Twitter won't unmask racist Frenchie unless US judge says so

Re: People have opinions, it's not a crime.

Racist remarks are not opinion, they're an offence. You shouldn't be allowed to get away with it online any more than your should in public.

That's the whole point. The internet is not "in public". You have to decide what to read, and you can turn it off. It is of course possible that the complainants were forced to use Twitter and follow specific people, in which case they should sue whomever is forcing them. In any case, this all has nothing to do with racism or Twitter, and everything to do with self-righteousness.

Re: People have opinions, it's not a crime.

"Racist remarks are not opinion, they're an offence. You shouldn't be allowed to get away with it online any more than your should in public."

But we all have EVERY RIGHT to voice our own thoughts and opinions, no matter how vile we may think they are. I would defend that right, even if I was being defamed. Can't have it both ways.

Shufflemoomin : @Re: People have opinions, it's not a crime.

Wrote - "Racist remarks are not opinion, they're an offence."

Then it becomes a matter of opinion what is a racist remark. Many fanatics demand that anything they do not agree with is racist - if there is a non-white person in the scene in any function whatsoever, which these days in the UK is just about everywhere.

Someone in my trade union (Unison) criticised the leadership committee as "Like the three wise monkeys - seeing, hearing and saying no evil" - a pretty standard bit of political flak and a well-used phrase one would have thought. But the committee contained one black member who complained that this remark was "racist" and extracted a formal apoplogy from the critic!

One wonders why it was the black member who raised the complaint.

Re: People have opinions, it's not a crime: Shufflemoomin

You are quite correct. People should indeed be able to speak their opinions in public just as easily as they can online. Anything else is an illegitimate restriction on free speech.

No-one has a right not to be offended.

Re: People have opinions, it's not a crime. @Ben Tasker

The point about the Daily Mail undermines your opening paragraph. All it takes is one Daily Mail journalist to get "offended" and suddenly Offcom has hundreds of complaints by people who never witnessed the original broadcast or weren't offended until the Mail told them they should be.

My personal position is that people have a right to offend, but not to incite hatred of violence.

@Arclight

You and others are quite missing the point. Twitter is by definition the ULTIMATE opt-in, non-public forum. You MUST sign up for a twitter account. After that your MUST sign up to receive the allegedly offensive material. Opt out at either point and there IS no offense.

@Roadkill

Nits:

The imperial presidency started well before FDR. Some trace the socialist problem to Wilson, others to the other Roosevelt, some even to Lincoln. You are correct that by FDR it was certainly under way, and only committed socialist/communists deny it. If you are sticking strictly with "imperial" that goes back to at least Andrew Jackson who used the office to destroy the National Bank (perhaps a good thing, perhaps not) in defiance of Congress.

The drone issue is a mixed bag. If the American is in foreign territory and known to be helping the enemy, that is engaged in subversion against the US, I have no problem dropping a drone on him. The presumption of innocence only goes so far, and it's right out the window when war starts.

Presidents have ALWAYS had the power to suspend habeas corpus. Washington himself suspended it during the Whiskey Rebellion, which he put down with US troops. Moreover, this is an assertion of suspending habeus corpus for foreign agents, a claim I find specious at best. He isn't routinely suspending it for US citizens who aren't known to be acting as foreign agents.

The Constitution also allows for the creation of "other courts" which is essentially what the national security letter system is. It may be being used to liberally, but that is an issue separate from the authority of Congress to create such an alternate system.

I concur that executive orders have been used too much, and the example you site is particularly egregious. I will note however that progressives/socialists/communists have long been at work undermining that right and the courts have generally supported this. The history goes all the way back to Miller, a case that if a lower court today were to treat the defense the way SCOTUS treated the defense in Miller, the presiding judge would be subject to a STERN rebuke and even possibly disciplinary action from the Bar. Such is the way of dictators and their sycophants who will rule when a free people refuse to hold their government accountable. We failed miserably on that count in the last election.

Re: "We adhere to the laws of the countries in which we operate."

They also have fat ***ish lawyers.

Re: Volte-face

Anonymous Coward, would you still consider the publisher to be operating in the USA if the US companies’ advertising were paid for in euro rather than dollars? What if it were paid for in yen? What if the US companies were non-profit charities, and the publisher included their advertising in the magazine gratis?

I agree that publishing a magazine is generally analogous to publishing a Web site, but I disagree that that example demonstrates operating in the USA. If the acquisition of an overseas customer were sufficient to consider a company to be operating in the customer’s country, then that company’s operations would be subject to corporate taxation not only where their products are manufactured, but also in every country where they have customers. Since Fromage et Vin would not be bound to file corporate tax returns in the USA solely because they acquired their first US subscriber, that wouldn’t be sufficient to be considered as operating in the USA.