Your masters in Ottawa have decreed that you can now listen to "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits on a Canadian radio station! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14750076 Wow, all that fuss over one little word and one complaint by a Newfie.
Oh, please. If anything, justice was done in this case, eventually. The US has more than its fair share of personal liberty violations. Online poker anyone?
And yet the free speech issue is still there. Like being able to be fined or even jailed because someone took offense at something you said. Sure, the US has its share of violations, but in these cases the violations actually are against its own laws - in Canada, the violations are written into its laws.
Well, I'm not feeling particularly oppressed. I presume you are talking about some sort of anti-hate speech laws that Canada has and the US doesn't.
Probably. Personally, I have no problem with anti-hate speech laws. Maybe I just remember what happened in Rwanda, but I'm of the opinion that genuine hate speech falls under the "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" exception.
It must suck to be as truly fucking stupid as you are. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is not a government agency. From their website: "The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) is an independent, non-governmental organization created by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) to administer standards established by its members, Canada's private broadcasters." Funny thing is... even though member radio stations could not have played the song, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -- a government-funded public broadcaster -- could have played it.
Whether CBSC is a government agency or not is irrelevant when it comes to the anti-hate speech laws that Canada and other countries have. Like it or not, those laws mean that the countries which have them do not have free speech.
I bet he does. Most people don't even notice that he's saying it, but once you hear it, you always notice it.
He does: "Tell me who the fuck are you?" There is a radio edit floating around, sans the "fuck". Some of the big syndications, like BOB radio, use it.
Ah yes, censorship, which is still being fought against by civil liberties groups. But not something that can send ordinary people to jail because someone was offended by something they said and used an anti-hate speech law.
Worst. Avatar. Ever. Even if you're a Republican. My god; have you no shame, EP? You might as well have an avatar that announces that your penis is baba's chew toy. You're surely dumber than he is if you have that avatar.
I seem to recall some newspaper types being put on trial for opinion articles they wrote which were negative toward Islam. Or is that not "normal" enough for you? The really disturbing thing though is how you and others seem to be perfectly cool with this blatant violation of free speech, which effectively says that you're free to say whatever you want, as long as no one is offended and the government agrees with it.
Perhaps because it doesn't say that at all, and you're too foolish to see that. I'll be waiting for that evidence.
Here's the case I was thinking of. It was dismissed, but the sad fact is that there was any kind of a law to bring it to trial to begin with. Reading through the Wiki article about Canada's hate speech laws also brings up an instance of someone being able to prosecute based on "hurt feelings". As far as what it says about anyone who defends these laws and what they in effect say, bury your head in the sand if you like, but that is the case. Free speech shouldn't be limited by hurt feelings or whether anyone, especially the government, agrees with what's said.
But what? A reasonable law exists covering hate speech. The case you cited shows it not prohibiting reasonable free speech, and not being used to punish "hurt feelings." Find me a case where that actually happened, because you seem to be interpreting the law differently from every judge in Canada.
As long as a law exists to punish people for "hate speech", it's flexible enough to be abused accordingly. As long as it exists, it is a threat to free speech, no matter how much you want to be an apologist for it.
You started out claiming the laws said something they don't really say. Then you claimed the laws "in effect" say something they don't actually say, when legal precedent has shown that's not the case. Then you made a bold statement about how free speech shouldn't be limited, when the law we're discussing hasn't actually done that. Now you're claiming the laws are "flexible enough to be abused accordingly," when legal precedent has shown that's not the case. Is there maybe a chance you're being hysterical?
Wave goodbye to your freedom of speech. Oh that's right, you're not American. So you've never had freedom of speech to begin with.