I disagree with the EU about their copyright legislation, but applaud their attempts at increasing privacy.
What I find odd about the conversation around EU internet legislation is the idea that "The Internet" is a single entity that has some kind of natural state, and further that natural state is for all information to be free and to be a place where anyone can say anything (or should be able to). I think this grows out of the American origins of the Internet, and the American concept of free speech.
But other countries have different views of how free speech should be. Should you be able to deny the holocaust? Should you be able to purchase unlimited political ads? Should you be able to spread misinformation? Americans tend to say yes, because the truth will sort itself out. I'm not going to make a judgement on whether that's true, but it is true that other societies make different judgements on where to draw the line on freedom of expression, and those countries have a right to implement those decisions for their people on the Internet just as much as Americans have a right to have wild-west style freedom of expression.
Oh, also, before someone straw-mans me, I'm not talking about repressive regimes. I'm talking about societies where the populace is making informed decisions about their leaders, and have collectively decided they draw the line on expression in a different place than Americans do.
> ... and those countries have a right to implement those decisions for their people on the Internet ...
No, they do not. One's natural rights do not disappear just because one happens to be living under a regime which fails to acknowledge them. When an American talks about the freedom of speech, they're talking about a right shared by every human being on this planet, not just the ones who happen to live in the USA. It is a matter of objective fact, not opinion or local preference, that the use of force, including fines, imprisonment, etc., is not a proportional response to mere speech, regardless of the content.
It's a matter of objective fact? Show me the experimental data that shows the American interpretation of freedom of speech is correct. Even Americans draw the line somewhere. For instance, the old "shouting fire in a theater." bit. Or, say, planning a murder.
Other people decide to draw the line different places. Sorry, but claiming the American legal interpretation is "objective fact" and, say, the German one is wrong is just crazy.
Personally I think the crazy notion is that governments have rights. They are an embodiment of power. They need and have limits not rights. If the people stop the government from having an army - circumstances of the practicality of doing so aside its rights haven't been violated. It doesn't have any and the notion they do is absurd.
Even the transience property of personhood for corporations (regardless of one's opinion on the matter) doesn't apply to them for several reasons. Anyone with sufficient actually trivial resources can form a corporation. Forming your own government (in a non-parliment sense) is generally known as treason.
The people may have a right to self determination but that is a very big distinction.
Assuming a well-functioning democracy, they have whatever rights The populace wants them to have, including deciding what types of speech are acceptable.
>Assuming a well-functioning democracy, they have whatever rights The populace wants them to have, including deciding what types of speech are acceptable.
So... mob rule.
That seems like a very stable and restrained society. I can't think of any obvious problem with that, or any time in, say, German history (to name a particularly egregious example) where mob rule run amok destroyed most of the Continent. Or Russian history. Or Cambodian history. Or Chinese history. Or...
The only currently reliable way to defuse mob rule is to decentralize. This is done by passing laws that say that society can't stop its individual members from doing certain things. And while this does lead to a very polluted commons (and sometimes isn't sufficient on its own to prevent the mob from taking over), it also leads to an exceptionally stable society simply because the "we should gang up and hurt/ban the people we hate" reflex is impotent outside of one's chosen groups and the hands-off attitude becomes ingrained in the people after a while.
The right to be wrong is important, because once the mob decides that your life itself is wrong (or rather, the closer the local Overton Window is to that idea- the more entitled a society is to restrict its members, the closer it is to this by definition) you're in trouble as soon as the mob hits a rough spot. It might advance faster at times, but it's just too unstable.
While mob rule can be problem it has long been the 'democratic bogeyman' to justify why oligarchs and dictators must retain power even if what they want isn't remotely close to being unreasonable like not facing famine when it can be prevented. I'm not sure that decentralization works for stopping it - just limiting their demesne to one small town where you could be lynched instead of a whole country.
The system of constitutional rights of some sort has worked pretty well to excellent for limiting that purpose especially when combined with a judiciary willing to look ahead. The issue it helps prevent is the same as the mob rule example although it can also happen with more 'restrained mob rule' situations in a set up for a turnkey dictatorship that allows for absolute power in just a few steps.
The 'democratic institutions' and societal structure seems to be a factor of how resistant from degrading as well, how likely a transition to democracy is to stick and not have travesties in the attempt and how the aftermath of a dictatorship is handled. It would be interesting to see if there can be a good qualitative breakdown here as there are for signs of rising fascism and dictatorships.
> It's a matter of objective fact? Show me the experimental data...
You're looking in the wrong place. It is objective precisely because it comes from logic, not experiment. The question is not "which system better optimizes for a certain set of subjective preferences" but rather "does this act inherently justify this response". That is true only if the response is proportional—similar to the original act both qualitatively and quantitative—because the perpetrator of the original act cannot then argue that their action was right and proper while simultaneously claiming that the same action is wrong when someone else does it to them. Either they allow that the response is acceptable, or they admit that they were wrong to behave as they did. However, you cannot make that argument if the response is non-proportional, such as the case when responding to speech with force.
> Sorry, but claiming the American legal interpretation is "objective fact"...
I'm not making any claims about the American legal interpretation, but rather the principles of natural law which underpin the best parts of it. There is still a lot which the American legal system gets wrong on that score, including that travesty of a ruling made under duress to justify suppressing political protest against the draft (the infamous "shouting fire in a theater" case).
> Or, say, planning a murder.
The problem with that is not the planning, but rather the intent to actually murder someone, which is obviously not merely a matter of speech. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with planning a murder, per se; mystery-novel authors do it all the time. If you lead people to reasonably believe that you actually intend to commit the murder, however, then you shouldn't be surprised if they respond accordingly in self-defense against an imminent threat of irreversible harm.
What I find odd about the conversation around EU internet legislation is the idea that "The Internet" is a single entity that has some kind of natural state, and further that natural state is for all information to be free and to be a place where anyone can say anything (or should be able to). I think this grows out of the American origins of the Internet, and the American concept of free speech.
But other countries have different views of how free speech should be. Should you be able to deny the holocaust? Should you be able to purchase unlimited political ads? Should you be able to spread misinformation? Americans tend to say yes, because the truth will sort itself out. I'm not going to make a judgement on whether that's true, but it is true that other societies make different judgements on where to draw the line on freedom of expression, and those countries have a right to implement those decisions for their people on the Internet just as much as Americans have a right to have wild-west style freedom of expression.
Oh, also, before someone straw-mans me, I'm not talking about repressive regimes. I'm talking about societies where the populace is making informed decisions about their leaders, and have collectively decided they draw the line on expression in a different place than Americans do.