Rational people can disagree on whether or not the escalating violent rhetoric of right-wing politics contributed to the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabriella Giffords and the collateral murder of six others, but rational people–I think–might agree that exhortations for the murder of anyone are not moral. The right to free speech comes with both legal and moral responsibilities, and when we hear speech that tramples the core values we commonly hold, it is our moral imperative to speak up. When people use speech I find offensive, I speak up. Nigger. Kike. Fag. Cooze. Gook. People have the right to use these words if they choose, but we as a society have made it clear that only in exceptional contexts (like the study of literature, for example, or the teaching of it, in my case) are these words tolerated. By rejecting speech of this sort, we articulate our respect for all people, we reinforce our desire to maintain a society that values difference, and we validate the responsibility each of us shares when exercising our right to speak. In common conversation, we’d be horrified to hear someone talking like this. Similarly, we’d be horrified to hear someone call for the murder of anyone publicly. The overt and unavoidable nature of audible speech names things many of us feel but would rather not own. We possess a moral compass–most of us, anyway– that views the slaughter of humans as immoral, as something we don’t personally want to be responsible for. In some cases, indeed, such speech is a crime, as in calling for the assassination of the President of the United States. Those who silently tolerate speech of the sort mentioned above are as derelict in their social and moral responsibilities as those who make such statements.
All of which brings me back to killing Julian Assange. The domain name administrators for these websites claim they have no right to control the speech of those who register such names and that they will register anything except cases calling for the murder of the President. Their stance is arbitrary and hypocritical. We have standards for speech in many aspects of our lives. For example, I can’t get a license plate for my car that says “Fuck You,” or “Die Kikes,” or “Kill Niggers.” The state. ironically enough, controls my speech in that respect. I can’t get an editorial printed that uses this sort of language or calls for violence against individuals or groups of people. The editorial standards of the newspaper control my speech in that respect. And few people would argue that those controls are unwarranted because they validate what we claim to hold dear: respect for people and life. Why, then, are website domain names exempt from such standards? Indeed, a case could be made that domain names of this sort are even more worthy of standards-based control than newspapers or license plates. No one can communicate with another person on or through my license plate or my editorial. Such speech is one-sided by its nature. Hateful people united in common cause cannot use my license plate or my editorial to coordinate or plan or foment. The same cannot be said for the websites on the internet, which, by their nature, have a community-forming function that unites people of common interests and provides them an organizing tool for action.
Thoughtful people should demand that domain name administrators take responsibility for their speech. For example, they should support newly launched websites like www.vivantleakers.org, which will provide a single-source catalog of calls for violence against leakers on the web so that pressure can be placed upon domain name administrators to apply commonly accepted standards of speech in the public forum. Remaining silent or impartial is unacceptable in this day and age given recent events; people must make their objections known consistently and clearly. Anything short of that is cowardly, immoral, and indecent.
mike-in-mi says
has the point of your opening graph been proven?
lightiris says
prima facie evidence? lol.
tedf says
If you take seriously the notion that the Wikileaks leaks may have put lives at risk (leaving aside whether it was harmful to the national interest), isn’t this post the slightest bit ironic? And suppose that the people who registered these domain names had an encrypted archive of documents, called “insurance,” that they threatened to release if the domain registrars had the temerity to try to silence them in the exercise of their God-given right to free speech? Obviously I’m not saying people should be allowed to register domain names like this.
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p>On another front:
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p>Is it possible that hordes of Assange supporters aren’t being intimidated into silence, but rather, that there are not hordes of Assange supporters?
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p>TedF
marc-davidson says
hasn’t put lives in danger — or at least in the way that you and others have suggested.
tedf says
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p>Here is the link. I don’t want to get into this debate again, but I wanted to make sure that both perspectives on this question were flagged in this thread.
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lightiris says
the issue with casual folks. When people feel comfortable in speaking, I’ve not had one yet think that he’s not doing valuable work. Your mileage, however, may very.
marc-davidson says
on the WikiLeaks issue; however, I’m reluctant to advocate for censorship of the web. In fact, this sort of censorship is being used against WikiLeaks. It seems clear that we don’t all have the same standard of what is outrageous.
Can you explain how to distinguish between the two?
tedf says
I think Marc is making essentially the same point I was making, except from the perspective of someone generally supportive of Mr. Assange rather than from the perspective of someone generally critical of him. There hasn’t been that much common ground on Wikileaks here, so this is an interesting fact, I think.
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lightiris says
but I don’t think calls for violence matter whether they are on the web or on my license plate or in an editorial.
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p>What is the substantive difference? Why can’t we just agree that calls for murdering someone–or raping someone–are inconsistent with a free and civil society?
sabutai says
How do you reconcile the idea that domain name administrators have responsibility not to allow incendiary domain names such as you cited, yet received criticism from Assange supporters for disconnecting Wikilieaks domains, an organization arguably promoting incredibly incendiary tactics?
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p>I realize the answer is that some types of incendiary is good, others bad, but who decides and how? Individual, unaccountable CEOs of private corporations? We have too much of that now. Would killosamabinladen.com be okay? How about killhugochavez.com ?
lightiris says
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p>Because I believe there is a substantive difference between calls for active violence and incendiary content; they are not the same. Is there really no substantive difference between controversial political content and, say, calling for the rape or murder of someone? How about setting up a website that looks like this: rapejennysmithbeforesheturns10.com. Is that really the same as leaked cable content?
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p>In a world where all things are equal, as Kbusch so eloquently puts it, that might be the case, but I think we are capable of making distinctions. I think editorial responsibilities should extend AT LEAST to the registration of domain names given their privileged and unique quality of providing an organizational space for criminal violence.
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p>Well, the alternative might be that no one has any responsibility for anything? We expect and value editorial responsibility. How is this any different? No, neither one of the alternatives you offer are okay, either. The call for violence is not acceptable, no matter who it’s against, and maybe that’s the line in the sand that would work.
sabutai says
I never said that the alternative is “nobody has responsibility for anything”. However, allowing domain name sellers to police what’s available is just giving private companies more censorship sway over acceptable Net discourse. Eliminating violent domain names if fine by me…I remember “killwithme.com” being registered for some excrecious website attached to a Hollywood schlock horror movie. (Is fictional violence okay?) I’d just say that the best bet would be to bring this before ICANN or if need be the FCC.
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p>But please do answer my earlier question — is http://www.killosamabinladen.com okay? Or http://www.killhugochavez.com?
lightiris says
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p>I did answer you–see above (or below):
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p>The answer, again, is no. Websites of that nature should not be registered.
patricklong says
The state provides license plates for a specific purpose that has nothing to do with free speech, so they are justified in limiting what you can say with them any way they want. Newspapers only have limited space for editorials, and newspapers can and do take sides on the issues of the day. There is no limit on how many domain names can be registered, and domain name admins do not take sides on the issues. You are asking them to take sides now.
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p>Advocating a crime is different than inciting one. The material disclosed on Wikileaks is far more likely to result in actual violence than the existence of a website titled killjulianassange.com. As far as planning violence goes, one can do that just as easily at a site called julianassangesucks.com as at killjulianassange.com. Once you start placing limits like that with such flimsy justification, you can make the same argument for not allowing sites with a domain name criticizing a specific person, which puts a major dent in our political discourse.
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p>Further, the rapejennysmithbeforesheturns10.com example is irrelevant. Unless Jenny Smith is a celebrity, the people visiting it will be people who actually know her, which means they have a lot more opportunity to actually rape her than the average visitor to killassange.com has to kill Assange. That’s probably crossing the line into incitement rather than mere advocacy of a crime, because there is a higher risk that someone will act on that advocacy. The fact that she’s a child also makes some difference too, because she is less able to protect herself and probably has not made a mature decision to be a public figure even if she somehow is.
lightiris says
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p>This makes no sense. In fact, it bolsters my argument–thank you. The limiting speech “any way they want” means they are applying an editorial function over and above the plate’s primary function, which is provide a unique identifier for registration purposes. They have even less an investment in what the message actually conveys than most because the “vanity” of such plates is a secondary function. The fact is, they DO care what the “message” of the vanity plate conveys.
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p>This is ludicrous. Are you really suggesting newspaper editorials routinely refrain from publish things like “fuck the kikes” and “niggers must die” and “kill the working cooze” because they don’t have room?
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p>No, I’m asking that domain name registration services apply an editorial decency standard that precludes exhortations to violent crime.
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p>An irrelevant point distinction without much of a difference. My editorial called “Kill Newt Gingrich” won’t be printed any time soon in any mainstream newspaper–were I to write such an egregiously hateful and unacceptable piece–because the sentiment is offensive. Do you really find a serious distinction between “Kill New Gingrich” and “New Gingrich Must Die”?
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p>This is pure reflexive conjecture without a shred of evidence to back it up. Your anti-WikiLeaks bias is showing, much suggests to me that you are reacting to the individual who is the subject of my post and not the argument as it pertains to anybody.
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p>You are determined, it seems, to conflate distinctly different political points. Are you actually suggesting that ‘kill Julian Assange’ is no different from ‘Julian Assange Sucks’? That words have no meaning? If that is the case, then why is the line drawn at ‘kill Barack Obama’ and a plethora of ‘Barack Obama Sucks” websites abound? We are willing to accept a line as it applies to the President of the United States. I could NOT make the argument you suggest because it is simply silly and unrelated to the point I am trying to make. Are you incapable of distinguishing differences in the meaning of words? I am not allowed to yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater for a reason: words have meaning and ramifications.
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p>This is utter gibberish. The President of the United States is a “celebrity”–perhaps the most well-known in American society AND he’s an adult, yet one cannot register a domain name like “killobama.com.” Perhaps it would have been okay for you to have a website called “killGabbyGiffords.com” where people could gather who hated her? After all, she’s a “celebrity” and and adult.
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p>It matters not whether Jenny Smith is a celebrity or a child; what matters is that exhortations to commit violence are unacceptable in a civil society–and you’d be hard pressed to find a rational adult who thinks that a domain name such as the one I suggested is harmless. We could have a plethora, then, of websites registered by bullies to torment others in school. How about that? How about “The faggot Matthew Shepard must die.com.” That’s acceptable to you?