[ghda]

This has always struck me as a weird sort of edge case, because the hypothetical situation is pretty disconnected from all the other situations where people might seek restrictions on free speech that it doesn’t really matter which way I go.

If I say that yes, I suppose we can carve out some sort of exception for people who directly cause harm to life and limb by falsely proclaiming the existence of immediate dangers in crowded areas, then this doesn’t seem like a slippery slope — I am not forced to then admit we should also start censoring anything else outside that very narrow category.

If, on the other hand, I say that free speech should apply even to those shouting fire in a crowded theatre, am I worried that this is going to suddenly become a major danger? Are psychopathic pranksters going to start causing fatal stampedes at every opening night? No, because it’s not something that actually happens; anyone shouting fire in a crowded theatre would probably just get shushed and escorted out by ushers; at worst they’d provoke an orderly evacuation through the plentiful emergency exits that theatres tend to have nowadays.

So I guess I’ll go for the second option — refuse to carve out the exception and accept the risk of the occasional unnecessary evacuation.

There are other small and well established edge-case restrictions on free speech I am willing to accept, mind you, eg market manipulation or giving false statements to police. But I don’t see the classic fire-in-theatre one as being relevant to anything.

[ConceptJunkie]

> This has always struck me as a weird sort of edge case,

Actually, it's not if you look at it a different way. We have Free Speech in the U.S.A., but there are many instances where it's illegal (and rightly so) to lie. You can't lie about your finances to the IRS. You can't lie in court when under oath. You can't ruin someone's reputation by lying about him (i.e., slander or libel).

And you can't lie about there being a fire in a theater.

[rhizome]

There are other small and well established edge-case restrictions on free speech I am willing to accept, mind you, eg market manipulation or giving false statements to police. But I don’t see the classic fire-in-theatre one as being relevant to anything.

This contradicts the point you were making before, which I was responding to, where no agency is qualified to establish limits, so I guess this part of the thread is over.

HOWEVER

refuse to carve out the exception and accept the risk of the occasional unnecessary evacuation

You're still hung up on theaters, not to mention a whole whack of cherry-picked hyper-specific scenarios. Look into the Hillsborough Disaster some time. Or here's an on-point example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster ...would that be no fault of anybody in the free-speech society you are advocating? Maybe pulling a fire alarm would have to be established as a form of speech first, but I bet that could be done.

[Dylan16807]

> This contradicts the point you were making before

No it doesn't, you don't need an agency butting in case-by-case to have specific exclusions.

> Hillsborough Disaster

Too many people, bad management of the crowd, how is this relevant to speech at all?

> Italian Hall disaster

I think it's fair to blame the design of the building and overcrowding here. Blaming the person that yelled fire is good for vengeance but not very good for safety and accident-prevention.