. . . . . is 60 years old this year. As a group of people who appear to me to be intelligent, rational and not obstinate I would be interested what others think about Article 19 and how this should be upheld in all walks of life. Article 19. 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.
I believe fully in freedom of expression. However, there is a distinction between being guaramteed an outlet for your opinions and other forms of expression, that does not require that privately owned information channels provide a medium for all such expression, The other consideration is that if such expression results in the curtailment of freedom or otherwise brings significant garm to some significant part of the population, there is cause to hold a person responsible for that ecpression, or even to suppress it. For example, child pornography is suppressed in most free countries because the harm resulting from allowing it greatly exceeds any benefit from its expression. Inciting to riot is also not permitted for the same reason. Note: This is a potentially volatile discussion. Any sign of it getting out of hand will result in it immediately getting shut down, with infractions for anyone deliberately provoking flaming. This is a privately managed information channel, and its rules will be enforced.
The child pornogarphy analogy is redundant in this argument. This is because such behaviour is outlawed on other rights of the universal declaration of human rights child and therefore renders such expression of freedom of speech as void due to the illegal nature of the act. And so back to the article: 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. any media would suggest that unless an individual/group is abused then you can challenge the thoughts, perceptions and actions of anyone? Also you cannot be censored regardless of whether a forum is privately owned as long as it is appropriate. If such forums can be censored then surely it would be in breach of the article?
Occording to how the article sounds it would be a breach of it for this form to stop someone from posting an article on the reasons christians should rule the world (Used christans because i am one so I'm allowed ) But who all signed this? Is it like the UN? The UN is rather useless in my opionion, they hold no true power. Why isn't it being enforced in china for the tiwanies (I spelled that horribly)? It seems to me to be another politicle venture of nations to appear to be doing good in the world.
Of course he can. Privately owned property such as this forum doesn't have the obligation to provide free speech. Think about it from the owner's pov: And that's cool, because there is no legal obligation for him to provide anything. Just like malls can limit free speech, websites can too. It's his website, so he can modify content as he wishes to. And outlawing this kind of behavior is just taking away rights from website owners. No one is limiting anyone from expressing their own content in their own website, just as no one is limiting anyone from modifying (banning, modifying posts, even erasing the whole web page) their own content. Just imagine if every forum couldn't legally erase other people's posts! Legally, they wouldn't be able to do auto-prunning to erase old posts to save space and couldn't even delete their websites!. Madness!
The medium in this case would be the Internet. Apart from illegal content, you are free to express your opinions on the Internet. That does not require a content provider,such as this forum, to provide a soapbox for your viewpoint. When you joined this site, you accepted the terms of the site. Among other things, it means you accepted the site's restrictions on content and manner of expression. This site does not govern you. But neither do we promise an unrestricted channel to express anything deemed outside the scope of this site's purpose. If you wish that kind of access, you are free to fund, create and operate your own site. Therefore, neither we nor your government are curtailibg your rights.
