| Sam3o said: On topic, I have two things to say... Firstly, this freedom of speech excuse is getting lame. It's being used to justify people saying or doing (movies, cartoons, etc...) whatever they want, having nearly ABSOLUTE FREEDOM in doing so. People have freedom to drive their cars as they wish. However, if someone were to abuse it by going through red lights, overspeeding, driving recklessly, causing an accident, or endangering the lives of others, then that someone will be fined, have his driving license taken away, or jailed. One could imagine the chaos that would befall any transportation system if people had absolute freedom in driving. Likewise, depicting or accusing someone to be a rapist, a pedophile, or a murderer, especially wrongly or without any basis, will definately hurt that someones beloved ones (parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, etc) and you will most likely be sued for by them for that! How would someone feel if their mother was depicted as a prostitue, or their father as a rapist when they're not? How would billions of muslims feel if their beloved prophet and #1 role model was depicted badly in the mass media? Many seem to confuse between that and criticism. Secondly, 2 wrongs don't make a right! Responding to someone that punched you by shooting and killing him may get you a life sentence. Taking vengence by destroying public property, rioting, and killing will not fix anything. It will only convice the other side that these "Muslims" are violent, intolerent, and uncivilized and they will insist on making more cartoons, more movies, and more depictions, and their products will look believable. Both sides will be stuck in a never ending cycle of hate and intolerence. It's quite sad because when the prophet and his followers were met with violence, torture, intolerence, exile, betrayal, killings, and several battles, and then he had the chance to take revenge and get even he instead chose mercy and forgiveness. It would be quite useful if many Muslims these days actually took him as a role model. |
You don't have the right to drive recklessly, that's where you're wrong. Property rights trump all, and the owner of the roads sets the rules. Don't follow them, and you infringe property rights, and face the according punishments.
Actually, I do have the right to say all those things about your mother and father... so long as I'm not in your property (and you've told me not to), or I'm in somebody else's property who has also told me not to. What you're essentially referring to are the defamation laws that babuks argued earlier. These are an infringement on rights. Here's why:
Your basis for these laws is that you don't want to harm your reputation, or the reputation of your mother, or whoever. What is a reputation? Do you own your reputation? No. A reputation is held in the thoughts of the community, they are about you, but they are not yours. Ergo, you have no right to control them.
In a world without defamation laws, people's reputations will be even more secure, why? Because anybody could say any old shit. I could call your father a rapist until the cows came home... nobody's going to believe me unless I have substantial proof; because they would hear shit like this all the time.
