From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Date: 19 Aug 92 06:37:37 GMT
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada

In article <920817.275105147@foucault.postmodern.com> mcb@foucault.postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) writes:
>In the referenced article, clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
>> mcb@foucault.postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) writes:

>> >I've stayed out of this so far, but I don't think you understand how
>> >offensive I (and others) find the above paragraph.  I have absolutely
>> >no interest in any cooperation, no matter how slight, with any form of
>> >state censorship.  I believe that censorship is not merely evil but Evil, 
>> >and if your government gives you problems about that, I think you
>> >should oppose them.

>> For a person who is usually relatively well informed, this is a remarkably
>> *stupid* and insulting remark.

>I could say the same about your original article as well.

Why?  Simply because I suggested the topics be kept separate?  Why is
that any different than keeping pictures under alt.binaries?

Absolute freedom of speech is a myth.  The United States certainly doesn't
have it.  While the first amendment appears to provide it, the Supreme
Court has consistently ruled in favour of a balancing act between free
speech and other rights.  We can see this in the fact that the US still
has obscenity legislation (see Carl's postings) that can result in
criminal charges or banning, incitement legislation (ditto) or
more mundane things like publication bans on the identities of
rape victims and sometimes juries.

Canada has the very same types of laws, plus constitutional guarantees
of free speech too.  One difference being that the balancing act is
explicitly mentioned in the constitution.

The other more critical difference is the level of harm necessary.
Canada chose the route of "reasonable person", juries, studies, and
simply watching the USA - a case study in almost unrestricted free
speech.  In the US, you have to have bodies stacked up over the rooftops
before they'll notice.  Reminds me of the cigarette companies - they
need to see a cigarette being 100% fatal within 15 seconds of the first
puff before they'd admit that there *might* be a downside to smoking.
"But we'll need another 20 years of studies first"

People keep harping on "universal right to free speech".  The "freedom
of speech" you keep talking about is freedom of speech without responsibility,
freedom of speech bedamned with the body count.

That isn't universal.  It's purely an American invention - and the
Americans don't even have it.  They just think they do.  Canada as a
whole has rejected it.  As have most other western countries.

If you want to tell us how to run our country, I suggest you clean up your
own problems *first*, then we might listen.  Like reducing your violent
crime rate by a factor of four - then you'll be at least in the same
ballpark as everybody else.

>> In case you missed it, Canada is not only a democracy, but these laws
>> enjoy the overwhelming support of the entire country.
>
>Yeah, right.  Perhaps you've forgotten, but exclusion of Jews enjoyed
>the overwhelming support of the German people in the 1930s.

So now you're calling Canada fascist.  By tradition, comparing something
to Hitler or Nazi Germany usually ends the discussion.  Not.

On the other hand, with a Keegstra or Zundel law, *maybe*, just *maybe*
Germany wouldn't have ended up as it did.

>Tyranny
>of the majority is always a problem.  I know a fair number of
>Canadians -- intelligent, well-educated people, all of them -- and
>each of them find state censorship as offensive as I do, and are
>embarrassed that their country would take such action in a misguided
>attempt to prevent "harm". 

I suspect that I know a *lot* more Canadians than you - I live here
after all.  Intelligent, well-educated people, all with a strong commitment
towards freedom of expression who have come to the reluctant conclusion that
there are limits.  Some of them may be embarrassed about it (because
the Yanks keep refusing to understand), some may think it can be
handled in other ways, but still recognizing limits.  And I know a number
of Americans that are the same way.

>> And why should I, or anybody else bust their butt to "save" crap like
>> this?  Crap who's only legacy is oppression, misery or even death [ie:
>> Keegstra or Zundel].

>Because free expression is inherent in the nature of a free society;
>if Keegstra's and Zundel's words are suppressed because people
>disagree with them or find them threatening, whose words will be next?

Do you have any idea at all what the laws they were charged with require
for conviction?  Neither law outlaws "offensive" speech.  Neither law
outlaws speech that is merely "disagreed" with.

Zundel's law was "knowingly spreading false news intended to incite
hatred towards an identifiable group".  They didn't really even have
to establish the "knowingly" and "false" part, because he did his own
photograph faking, but they did anyways.

Keegstra was charged with a simpler "inciting hatred" law.  Well,
he certainly did - turned many years worth of high school students
into full blown nazis.  That is not minor harm.  That is going to
take *many* years to repair.

>I think Keegstra and Zundel are scum -- but even scum should have the
>right of free expression.  By denying the Holocaust they defend and
>attempt to exonerate people who participated in the murder of my
>relatives (I am a Jew of Eastern European ancestry).  Yet I would not
>silence them, because I do not want to live in a society that
>suppresses the free exchange of ideas.

Neither Zundel nor Keegstra were really trying to exonerate anybody.
That was just a byproduct of their real intent - to incite violence
against jews, to oppress them and to kill them.

You still defend them?

>> >So if censorship (and pressures to resist it, i.e., by cross-border sites
>> >that send you "illegal" material) gives you a problem, get on your
>> >MLA's case.  Don't come whining to Americans telling us to cool it; I
>> >think instead we should turn up the heat. 

H'm.  I think that publication bans on rape victims' names in American
court cases is a violation of the freedom of speech.  It's a universal
right.  So I'm going to start posting them all to news.admin to turn
up the heat so that Americans will resist the law.

Yeah right.

Fix your own problems before telling us how to fix ours.

[A Buffalo newspaper did specifically that - a youth offender's name
from a court case in Canada was published in violation of the Youth
Offender's Act.  Canadian courts couldn't do a thing.]
 
>> So you have just gotta save us from ourselves.
>> 
>> Save us from evangelical Americans who simply cannot accept that there are
>> ways, *viable* ways, other than theirs.

>No.  Freedom of expression is too important a human rights issue to
>allow politicians, censors, and their apologists to restrict it.  I
>am not arguing from an "American" point of view -- 

You most certainly are.  The "absolute freedom of speech withoutu
responsibility, without regard for body count" you're preaching
is entirely an American invention.  Ironically, an invention that
the Americans don't actually practise.

>I find the
>situation here intolerable as well, and have contributed time, money
>and energy to anti-censorship causes and publications.  In some ways
>the situation here is worse, since we seem to pay lip service to
>freedom expression as a Constitutional right, but it is so regularly
>violated by everyone from the Supreme Court down to the Mothers for
>Decency that it has become more of a sham than a right.  

Well, at least you recognize that...

>> It's attitudes like this that make the term "ugly american" so appropriate.

>Oh, please.  By the way, I am a first-generation American.  My parents
>were both born in ... Canada.  (And I have spent considerable time in
>Canada.)  

Oh please.  You expect to learn something by occasional vacations here?
35 years?  Educated here?  9 generations?

Like they say, for every Canadian that moves south, the average intelligence
in both countries goes up.

>> MLAs?  More ignorance.  MPs.
 
>> MLAs are the term for some provincial politicians.  This issue is federal.

>I am perfectly aware of the distinction. (Unless you are a politician,
>lawyer, or happened to work in one, I think it is a fair bet that I
>have spent more time in Canadian provincial legislative buildings than
>you have,

How about a year in a Royal Commission?  A year spent not just "in"
legislative buildings, but dealing with politicians, lawyers, high and low
level bureaucrats, provincial and federal police on a continuing and
high-level basis?

[The title may be interesting w.r.t. our discussion:  The Royal Commission
of Inquiry into the Confidentiality of Health Records in Ontario. ;-)]

>being related to a few MLAs here and there.  My experience is
>limited to Manitoba and British Columbia, however.) My understanding is
>that Canadian censorship laws are a mix of federal and provincial
>enactments, and that one generally has better access to MLAs as they
>are more numerous.

Except in Ontario where they're MPPs.

The real rules are federal.  Provincial influence is minimal, and
is regulatory rather than legislative.
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
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