexual orientation was added and in 1995 it had an addition with harsher penalties for propaganda enterprise.
I'm not saying I like the idea of limiting free speech in general. It should not be abused to silence a few morons here and there using profound language. It has never been used like that in my country as far as I know (small country; I'd know). I hope though that it helps prevent ever again that we the people will start fighting each other over such rediculous things as our religion, who we fall in love with or a color. We have bigger things to stand up for and AFAIK there is no law preventing me from saying all that I want about companies trampling on my rights and people in power.
Censorship is wrong. Free speech is one of the most important aspects of a democracy. I'm not saying anyone fighting to remove these laws are wrong. I'm just saying the laws are there for a reason and it's not because the person next to you whom you enjoy calling a faggot-trannie-nigger is a snowflake.