The Glade 4.0

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Fire in a movie theater to me. Freedom of speech does not cover malicious speech/publication that poses a direct threat to the public.

Since I imagine there will be a lot more righteous indignation I wanted to jump out and ask what people think of "The Anarchist Cookbook" which no one brought up during the debate this morning.

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The Anarchist Cookbook is mostly hippie claptrap.

Seriously, a third of the book or so is about drugs and how to make them, use them, and which ones are "better" than others. The rest is largely basic self-defense, survivalist tips, with a sprinkling of controversial advice.

It may have been controversial at the time, but in the internet age it's nothing.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The analogy is that it is a how-to on committing crimes (making drugs, bombs, booby-traps, etc). I think the comparison stands.

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The Anarchist's Cookbook is one of the things that the first amendment is deliberately designed to protect. Likewise, there is nothing illegal about this manual. It is what it is. Frankly, the manual can be used as training material for police and the FBI.

Just because it deals with something you find distasteful, and gives instructions on how to carry out illegal activity does not make the manual itself illegal.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Have you read the book? Do you understand the context of the time in which it was written? Most of the data in it was NOT illegal at the time.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Indeed. If criminals want to give away free intelligence on how to catch them, we shouldn't discourage it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A disgusting use of free speech, but still free speech nonetheless. Describing how a person could commit a crime (or giving a detailed description of the commission of a crime) is different from soliciting someone to commit a crime. There'd be a whole lot of novelists in prison, otherwise.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Sometimes protecting your speech means you have to swallow the bitter pill and say, well that does have a right to exist.

That said it'd be rather fitting if they catch this mule guy or anyone else with the manual in the act or with evidence of something unseemly.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Can depend on the context and intent, though. For instance, if I write a detailed description of how to hack Bank of America ATMs and post it on Gizmodo as a general interest tech news story, that's protected speech. On the other hand, if I write the same detailed description and give it exclusively, and secretly, to a guy I know is mobbed up, well, that's potentially conspiracy to commit larceny.

I see this child molestation thing the same way. If this how-to guide was posted for all the world to see, then it's protected speech. If it was posted in an invitation-only, password-protected forum for pedophiles, then it may be part of a criminal conspiracy.

Free speech or not, thats pretty ****ed up.
I just hope that the guy wrote it "well"enough to give away all the tricks that peds use and provide enough info for the cops to catch the bad guys and for educational stuff on peds to be more accurate.
*shudder* I can't believe something like this even exists.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Didn't we have this argument before on some educational pamphlets that the state of California was passing out on how to use Drugs safely or something like that?
I seem to remember an argument being made about how it could have been enough to push someone over the edge who might otherwise have never hopped the fence...
Perhaps similar in this case? Someone gets a manual and sees how "easy" it is to commit the crime with a how-to on details they never even thought of before.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Doesn't matter. It's still protected speech.

The fault of the crime doesn't fall on the person who provided the material that "convinced" someone else to commit a crime, but with the person who actually committed a crime.

As has been said, if providing the details of how to commit crimes well was a crime, most authors of criminology textbooks, criminology classes, and most murder mystery writers would be out of jobs and in jail.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

It has been proven in court that Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne were not liable for teen suicide.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That was in reference to whether it was a good idea for them to pass out such pamphlets (and I believe it was NYC doing it; Michael was referencing his experiences in California with similar things to discuss the issue), not whether it was protected speech. It's also not a good parallel because the government doesn't have a right to advocate flouting the law in the way citizens do.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I just noticed this:



Talk about a bad choice of your words in your default text.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Free speech protections aren't going to prevent you from being lynched by your neighbors.

Only in places with ineffective law enforcement.

You have way too much faith in law enforcement if you think any department can protect you from your neighbors.

It just occurred to me that most science textbooks in general would be illegal. A chemistry textbook could be construed as providing details on how to cook meth, for example.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Neighbors won't attack you when they know they'd get arrested later.

There are exceptions, however. As much as I despise the DMCA, it is currently illegal in the United States to investigate, publish, read about, discuss, or even bloody think about (if they could find a way to enforce it) breaking commercial encryption.

Yes, I think the USSC should strike down most of the DMCA as a result of several inconsistencies with the constitution.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The fact that an unconstitutional law exists doesn't make it any less unconstitutional.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

They may or may not. There are a great many people in prison for murder who are there because they killed someone who harmed a loved one or friend. Your neighbors will probably not attack you for allowing your dog to bark excessively if they know they'll get arrested. The same may not hold true if they find out you are promoting the molestation of children.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The fear of being arrested is not a sufficient deterrent to prevent crime. If it was, we wouldn't have a crime rate.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20