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Old 16th October 2000 | 13:52
  #31 (permalink)  
HugMonster
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Who, you miss the point entirely, as do many people who complain about reduction in their "rights" and "freedom".

You might find it a help to read a good textbook on the concept of civil rights, human rights and legal rights. You need to understand the difference between all of these before you complain.

Any extension of your "rights" impinges on another's "freedom". Your right to shout "FIRE" in a crowded theatre impinges upon others' rights to peaceful enjoyment of their own time. Your right of free speech may impinge upon others' rights not to have hatred, abuse and invective poured upon them.

In the UK as in the USA, there has never been absolute right of free speech (no matter what the First Amendment may say). There is always the caveat that the greater good has to be protected. Whether that is embodie in the laws of defamation or in the Broadcasting Act (in the UK) that stops you showing copulating couples on BBC1 at 4pm, it is a limitation on free speech.

Why assume that limitations that protect people from others' "free speech" are a bad thing? Government is, in concept, there to provide a system which stops life for the majority being "nasty, brutish and short"