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Showing posts from September, 2012

Inalienable Rights?

I don't know how to ask what I'm about to ask without pissing everyone off, but maybe that's what makes it good material for discussion. +Jeff Jarvis wrote in his blog today : Zeynep Tufecki, a brilliant observer of matters media, digital, and social, cautioned on Twitter that we must understand a key difference in attitudes toward speech here and elsewhere in the world: “Forget Middle East, in most of Europe you could not convince most people that *all* speech should be protected. That is uniquely American,” she tweeted yesterday. “In most places, including Europe, ‘hate-speech’ –however defined — is regulated, prosecuted. Hence, folks assume not prosecuted=promoted…. US free speech absolutism already hard to comprehend for many. Add citizen media to mix, it gets messy. Then, killers exploit this vagueness.” Excellent points and important perspective for the current situation. I, like Jeff, am a Free Speech absolutist. I'm lucky enough to live in a country that h