Brigitte Bardot convicted of "provoking racial hatred"

Well, she's a dumbfuck, so I'm not saddened at all by her being convicted for her retarded remarks. Her stances on seal hunt is just another proof of her being dumb and ignorant.

Well, if you're defamatory to a religious group, you'd get sued, so where's the difference?

I'm afraid that "muslim" may be confused with "arab" in this case, but I don't know enough about Bardot...

However, the seal hunt protesting really pissed me off, especially when Morrissey didn't even have the sense to realize how, uh, nonsensical the protesting is - and refused to tour Canada.

Laws against inciting hatred - which in this country at any rate involves more than just being a dick - are a good idea, despite the fact CNN and FOX would have to replace half their lineups were the US to implement such laws.

Maybe, if your hate-speech laws were written by tearful pearl-clutching republicans who get all soppy when their god The United States is blasphemed against. Dissent isn't treason in any case, and that's official. I looked it up long ago in order to embarrass some tearful, pearl-clutching republicans who were whining about people not supporting Bush's awful policies. But our hate-speech laws are quite specific. Saying nasty things doesn't cut it, you have to be inciting violence or there has to be a reasonable possibility that what you're saying could inspire someone else to violence. It's about as easy to prove as slander or libel. If I say we give the Libertarians their wish and refuse to allow them to use fire, police, sewage, etc. but promise them we'll move their corpses out of the way when they die on the street, is that hate speech? It's contemptuous, but it isn't hate speech.

It's not about saying things people find uncomfortable, it's about inciting hatred. It's about riling up the crowd so there can be a lynchin'.

I see what you're saying, there's a big grey area between your fist and my nose. I agree. I still think laws against inciting hatred are a good idea, and I manage to live under them without being noticeably oppressed.

Sounds like I could sue 80% of the posters of the CHUD religion board.

Sorry, these laws are mostly stupid and this case is a perfect example of it.

I'm completely pro-anti-hate-speech laws...but I don't see that level of incitement in this article. It's possibly because this is my first taste of the story and the fact that a single line is quoted from it, but is there more to her statements and/or behavior than just saying <paraphrasing> "Muslims are destroying France" </paraphrasing> ?

It's not a right in France. Whether or not you agree with it, the French have apparently come to the conclusion that it is their government's right to arrest someone for being a dick.

Though the average intelligent American would disagree with the French government's stance here (as I think we all do, and I think that's what you were trying to say, based on your later posts), it's probably a good thing that France has these laws in place. Successful or not, at least we have an idea how these sorts of laws work out. That helps guide other governments in dealing with these sorts of tough social governance issues in the future.

We've had similar cases in the US, I recall the one about the guy who made a joke against Scientology regarding (Tom) Cruise missiles ...

http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/Scient...henson_pr.html

Again, these laws are stupid. For the real extremist racists groups, better have them in the open than hiding, so we can publicly mock them and their idiotic ideas.

You'd lose. Expressing contempt is not inciting hatred, and this probably doesn't qualify as a public forum anyway.

These laws are necessary and the Klan is a perfect example of why. Personally I think Ann Coulter's another, but hate speech is so hard to prove as such that she'd probably weasel out of it.

The case I linked to, which is the closest to "hate speech" like law being applied in the US was over comments on usenet.

Punishing speech is always a bad idea. If you incite actual, provable violence, you have moved beyond speech. Otherwise, keep your laws out of my head. Anyone who advocates hate speech laws is essentially an enemy of freedom of speech.

The thing is, you muzzle Ann Coulter, you make the same mistake that our government did in invading Iraq: ultimately, you want to understand how the enemy (in Coulter's case, the enemy of common sense and reasonable political discourse) thinks, so you can understand how to combat it.

EDIT: The metaphor is a little muddled with the Iraq = enemy thing, but the gist is still there.

Eh, a woman is a woman.

SHUT THE FUCK UP, HATE-MONGERER!!! THAT'S THIRTY DAYS IN PRISON AND FORCED ANAL ENTRY! Goddamn those I find loathsome...they ought to be lined up and shot! Who's with me?!

No you haven't.

This isn't usenet. It's a private place. Might as well be Nick's livingroom. Also, contempt and mockery aren't inciting hatred.

The only difference is who gets to post, but it is a very public place as anybody can read the comments. I don't see at all how this place would be treated any different in that case.

Why? She can think what she likes, if you call what she likes 'thinking'. It's not our job to correct her parents' mistakes, just minimize the effects. Therefore, she can say what she likes. She can be as hateful as she likes. But she can't rally people to start shooting liberals. She probably couldn't buy a billboard that says "Fags get out or die!" either, but I'm not a lawyer so don't quote me on that.

This is a terrifying precedent for what is supposed to be a free country. No one should ever be faced with penalty of law for simply saying anything, and I really don't give two shits what it was. If you're supporting this, then you're supporting the muzzling of free speech. Period.

CHUD is privately owned.

And her remarks were in a letter, which was published in her group's journal. They weren't put on a billboard in public view.

Well, damn! I'll just decide arbitrarily that what I oppose isn't really speech and then we're good, right?

People do not have the right to say whatever they want. They don't have it in this country, they don't have it in the United States, and they don't have it France. We never have. We have to really go overboard before we can be said to have abused our right to speak freely, but it can and does happen.

So?

The comments are publicly available.

So you are saying "hateful" comments are ok as long as the place they are stored is privately owned, even though it also makes them available to anybody in the world?

That makes no sense at all. Like these laws.

Again, her remarks appeared in a letter, and later in a journal circulated in her own group. They were not placed in public view. If prosecuting someone for something said in those venues isn't pushing government control of speech too far, I don't know what it would take to convince you.

Her who?

If it makes you feel better, I agree with the EFF: making dumb jokes about Cruise missiles is not threatening or inciting violence. That's why Capitan would lose his case against the CHUD religion forum. Hate speech laws aren't about dumb jokes.

I believe so, yes. I'm sure the Canadian Legal Code is available on-line if you would like more detail. And I could be wrong. But I'm certain that nothing said in the religion forums would even come close to constituting hate speech in any way, shape, or form.

How can you say that if you don't know what these laws cover?

Oh. Right. Bardot. That her. Well, what do we know but one line from her letter? We know nothing. Maybe she is arguing for shooting them all and letting God sort them out. Was she just bitching? Was she advocating some form of official discrimination against a specific group of people? Was she doing it because she hates Arabs or because she loves sheep? Is she a repeat offender? I'm not going to argue for or against Bardot because I don't know anything about the matter. I don't need to in order to think hate-speech laws are a good idea, do I? Just like I don't have to support all the murder convictions in the world because I think laws forbidding murder are swell.

The problem is that hate speech ends up being very much a matter of opinion. Murder isn't. If somebody attacks somebody else, and the second somebody dies as a result, you've got a pretty much cut-and-dried definition of murder. Hate speech is troubling because everybody has to agree on what it means.

Although I'm not sure why I'm even taking your comparison seriously, as even you must realize how fucking stupid that is.

No, it's clearly defined. In our case, in S.319: Public Incitement of Hatred.

No they don't. No one has ever asked me for a definition of it or any other crime.

It's not stupid. I oppose wrongly convincting anyone, for any crime. Even if I think the act they allegedly committed should be a crime, they shouldn't be convicted if they didn't do it. What's fucking stupid about that? Seems obvious to me.

What would it take to convince me? Free speech zones. When we're physically restrained from saying anything in what's ostensibly a public place because it might disturb important people, then I'll worry about government interference in free speech. I have no problem with making advocating genocide illegal because I can't imagine any reason why such a thing should be legal in the first place. I don't know all of what Bardot did, and I don't much care if her conviction was just or not. It doesn't change the fact that I have no problem with laws against hate-speech; I don't see them as being much different from slander or libel laws. Which is what the OP asked: "Anyways that's my two cents on the whole situation what say you all?"

Are you being dense on purpose? The point is that the term "hate speech" is inherently nebulous. However they've "rigidly defined" it, it's based on subjective opinions. Very much in the way that "murder" isn't.

The point is wrong. You may be fuzzy about what is and is not hate speech, and I might be too, but the law is not. As for my being dense on purpose, no. You just seem to think your basis for your decision is mine as well, and it's not. I have no problem with hate speech laws. If what Bardot did was not a violation of those laws, her conviction is wrong. Just like fucking littering, since you're so hung up on murder. That YOU think hate speech is too nebulous to define doesn't affect MY opinion. Get it yet?

Sigh.

I'm not arguing that she violated the law. I'm saying that the law shouldn't exist. I'm saying that the passing of laws against certain kinds of speech is a dangerous precedent. What constitutes hate speech is too subjective to be effectively written into law, regardless of the fact that they have, in fact, done so. It's the kind of law that practically begs to be selectively employed, and is eminently open to abuse.

There's a great big fucking difference between saying that she's violated the law and saying that she's actually done something wrong. People who smoke pot break the law, and it doesn't mean that they deserve to face prosecution. Unjust laws should not be used as a yardstick to measure right and wrong. To do so makes you an automaton.

Slander? Libel? Uttering threats? Such laws already exist. I want legal recourse should someone try to ruin my professional reputation, and I want legal recourse should someone petition my local shops to refuse service to French Canadians. Do you think I shouldn't?

As I said above, there is a grey area. That's no reason to throw in the towel, and I don't agree that the matter is too subjective to be effectively addressed by the law. It's certainly effective in obvious cases where there is no ambiguity, and it goes to some lengths to differentiate advocating an action from expressing an opinion. Like slander and libel, these laws deal with determining where your swung fist ends and my nose begins.

All laws are such, to the point where 'driving while black' has become a cliche.

Oh no, I think great care should be taken in determining whether or not the accused is pushing for harming others precisely because freedom of speech is so fundamental.

DESTROY ALL HUMANS!!!
take me to jail.

...and God created Woman.

So it's God's fault.

If we can get God into court for hate speech, I'll be all for these laws.

I wish Sea Bass... read my post to understand how ironic it is to lock people up for speech. You would be locking people up with the same fury with which they express themselves to whatever group. You can't get very 'angry' at fascists, because they will only smile at you for becoming what you loathe. And they love portraying themselves as the victims.

I don't care about any of that. They can smile until they're blue in the face.

I'm not sure why thinking people ought not to be allowed to incite violence and hatred is getting me so much grief here. Slander and libel have been illegal for years and years and that doesn't seem to draw much fire.

I think inciting violence and hatred are very different things. But on the hatred front, that is just a very nebulous concept. In this case, what she wrote is very similar to what you read from people here regarding Christianity, so I don't see how somebody critical of religion can be an advocate of that.

Slander and libel are much more specific things, and "hatred" is too general a concept (or emotion) to legislate.

We managed. Anything not falling under it is just general assholery, which is legal.

Slander and libel are demonstrably false.

It's criminal to directly incite someone to commit a criminal act "go out and kill all Muslims", for example.

Expressing an opinion, no matter how abhorrent, that doesn't incite criinal acts, does come under the umbrella of free speech. Where you're in a grey area is opinions of the "XXXX group deserve to be put to death", and that's where I think the real tension comes.

This type of thing is what I'm talking about. Encouraging discrimination falls into this category as well.

I agree, with the caveat that different countries may not necessarily define the same acts as criminal.

And the specific matter is examined and a decision reached, which beats throwing your hands up in despair and categorically declaring all such statements as too nebulous for the law to address.

And while slander and libel are demonstrably false, I have not committed either if I really believe the things I'm saying. I don't even have to be right, I just have to believe it. And that's just one loophole. If I argue that my position has a religious basis, that's probably another. But the laws exist despite the nebulosity of the matter.

I think you are in favor of some freedom in speech.