Porn producer gets it, one law professor doesn’t

Adult film producer John Stagliano — facing up to 40 years in jail if convicted in a currently running obscenity case – debates Pepperdine Law School’s Barry McDonald on free speech vs obscenity. Money quote from Stagliano:
Barry, your point is that people must be forced to not think things that you don’t like, and for that [...]

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A free-speech clarification

(Updated 13/6)
In response to an emailed comment by a certain reader, I feel it is appropriate to clarify my stand on free speech.
I frequently say I believe in complete freedom of speech, no hate-speech exceptions, etc. However when I say complete freedom of speech, I use the term only to refer to expressed opinions. My stand [...]

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The most important truth

“I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
- Voltaire (as paraphrased by Evelyn Beatrice Hall).

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What’s going on in Netherlands?

The Dutch got it once. So they legalized abortion, prostitution, soft drugs and euthanasia and guaranteed absolute free speech. But isn’t there an old proverb about not seeing the value of things you’ve had for a long while? It seems the famously easy-going Dutch are tired of their freedoms. What else to make of the ban on magic mushrooms, and now the arrest [...]

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An unfortunate end to a sad affair

Remember Karen Fletcher? The woman in the centre of the high-profile obscenity case I wrote about earlier? The reclusive lady who wrote violent sexual stories involving children in an attempt to cope with her own history of child abuse and was subsequently hounded by federal prosecuters? Well, the matter’s come to an end.
She battled the federal government’s allegations [...]

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Anti-trust vigilante Obama

I still prefer Obama over McCain, but some of his views are depressing.
For those interested, my position on anti-trust laws is here. This issue, however, is more worrying than the old-fashioned Microsoft harassment that was the motivator for my old post. The media, for all its faults, is a vital expression of free expression and any attempt [...]

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Elane photography violated NM law, rules commision

I posted earlier about the Elane Photography case. The New Mexico Human Rights commission issued its opinion today, holding Elane Photography guilty of discrimination. As Eugene Volokh discusses here, the breadth of the decision is astounding and ostensibly covers other businesses of a similar nature. For instance, freelance writers — by the same logic employed by the [...]

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Freedom, pornography and the Bush moral agenda

“I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul”
- George. W. Bush
“Pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it’s difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need; and, while [...]

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More on the previous topic

Eugene Volokh writes about a hypothetical scenario involving a mixed-race couple in the photography incident:
The desire to prevent race discrimination should no more dissolve your right to be free from being compelled to speak (here, to create an artistic work) than it should dissolve the right to express bigoted views, to choose members of a racist [...]

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The right to choose what you photograph

In America, you have freedom of expression and freedom of association, except when you don’t. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, one does not really have the right to decide who one hires, or rents out one’s apartment to, allows inside one’s restaurant, or does business with. If you refuse to deal with someone commercially because [...]

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The ban game

The headline of this DNA report reads:
Tamil movies to be banned in Karnataka.
However, the first sentence of the report merely says
To protest against Tamil Nadu going ahead with Hogenakal project on Karnataka border, the Kannada Rakshana Vedike (KRV), a pro-Kannada organisation will be prevent (sic) Tamil movies from being screened in theatres and television channels from today.
My [...]

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Mugabe forces opponents to eat their words

Quite literally.
Amnesty International cited a case on March 7, when three members of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were ordered by intelligence officers to take down election posters.
According to Amnesty, the officials forced the opposition supporters to chew the posters and swallow them.
For those living in democracies like the [...]

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Welcome to Nineteen Eighty-four

Think twice before writing a violent story. Steven Barber, a student at the University of Virginia at Wise, was searched, involuntarily committed for three days, and finally expelled from the university, for … hold your breath … writing a story in which a character contemplates murder and suicide.
I don’t know which is more disturbing - [...]

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How dare you read that book!

Keith Sampson, a university employee and student, has been charged with racial harassment for reading a book called “Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” during his work breaks. Apparently, the mere presence of the word Ku Klux Klan offended a co-worker, despite the fact that the book is in fact [...]

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Jodha Akbar ban overturned by Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of India has once again put its weight behind freedom of expression, overruling the ban on the film “Jodha Akbar” by three state governments.
It is a sad matter that in India people think they have a moral right to ban things they don’t like. And the ludicrous loopholes in our constitution (think “free-speech for [...]

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