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April 19, 2007
The End of Free Speech
Turns out that the Devil was right. The European Union is going to make Holocaust denial a criminal offense. Here's the FT and here's the Devil.
Still to be voted on by Ministers and the the Parliament but there's little doubt that it'll go through in some form.
And yes, it includes blogs, whether hosted in the territory or hosted outside but by someone within. But don't worry about speech being criminalised we're all safe:
The text expressly upholds countries’ constitutional traditions relating to the freedom of expression.
As free speech is something of a recent innovation here (1750s or so perhaps?) then that "tradition" seems less of a protection than you might think.
April 19, 2007 in European Union | Permalink
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Comments
Hmmn. Likely to be illegal. The ECJ only upheld the Holocaust denial laws in Germany and Austria for "special factors" regarding their particular er.. issue.. with Nazis. This doesn't hold for other countries.
The ECJ is, just to be clear, not part of the EU.
Posted by: Kay Tie | Apr 19, 2007 9:15:36 AM
The ECJ is part of the EU, it is the European Court of Human Rights that isn't.
Posted by: chris strange | Apr 19, 2007 5:46:02 PM
