All "speech" should be legal--printed, electronic, or otherwise--even guides to making bombs like the Anarchist Cookbook, of which I have a copy. Anyone who doesn't support that doesn't deserve freedom of speech. I understand limits to speech being necessary to prevent imminent harm (when there is evidence of clear and present danger) like yelling fire in a crowded theater. However, this logic has been overextended and abused to the point where less-than-clear danger and just potential risk are enough to justify censorship of unpopular political speech. One more reason to nix the Terrorism Act. -Henry
On May 21, 2014, at 12:05 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> Message du 21/05/14 16:24 >> De : "Georgi Guninski" >> AFAICT someone might go to jail for owning >> a book (not sure if paper or electronic): >> >> From wikipedia (old revision): >> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abu_Hamza_al-Masri&oldid=609513570 >> >> --- >> Guilty of one charge of "possessing a document containing information likely >> to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism"[31] >> under the Terrorism Act 2000, s58. This charge under the Terrorism Act of >> 2000 related to his possession of an Encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad, an Al >> Qaeda Handbook and other propaganda materials produced by Abu Hamza.[32] >> --- > > Would you be in favor of charging someone for possessing things like: > - A catalog of hacking tools; > - Pedophile instruction manual; > - Recipes for preparing human flesh; > > ??? > > Things like that remember me that google once did not have the capacity to > exclude links from its systems, but because of pedophiles, they finally built > that capacity. The next day the copyright industry was knocking at their door > to take down content they previously couldn't because of the lack of > technical capacity. > > "Now Google don't have excuses." - I remember seeing that phrase in a New > York magazine. > > The only way to not have people charged because of a book would be to make > legal all books no matter what and you guessed it right, it won't happen. > > Because you, yourself, will be in favor of indicting people in at least one > of the items I quoted, which automatically makes it legal to charge anyone > because of possession of any book.
