Exercising Freedom of Speech is Like Circulating Child Porn

In other news, twitter is now a respectable news institution with the need to uphold truth and justice and not, as most people thought, a gossip-mill for people who have too much time on their hands to post inane comments about what they just had for lunch.

The Lord Chief Justice has said recently that there need to be stricter controls on the internet and ways of punishing those who spread lies. He compared those who spread lies on the internet with people who circulate child pornography. He is of course referring to the injunction placed on a premiership footballer surrounding issues regarding a possible blackmailing by ex-Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas. Ironic really that a Big Brother contestant is involved during an attempt by the state to shut down freedom of speech. According to the judge, comments on twitter by numerous people revealing the identity of the footballer are a terrible travesty of justice. That this sleazeball can say this while keeping a straight face as he tries to legally uphold the process of keeping the press and general public gagged regarding things it would be slightly uncomfortable to talk about would be comedic if he wasn't the Lord Chief Justice and in charge of actually making and upholding the law.

Give people the right to say what they want? Preposterous!

I could imagine this type of thing being said by some crazy right-wing bloke with a skinhead and more tattoos than teeth, but from the guy in the top position of authority amongst the judicial system? To use as ludicrously loose an analogy as the chief justice himself, for him to be supporting the gagging of free speech is like the head of the green party supporting National Burn Coal for Fun Week, or like a Yorkshireman supporting an alcohol ban.

The problem I have with this is that laws already exist to stop newspapers and media sources from publishing lies about people through the libel and slander laws. What injunctions implicitly support is the banning of the media from reporting on things that are perfectly true. When the chief justice says he thinks people on twitter spreading lies are terrible criminals, what he actually means is that he doesn't like people on twitter saying the complete truth about things he doesn't want people to talk about. If people on twitter were lying and gossiping, it wouldn't be unusual anyway. The average twitter user has the wit and intelligence of a mop, and I wouldn't trust the writings of anyone on a site which has the primary purpose of allowing people to find out what Justine Bieber ate for breakfast. Twitter is not a news source, it is people talking about whatever they want in a small amount of words. To ban people from gossiping on twitter is the same as banning gossip on the street or in the pub. And would anyone want to live in a world where the pub isn't a den of obscene lies and fanciful gossip?

An overpaid, overexposed  footballer being bribed over
 their seedy love life? Who'd have guessed?

Not that I personally think it is right to stop even news and other reputable sources from commenting on events, especially as libel and slander cases exist for the sole purpose of stopping them from fabricating information regarding events and people. Injunctions are treading on the toes of the staple elements of freedom: freedom of press and freedom of speech. I might wish that the complete moron I'm talking to would stop expressing their love of homoeopathic remedies and how traditional medicine is a corporate lie machine built to keep people oppressed, but they have the right to say that, just as I have the right to tell them where to shove their bottle of diluted lavender oil. To say that traditional medicine doesn't work is pretty much provably wrong, and under the kind of world the lord chief justice seems to suggest would be clapped in irons and imprisoned. As much as that idea holds some appeal, as the world would be a happier place without alternative medicine believers clogging it up, I respect their right to be a free and living idiot. But for a newspaper to post the actual news about a court hearing which is actually going to happen is apparently illegal in this day and age.

The most worrying thing is that there aren't more people up in arms over this. In America, people get angry if you even suggest that it might be a good idea not to let uneducated rednecks keep enough weapons to form a small army. Yet in Britain the freedom of press is suppressed and the head of our legal system suggests banning idle gossip online and we struggle to raise a "meh". Admittedly, it's probably because everyone is too busy tweeting about it.