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Comment by deadmik3 | Hacker News Reader

"In Australia, where I spoke, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to do or say anything likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate,” providing alarming latitude in the restriction of free speech."

I really find it shocking that there are laws regarding supposed hate speech with such subjective terms as "likely to offend".

As a registered democrat, this author really captured my feelings about the left. It used to make so much sense, let everyone do what they want, that's being liberal. Now the radical minority is getting louder and more persuasive to younger generations as they dress up these ideas in comedy and media.

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The author seems to be pulling things out of context in bad faith. It is unlawful, though not a criminal offense, in Australia to publicly say things likely to offend people of a different race, based on their racial group, provided the statements are not meant "(a) in the performance, exhibition or distribution of an artistic work; or (b) in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest; or (c) in making or publishing: (i) a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest; or (ii) a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment." (as explained in 18D).

I disagree, the law does provide these exceptions but I (and presumably the author) don't find these exceptions to be comprehensive enough to render the unqualified statement of the author "out of context".

How is a person supposed to prove that their views are "fair and accurate" or a "fair comment" and a "genuine belief"? These are highly subjective, and none of them helped Andrew Bolt, a reporter who was sued under these laws.

Note that you won't even grant that the author is quoting the law in good faith. How is a person supposed to show that their "racist" views are held in good faith?

What does "unlawful, but not a criminal offense" mean?

> What does "unlawful, but not a criminal offense" mean?

Generally, that phrasing would describe civil wrongs. Criminal law isn't the whole of the law.

While I agree with you that such a law is poorly constructed and should be fixed, that it exists is not worrying to me at all.

Until recently, it was legal in many places to rape your wife. It is still currently legal to release pollution into the atmosphere without paying for its ecological costs. There are a lot of bad laws on the books, and even more that were on the books 50 years ago. And we're ok. We figured it out.

If thousands of people start getting put in jail for offending folks, I'll get a little more worried. And we'll fix it.

What bothers me is that you are spending energy worrying about a law that may, theoretically, be misused in the future when there are people in prison right now because of bad laws that have been on the books for a long time.

You're lucky that you are in such a comfortable position that you can worry about hypothetical future prosecutions, but I might suggest using that privilege to help people who are already in the position that concerns you.

The reason why people worry about these laws is because of the trajectory.

Historically, freedom of speech was pretty much not a thing, and laws made all kinds of offensive speech (usually offensive to those in power) illegal.

For a while, we had a strong trend of getting rid of such laws and getting more free speech. Freedom of speech, including all kinds of offensive speech, was a key tenet of humanism, and associated social and political advances.

But now the trend is in the other direction. As time goes by, our societies acquire more laws regulating speech, compared to where they were even a few decades ago.

I just can't worry about "it'll-be-bad-later-in-the-trajectory" problems when there are "it's-bad-right-now" problems ready to solve.

Many of the "it's bad right now" problems were started because at some point in the past someone was trying to solve a different "it's bad right now" problem without minding the consequences. Just to give an example, a "tough on crime" crackdown back in 90s to deal with a genuine crime wave, resulting in mass incarceration, especially of non-whites.

To me, the very concept of "hate speech" seems Orwellian.

How so? Some of the time it will naturally arise by combining an adjective with a noun. I mean, there really are people out there communicating their hate for other people.

As a legal concept it is clearly more fraught.

Presumably the legal concept is what he was referring to.

I made my comment because the very concept of made me skeptical of that. "The very concept" is a different meaning than "the legal concept".

> I really find it shocking that there are laws regarding supposed hate speech with such subjective terms

I find it shocking that you're shocked that hate speech is being defined exactly as its proponents meant it to be.

And who gets to be the judge of what's offensive anyway? If I were the judge, all kinds of speech would be illegal because I find it offensive: anyone saying anything good about Windows 10 or iPhones, for instance, would be locked up, because that offends me! :-) I had a coworker years ago who I overheard talking to another coworker, and he claimed that he was "offended" by gay marriage and any kind of obvious expression of homosexuality. I, personally, was extremely offended at having to look at him, because he was so fat.

So how do you enforce such a vague law anyway?

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