funkshen
dvds didnt exist in 1991
you are free to speak as you wish. your speech does not require prior approval by some arbitrary authority who may preclude it from the public domain (i.e. censorship)I don't understand your distinction here
the corollary to this is that
1) you are, to an extant, liable under civil law for the consequences of your speech insofar as they are defamatory
2) you are, to an extant, liable under criminal law for your speech insofar that it is a breach of the criminal code (e.g. if it is an assault against the state, or the personal integrity of the body (mind?) upheld by the state)
the point is not that law is irrelevant to free speech (or that being able to freely speak is ipso facto free speech). rather, i would say that insofar as any party to a conflict that believes in the legitimacy of civil and criminal codes of law, and are never actually forbidden to speak a thought (but rather may be punished after the fact), they are free to speak. this means that free speech does not imply freedom to verbally harass or abuse, or to defame
given what i have written above, this is patently false. you are not free to kill someone. any indication of such a desire will be met with preventative measures by law enforcement. but to indicate that you might, in the future, defame someone is not a crime. i.e. there is no such thing as conspiracy to defame. there is conspiracy to murder.But it was limited by coercion. You are free to kill someone, and free to suffer the consequence. That consequence is incarceration by the state; that is coercion by fear of said incarceration. While this is a diluted example the same principle applies.
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