Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.
Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". The version of Article 19 in the ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of national security or public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals". (Full article...)
Odex's actions against file sharing were legal actions against Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and their subscribers in Singapore by Odex, a Singapore-based company that virtually distributes sub-licensed Japaneseanime. From early 2007 to January 2008 Odex took action against anyone who had downloaded anime through BitTorrent for alleged copyright infringement. Odex tracked their IP addresses without their consent and sought subpoenas to compel the ISPs to disclose the personal details of these subscribers. After rulings from the Subordinate Courts, Odex took personal data from affected ISPs and sent letters demanding payment in place of litigation. More than a third of the individuals contacted by Odex opted to settle out of court for at least S$3,000 (US$2,000) to S$5,000 (US$4,000) each. The Singaporean anime community considered Odex's actions to be controversial, sudden, and heavy-handed—especially when it was discovered that the youngest person threatened was nine years old. In response, Odex dropped its pay-or-be-sued letter approach in favor of cease-and-desist emails to downloaders. Odex halted active enforcement after its third subpoena was rejected by the courts and lost a lawsuit when trying to obtain customer data from another ISP. In January 2008, Odex appealed the decision, and the High Court of Singapore ruled that one ISP was required to release data, but only directly to Japanese anime studios. Subsequently, these studios started their own legal actions against Singaporean downloaders. Some observers predicted that the High Court's decision would set a precedent for online privacy in Singapore by making it more difficult for copyright licensees to take legal action against downloading. The case raised issues of individual privacy, intellectual property, and free use of the Internet. Odex's actions attracted widespread criticism in Singapore and international attention and press coverage, which coincided with similar actions against consumer file sharing of music in the United States.
Image 10Orthodox priest Libor Halík with a group of followers. Halík has been chanting daily for over five years against abortion via megaphone in front of a maternity hospital in Brno, Moravia. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 11Restriction of apostasy by country (2020) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 16Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (from Freedom of speech)
Image 17A map of countries which have lèse-majesté laws as of January 2023 (from Freedom of speech)
Image 27George Orwell statue at the headquarters of the BBC. A defence of free speech in an open society, the wall behind the statue is inscribed with the words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", words from George Orwell's proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945). (from Freedom of speech)
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as, "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. Lawrence is now valued by many as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature.
Money is not speech, it is money. But the expenditure of money enables speech, and that expenditure is often necessary to communicate a message, particularly in a political context. A law that forbade the expenditure of money to communicate could effectively suppress the message.
25 February 2005 – Harriet Freezerring Emancipation Prize awarded to Ayaan Hirsi Ali(pictured) by Cisca Dresselhuys, editor of the feminist magazine Opzij
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