In Arizona, Online Discourse May be Ordered Civil

[Masteroderus]

I think people do not value their freedoms enough.

Think of this; the number one cause of unnatural death for modern man is being put to death by your government.

A place with similar laws to this is China. They have murdered 90+ million of their own citizens since the communist government took over. If you think that censorship is ok, and furthermore putting people in jail for internet trolling, just look down the road it leads to.

[sswilson]

How would we define it in the same context as traditional broadcast media (TV or radio)?

I'm all for free speech, but there's a huge difference between free speech, and hateful directed speech, and I don't believe that targeted parties should have to jump though the hoops of civil court to get satisfaction.

With that in mind... I'd agree that "offend", or "annoy" might not be the best description of what should be controlled, but anything even remotely resembling targetted harrassment of a definable person or group should be considered criminal.

[EmptyMellon]

So, we all agree that: We like free speech and the use of force against another is bad.

So why then is it ok for a government body to make ethical/moral decisions based on decisions of a small group of people to decide what IS and is NOT socially correct and use force to enforce the law of politically correct speech.

What you might believe to be a free method of self experssion might make me unconfortable, or offend me. However, I am only offends because I don't have the ability for either descussing, reasoning or just ignoring your stance.

The govenment should have absolutely no say what is or is not free speech, because if it does, then it no longer is free speech, but regulated speech.

[Galcobar]

Free speech has limits. That's not new.

That said, this was a goof. It was an attempt to bring old legislation up to date with modern communications by changing one term in a number of passages. The thought is fairly obvious: we'll just change the name of the communication technology so the law can keep doing what it was doing before. The problem was evidently not obvious: the two terms are not comparable.

The amendments to the anti-stalking legislation, you'll note, were more extensive and not surprisingly more specific to the capabilities of modern technology.

Thus why this amendment's already attracted so much attention that it's sponsor Vic Williams has said it's been stopped. It had already been returned to the state House from the state Senate, and was never sent to the governor.