- 30 Jun 2017 01:22
#14819586
Last week the US Supreme Court twice ruled in favour of free speech whereas the EU continue their war on 'hate speech'.
Monday the 19th of June 2017 marked a big day for the First Amendment of the US Constitution as two cases were ruled in favour of free speech absolutism.
In the first case, Matal vs Tam, the judge determined that it was unlawful for the government to refuse registering businesses with names that may be construed as offensive to some groups. The case became notorious for the repercussions surrounding football team the Washington Redskins, which some native Americans consider offensively named. However, the example in question concerned an Asian-American man called Simon Shiao Tam who was unable to register his ironic band name ‘The Slants’ with the US Trademark Office.
In the second case, Packingham v. North Carolina, concerned a State Law which barred registered sex offenders from using any social media that children are permitted to use. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the law violated the free-speech rights of sex offenders.
Both cases will serve as important precedents in future cases surrounding free speech on social media platforms such as Twitter.
In Matal vs Tam, Justice Samuel Alito advocated the ‘right to offend’ as an important legal framework in the public sphere. He stressed, however, that workplaces, university campuses, social media companies etc. are free to set their own legal standards.
In Packingham v. North Carolina, Justice Anthony Kennedy espoused the idea that blocking sex offenders from social media was akin to blocking them from full range of free speech options available in public spaces like parks and street corners.
The two rulings underscore the US Supreme Court’s commitment to the notion of free speech absolutism. America was always unlikely to fall into the same ethical quagmire as the European Union’s all powerful and unelected branch, the European Commission, and their war on ‘online hate speech’.
Working with social media giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, the European Commission last year unveiled a code of conduct that will ensure ‘online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally’. Upon receiving a ‘valid removal notification’, IT companies will have to remove or disable access to the content in less than 24 hours.
The ‘code of conduct’ in question was drafted without any public consultation.
Speech that ‘incites violence’ is illegal across the board – US, EU or anywhere else. Few would argue with this.
But the EU’s initiative goes one further and aims to actively prosecute those whose speech is deemed to ‘incite hate’. This loose wording has allowed proponents of this ‘code of conduct’ to use state power to remove people from Twitter who simply disagree with current EU migration policies.
To be clear, many of the views expressed by those indicted under this initiative are deeply unsavoury, and companies such as Twitter have every right to remove polemical material at their own discretion. However, the state has crossed a line that should never be crossed when they coerce companies who operate in the European Union to sign a statement declaring that they will commit to ‘promoting independent counter-narratives’ to contentious viewpoints.