Criminal charges for fiction... (52)

Careful now.

Scum.

Probably!

The Red Rose Whispers Of Passion (J o'B R)

I'll happily bet you two pints of lager and a packet of crisps that there are such Frenchmen.

Anyhow... if we can all make an effort to lift the discussion out of that particular cesspool which is "national pride" I believe the issue is that there is good reason to worry when a governing body decides that certain types of fiction are criminal in nature. Even if they may be in extremely bad taste, or otherwise causing great offence, they are still not ACTIONS that are taken against any specific victim so they shouldn't be subject to criminal legislation. (The only exception that I can see are personal insults and willful attempts to destroy somebody's - alive or dead - good name and reputation.)

We live in dangerous times. Yesterday's science-fiction concept of "precrime" has become today's policy - and it now seems that "preemptive war" is justifiable as long as WE are the ones doing it.

Christmas Bloody Christmas

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well thats not acceptable, if you fail to write can you be charged with neglect???

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." ~Buddha

Fans of my local football team, Barnet, claim they are playing in Europe every season!

As for cultural/legal leakage obviously 1st amendment has not made it here in the UK for 220ish yrs. I do not think there is any inevitability about this form of leakage. We have managed to keep ourselves very well insulated from French cultural/legal influence since the Norman invasion.

Some philosophic/social values like Christianity or socialism will permeate through various societies and create similar laws and policies on a grand scale but ultimatly local conditions dictate the final word.

Obviously law makers look abroad for ideas but only as possible answers for local conditions.

Over here it's called Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which is for the tie being part of British law due to the Human Rights Act enacted by New Labour:

As I understand it, similar restrictions exist in the US over freedom of speech, with the Supreme Court ruling on whether various forms of expression constitute "protected speech"; some forms of pornography at least (I can't recall whether or not porn as a whole is regarded as being not protected) are not regarded as protected speech, meaning that under individual States' obscenity laws, (some types of) porn can be prohibited. I'm no expert on USA law (not being a USAian, and also not being a lawyer of any kind) but this is the information I have picked up from reading reports about US law cases relating to censorship, and the legal issues surrounding sex work in the USA.

I stand corrected!!

One wonders if the right to bear arms and teaching in schools that the world is 5000yrs old will follow?

First off, in regards to that apparently troublesome word "American." Currently it is the only way in the English language available to describe someone from the United States - unless you choose to go with the unwieldy phrase "citizen of the United States." Now you can lead the way through example by describing us as as "Usonians" (Frank Llloyd Wright's idea) or USAian as you wrote, but if someone from the US describes himself as an "American" that person does so not out of arrogance, as though he feels his country is the only important thing in the western hemisphere, but simply because there is no other word in standard English which describes what he is. One generally describes one from a continent in the western hemisphere as being from North America, South America, or from the Americas.

That out of the way, on to the Supreme Court. Benjamin Franklin once said "Democracy is like two wolves and a sheep arguing about what they are going to have for lunch" (or something to that effect). These 18th century men were wise and forward thinking enough to understand that in a democracy minorities need to be protected from the tyranny of the majority. Their solution was the Supreme Court which is the highest branch of government in the land - they can overrule state legislature, congress, and even the president himself. Members are appointed for life by the standing president and serve as long as they live, unless they choose to retire, which is rare. The Supreme court can be liberal or conservative, depending on the presidents in power over the decades and the the ability of standing presidents to select new members depending on death or ill health of members, But the important thing is that the Supreme courts decisions are final and can't be over-ruled.

That's why, back in the sixties, that black girl got to attend that school in Alabama, even when the majority said she couldn't.

Sometime in the last decade the few states which still had anti-sodomy laws were forced to strike them do to the Supreme Court judging them to be unconstitutional.

Regarding porn and pornographic literature: There's a history of the Supreme Court overruling local bans. I won't get into the issue of child porn, which I hope has nothing to do with anyone on this site, except to say that recent UK bans on "simulated child porn" including cartoons and such were disallowed by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. American free speech allows all sorts of things reprehensible to most of us, even Fred Phelps who pickets at funerals with signs saying things like things like "God Hates Fags" and and goes on about soldiers burning in hell. He's not allowed to do this in Canada or the UK due to hate speech laws, but the Supreme court upheld his rights of free speech in the US.

What about our minority, the BDSM community? Well there was apparently there was some governmental harassment during the Bush administration years of Insex which intimidated them enough to close the site. Nothing ever went to court though and there are no bans on "violent porn" in the States.

It's an odd country. The United States got all those fundamentalist Christian wackos you were so glad to get rid of back in the puritan days - yet it's illegal to say anything about Jesus in a public (state) school due to constitutional separation of church and state. What a country!

So, to end, the case brought up by the OP is appalling and SHOULD be of concern to people living in the UK which has a violent porn bill in effect. It seems that Canada is following the model of the mother country in this regard. So people in the UK should look at this with concern; people in the US - not so much.

Edited 18 Nov 10, 4:51 PM by ThRobin

"the laws are comoletely different over there and legislation in the USA cannot be used on someone in the UK."

"Worse still, it's American morons, What's it got to do with UK citizens?"

"However noting the general trend with the UK acting as though it's just another American state I think that laws over there could potentially have an impact on us."

"Actually it's Canadian, but I get your point."

"Also the fact I said "noting the general trend with the UK acting as though it's just another American state" which did not in any way mention that we copied EVERY SINGLE LAW THE USA HAS IN PLACE or in fact specify that I was talking about just their law enforcement."

Point being, if you choose to bash Americans, that's fine, but please bash them for things they actually did, not for things that Canadians did.