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Guess they'd better fix that. Laws are like software--full of holes and bugs that can be exploited by ambitious prosecutors and other lawyers.
While I can understand the thinking behind "hate speech" laws (especially Continental ones), I've always found them disturbing. Unless the laws are narrowly confined to immediate incitements to violence or panic, or for libel or slander, they sit there like a trap for the unwary or like a loaded gun hidden away for those who know how to use it. For example, anti-Scientology website owners, long vulnerable to abusive copyright and libel suits, could now face criminal charges by $CN lawyers, and perhaps be extradited to the country with the harshest laws. $CN have lately been the first to exploit new laws to shut down their critics. Other U.S. corporations, using their status as legal persons, have used libel laws against their critics.
This is definitely slippery slope territory, especially now that the US and UK are revisiting the old concept of sedition. It's not that big a leap. Three cheers for the US government hostility to the EU; Ashcroft could otherwise fuck over expat critics. |
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