It is my general view that learning things is a strong link opportunity, not a weak link problem. When I first put the effort to prove and spread the word of fraud in the online poker industry (subsequently sparking global media coverage, a couple of books and even a movie starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake) it was against the “official” word being spread by corporations and their media partners. They falsely claimed that the alleged cheater was just getting lucky – so I set out to prove they were wrong by doing the maths to prove them wrong. It was my general view that if you spread more information, the truth will win out. That remains my view today.

If you see something that you think is wrong in the world – whether you think it is the wrong facts, the wrong morals, or the wrong tastes – I think the best cure is usually to communicate why it is wrong. In my experience, persuasion is more effective than force. Typically, using Government force to ban it is unhelpful.

There are, of course, some exceptions – there are some situations where I think that Government force can be used against some certain forms of speech. That is, I do think some forms of speech should be banned. This list below is not a descriptive list of what the law currently is (since that varies across different jurisdictions) and this is obviously not legal advice. Rather, this is an outline of the main categories of speech which I think can or should reasonably be prohibited by Government force.

I don’t really think that any of these things are particularly controversial, but it is a big world, and I’m sure some people disagree.

Obscenity

I think it is morally wrong to publish obscene material. This includes publishing adult material to children (having movie/TV classification ratings is reasonable!) but I think some obscene things should even be banned from being distributed to consenting adults. Not only should it be illegal to produce child sexual material (because a child cannot consent to such abuses) but it should be illegal to spread such child sexual material because it is obscene. I think some other forms of abusive sexual material should be similarly prohibited by Government force.

Defamation

Our Western Anglo civilisation has long-standing prohibitions against defamation. The exact line will vary by jurisdiction, and will typically give more lenience to someone criticising a public official, but it should, of course, be illegal to defame someone.

Fraud

You can’t defraud someone, and then claim that you were just exercising your free speech rights to say things that happened to be untrue. That’s not right, and fraudsters should be prosecuted for the harm they cause without a right to claim that they were merely exercising their free speech.

Incitement and true threats

It should continue to be illegal to incite a crowd to imminent illegal action (eg, whipping up a mob to start a riot) and to make genuine physical threats to someone. If you go up to someone and tell them in a convincing manner that you’re about to punch them in the face, you should be prosecuted for such behaviour. I don’t think this is a form of permissible speech.

Speech Integral to Criminal Conduct

You can’t use free speech protections to create a cartel. You don’t have a free speech right to agree with someone to form a conspiracy to murder someone. You shouldn’t harass and vilify someone: you can’t phone someone 62 times in a day and say that you were just trying to speak freely. Such behaviour where speech causes – or is part of – criminal activities should remain illegal.

In some cases, such speech can cause crimes against individuals (for example, a conspiracy to murder an individual) or cause crimes against groups (for example, a conspiracy to perpetrate a genocide).

Associated Activities

Clearly, I think that people have a general right to freedom of speech, and to protest, and so on. But such a right does not extend to other activities beyond speech, such as vandalism, and trespass, and so on.