NewsTrust - Freedom of Speech - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Technology should help us share, not constrain us

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Richard Stallman - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - Companies like Amazon can control the way we use the ebooks we buy. Instead let's build a publishing model based on freedom I love the detective novel The Jehovah Contract , and I'd like everyone else to love it, too. I have lent it out at least six times over the years. Printed books let us do that. I couldn't do it with most commercial ebooks; it's not allowed. And if I felt like telling the publishers to take their evil rule and stuff it, the software in e-readers has digital restrictions management – malicious features that restrict access, so it simply won't allow it. And the books are encrypted in such a way to force you to use that malicious software. Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are not allowed for ebooks. With the Amazon Kindle, for instance, you're not allowed to buy a book anonymously. Kindle books are typically available from Amazon only, and Amazon doesn't accept cash so users must identify themselves. Thus Amazon knows exactly which books each user has read. ...

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KO Computer

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Jan. 19 (Comedy News) - Wikipedia goes dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA, raising the question: do they expect us to go to the library like a common masturbator? ... If SOPA passes, people who stream copyrighted content could go to jail for five years.

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For lesson in shared sacrifice, send Congress to boot camp

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Russel L Honore - Aug. 02 (Editorial) - Like most veterans, the men and women who have worn our nation's uniform to defend this country, I am furious with and disappointed in the state of indecision that plagued Washington these past few weeks. Whether or not to raise the debt ceiling so our country can continue to pay our bills and maintain our global credit rating didn't seem like such a difficult decision.

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Violent video games, California and the ambiguity of freedom

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Keith Stuart - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - The US Supreme Court has ruled that an attempt by California to ban the sale of violent games to children was unconstitutional. We look at the factors involved and why this isn't a clear-cut victory for free speech.

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Libel law makes web hosts the Achilles heel of online journalism

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Martin Robbins - May. 03 (Opinion) - Much attention has been focused on the chilling effects of Britain's libel laws on writers, but standing up to threats counts for little when websites can be shut down on a whim In January 2008, web hosting firm Netcetera received an e-mail from the legal representative of Joseph Obi , a fantasist who describes himself as an "alternative medicine visionary" and "The World's Most Controversial Doctor!" Obi was struck off by the GMC and claimed to head a college which doesn't really exist , and was therefore a ripe target for a spot of debunking on Andy Lewis' popular (and excellent) Quackometer blog, then hosted by Netcetera. This attracted the ire of Obi, who instructed his representative to send the following bizarre threat: "In case the defamation continues beyond 12 noon on Monday the 21st of January 2008, we are instructed to hold you fully liable to the tune of £1 Million (One Million Pounds) per day, together with additional punitive damages relating to the many months during ...

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The Little Red (Face)Book

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Steven Levy - May. 01 (Opinion) - When I spoke at Facebook about In The Plex recently, rumors were swirling that the social networking giant was about to enter China, supposedly in a partnership with the search engine Baidu. So I made sure that my talk to a dining hall full of FB’ers included the cautionary tale of what happened when Google met China. (An excerpt of the saga as detailed in my book appeared in Fortune.) Though similar in some ways — focus on engineering, full-on embrace of Internet values — Facebook and Google are quite different companies. Their China efforts will also undoubtedly vary. But some of the challenges that Facebook will encounter will be just as tricky as the ones Google faced. Those problems ultimately led to Google’s reconsideration of the enterprise.

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In St. Louis, a protest sign meets government arrogance

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By George F. Will - Apr. 03 (Opinion) - A dialectic of judicial deference and political arrogance is on display in St. Louis. When excessively deferential courts permit governmental arrogance, additional arrogance results as government explores the limits of judicial deference.

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American Thought Police

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - The hard right — which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear.

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The Limits of Common Sense

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By James Taranto - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - Why toleration of outrageous speech is necessary for political freedom.

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Matthew Snyder's mom: The right to freedom of speech is absolute

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Julie Francis - Mar. 14 (Comment) - Five years ago, my son's father asked me to join him in bringing a lawsuit against the Westboro Baptist Church. I declined for the following reasons.

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Netizens Unite - An advocate for Washington's 'Internet Freedom' agenda has second thoughts.

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - Feb. 23 (Opinion) -

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Jewish prayers for Egypt's uprising

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Michael Lerner - Feb. 01 (Opinion) - Many Jews from around the world support Egyptian self-determination because of Judaism's own historic past with Egypt.

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Generously Angry

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Jan. 19 (Opinion) - What worries me about the otherwise laudatory goal of greater civility after Tucson is that we do not lose either anger or the ability to channel that anger generously for the sake of the greater good.

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Nasty words: Toxic v ballistic rhetoric

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Economist - Jan. 16 (Opinion) - What's scary about extreme right-wing rhetoric, to a great extent, is the way it's bound up with a legitimation of private violence as a defence of freedom. This has not always been the exclusive domain of the right. In the late 1960s and 1970s, it was extreme leftist groups such as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen whose rhetoric legitimated armed violence as a defence of "the people". It was appropriate for cooler heads then to denounce such rhetoric as scary on its own terms, and crippling to democratic politics. That lesson was effective: even the most inaccurate and excessive rhetoric on the left these days doesn't invoke violence. For the same reasons, today's right should drop its habit of couching political points in violent terms.

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The Arizona shooting and the first amendment

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Darin Miller - Jan. 16 (Opinion) - Amid the controversy about 'vitriolic rhetoric', let's remember that free speech is a foundational principle of American democracy

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Tunisia's youth finally has revolution on its mind

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Sam - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - We've become used to gossiping about the regime and feeling that we're plotting. But now we see the time to rebel has come.

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WikiLeaks and the first amendment

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Kennedy - Dec. 16 (Opinion) - An Obama administration prosecution of Julian Assange over the embassy cable leaks would be an assault on press freedom

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Liu’s Nobel

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:28:18 -0800

Weekly Standard - By Ellen Bork - Dec. 14 (Editorial) - Nor is it surprising that no top U.N. official attended the event. Outrageous, yes. But not surprising. When Liu won the peace prize, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed the secretary general’s hope that “any differences on this decision will not detract from advancement of the human rights agenda globally or the high prestige and inspirational power of the award.” Ban pointedly did not call for Liu’s release. Nor did Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, attend the award ceremony. Pillay claimed that she was otherwise engaged with business in Geneva on December 10, international human rights day. The fact that the most significant gathering in support of human rights on December 10 was in Oslo, not Geneva, should be taken to heart.

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A Wiki hornets' nest

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - The most important legacy of the WikiLeaks affair will almost surely be the rapidly escalating cyberwar that the group's renegade disclosures have sparked. If you think you're unaffected by unseen "battles" fought with keystrokes instead of bullets, you're wrong. At stake are issues of free speech, censorship, privacy, piracy, sovereignty and corporate power.

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Dianne Feinstein: Prosecute Assange Under the Espionage Act

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Dianne Feinstein - Dec. 07 (Editorial) - Just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security.

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Julian Assange answers your questions

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Julian Assange - Dec. 03 (Interview) - The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, answers readers' questions about the release of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

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Answers to Readers’ Questions About State’s Secrets

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Nov. 29 (Interview) - The New York Times is publishing State’s Secrets, a series of articles about a trove of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables that were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets. The cables reveal the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 diplomatic outposts around the world and offer a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with other nations in an age of war and terrorism.

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Our puritanical progressives

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By George F. Will - Nov. 28 (Opinion) - Progressivism is a faith-based program. The progressives' agenda for improving everyone else varies but invariably involves the cult of expertise - an unflagging faith in the application of science to social reform. Progressivism's itch to perfect people by perfecting the social environment can produce an interesting phenomenon - the Pecksniffian progressive.

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War and Speech

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Dahlia Lithwick - Nov. 26 (Opinion) - There seems to be no one answer to why there hasn't been a single important First Amendment protest case in the last decade. It's certainly not that the court is reluctant to rule on First Amendment issues altogether. The Supreme Court has taken up a surprising number of speech cases recently. But right now the court is more interested in crush videos, gay marriage bans, anti-Hillary Clinton movies, violent video games, corporate speech, and funeral protests than in the rights of people to criticize government wars. What does this say about the war on terror? And what does it say about what Americans care about most?

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The Tolerance Canard

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Denver Post - By David Harsanyi - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - Today, even broaching the topic of religious affiliation can send (almost all) the dolts on "The View" scattering for cover. To some folks, any whiff of critical discussion on the religious angle is tantamount to narrow-mindedness. And now, apparently, religious bigotry includes the dissemination of truth.

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