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Comment by rtsil | Hacker News Reader

In France specifically, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (which is an integral part of the Constitution), defines freedom as doing anything which does not harm others, and that the Law determines the limits of a freedom.

Which means Freedom (including of Speech) in its very conception is more bounded that the US notion of Free Speech (which, even though also limited, is less restrictive).

However, Free Speech based on the First Amendment only applies to the individual's relations with the State. A private employer in the US can fire an employee for saying something that doesn't reflect the values of the company, even if that speech was lawful. In France (and I assume most Freedom of Speech countries), the constitutional protection applies even with private entities and an employee cannot be fired for a lawful speech. .

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>In France specifically, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (which is an integral part of the Constitution), defines freedom as doing anything which does not harm others, and that the Law determines the limits of a freedom.

But the whole point of freedom of speech is for situations where it does "harm others". If nobody has a problem with your speech, then you don't need laws to protect it. The protection is only useful if speech comes into conflict with someone.

Freedom of speech doesn't stop where somebody else's rights begin, it starts there. There is no need for freedom of speech before that.

And the entire point of constitutional rights is that they should make the society better. There is no inherent value in abstract principles.

Broadly speaking, freedom of speech can mean two roughly orthogonal things:

1. Lack of government censorship.

2. Freedom of speech as an outcome: a society where people can speak their minds without excessive consequences.

Sense 2 is inherently vague and can't be regulated, as people won't agree on when the consequences are excessive. But it's usually what people want when they care about the freedom of speech.

The two senses are sometimes opposed. If you say something other people find unpleasant and a million people decide to ruin your life, it's clearly against freedom of speech in sense 2. But if you have laws against such mob justice, they can easily violate freedom of speech in sense 1.

Freedom of speech in sense 2 is more about culture than government regulations. If you have a highly polarized society, you can't have freedom of speech in that sense.

The "harm" is in relation to other people's constitutional freedoms and rights. Freedom of speech isn't inherently superior to, say, freedom of assembly, freedom of belief, the right to safety in one's person and one's properties, the right to vote, and so on...

It's a question of value: either you think Freedom of Speech is the highest form of freedom and right that one can hold, and all the other freedoms must come second, or that all freedom and rights are equal, and the role of the Constitution and the law is to find a balance between those.

> defines freedom as doing anything which does not harm others

Who decides if someone is harmed? Did I really harm someone if I called them a homophobic slur? Can I say that someone harmed me if the mispronounce my name?

The lawmakers decide. As I quoted, "the Law determines the limits of a freedom."

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