Article: 455 of alt.society.civil-liberty Xref: parc alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:1816 alt.society.civil-liberty:455 talk.politics.misc:77838 alt.censorship:4442 Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.misc,alt.censorship Path: parc!xerox!bader From: bader@Xerox.com (Lars Bader) Subject: Re: Dave (The Stud) Duke likes Republicans! Message-ID: <1991Nov8.062537.4005@parc.xerox.com> Sender: news@parc.xerox.com Reply-To: bader@Xerox.com (Lars Bader) Organization: Xerox PARC References: Date: Thu, 7 Nov 91 22:25:37 PST In article , bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > >Recently, there have been efforts to punish people for their thoughts. We see > >this in the harassment debate (*), where speech is increasingly legislated not > >only between superior and subordinate, where it might be part of implicit > >coercion, but also between co-workers, where the only motive for controlling > >speech can be to prevent someone from having to know that someone else is > >having thoughts about them that they regard as unpleasant, i.e: sexual > >advances where there is no implied threat if one does not accept, and politely > >made remarks which happen to be politically incorrect. So my thoughts that > >there is a desire for thought control and speech control are not unfounded. > > You seem to be confusing thoughts with actions. > > Making illegal the directing of thoughts at a specific individual in > the form of actions is nothing new. > > Hint: An assault does not require a battery. If I threaten you > verbally it is quite possible I have violated a law, and not a new > law, it can be construed as an assault. It is illegal because of the belief that people do not just make predictions of what they would do anyway; they make threats with intent to gain from doing so, and with the understanding, in many cases, that they will not do violence if they get what they want. Thus it is an instrument of coercion. The same is not true in the case that I have mentioned. The logic behind prosecuting threats is that either (a) the threatener is telling the truth, in which case they will commit the crime and deserve to be punished, or (b) the threatener is lying, in which case the threatener is trying to alter the behavior of the victim in a coercive manner, either to make the victim stay away, or to extort some benefit; in either of these cases, the threatener also deserves to be punished. I'm not convinced this can be said about other types of speech. We do have the first amendment, and it shouldn't be trampled on just because some fashionable new approach to a social problem has arisen. > > Protected speech tends to find thin ice when directed at a specific > individual, as in the sexual harassment you outline. No, it doesn't, except where it's intended as a form of coercion, or where it is repeated with intent to offend *and* the effect of offending (see the federal law on harassment (the old-fashioned definition, believe it or not, there's been one for a while)). > > But there's nothing new about speech directed at an individual, > particularly speech which threatens or otherwise predicts some further > action against that individual, to be treated as an assault or other > crime. And polite remarks, however politically incorrect, and sexual advances that are made only until a rejection, *do not* fall into the category of making threats or predicting an action. > I assume you would consider certain spoken words directed at you to > not be "protected speech", no? How about harrassing phone calls, for > example? If you want to call me up and declare your deep desire to have me rub peanut butter all over you, or whatever disturbed fantasy you might have, I see nothing that should be illegal about it, as long as when I tell you not to use my telephone or any other means of unavoidably intrusive communication to do so, you do not *repeat* your action. Repetition is the key here, in a circumstance where you have been informed that you are offending *and* under circumstances where you are intruding on my privacy rather than the other way around. Is the subject clear now? > > > -- > -Barry Shein > > Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs > Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD -- Lars E. Bader Email: leb@athena.mit.edu, bader@parc.xerox.com Disclaimer: My views may not reflect those of MIT, Xerox, or any other organization (and probably don't).