Tuesday, January 07, 2003 :::
 
Next time you get to feeling like Berkeley is one of those places where it's unfortunate that people are so outspoken, consider the alternative.

This German man is facing three years in jail for a statement he made on the internet. The statement was thus:

"Yes, Congratulations to the murderers of 11.09.02.... Good, that on 11.09 a couple of real men (!) found the courage to show the evil ones, the USA how it really is!"

Ok, not very nice, sure. Downright anti-American, even. But Germany has a law against "glorifying a criminal act", which I'd assume is to prevent people from glorifying Hitler and the Holocaust. The man, Holger Voss, claims that the statement was meant to be "ironic", and was a response to someone else's post. Free speech is such a dangerous thing, but it's the courts that will decide whether it's acceptable, and whether this individual will face jail for his comments. Some things to think about:

Would these comments be acceptable if they were made in America?
How would it be different if this was, say, shouted on the street as opposed to posted on the Internet?
Was the statement really ironic? Does it matter? If it was, does that make it ok?
How does German law differ from American law in terms of free speech? Obviously, there's no First Ammendment in Germany, but I'd imagine there would be some similarities.

::: posted by Andrewski at 3:53 PM