[peteretep]

Sure, that's a valid criticism. However -- and as far as I'm aware -- this isn't an issue in any of the other countries, suggesting that this is more a peculiarity of the British system, rather than an inherent feature of not allowing free speech?

[Kalium]

This British peculiarity could perhaps be regarded by some people as one nasty failure mode of free-ish speech.

I would say that once you have free-ish speech, you have incentives for people to find ways to characterize speech they dislike for any reason as on the wrong side of the "ish" lines. The more flexible and privately actionable the enforcement is the more people will seek to find ways to use it for their own gain.

To put it another way, how easy do you want it to be for powerful private citizens or the government to silence anyone they don't like for arbitrary reasons? Before any protests that this can be countered by clear legal drafting, perhaps consider how readily criticism of Israeli policies is cast as anti-Semitic hate speech.

[peteretep]

> This British peculiarity could perhaps be regarded by some people as one nasty failure mode of free-ish speech.

Sure, but the Americans are innovative yo! (cf: Peter Thiel and Gawker)

> how easy do you want it to be for powerful private citizens [...] to silence anyone they don't like for arbitrary reasons

I do not want this, but I feel the press in the UK counter-balance that pretty effectively. Rich people seem to love bringing down other rich people

> how easy do you want it to be for [...] the government to silence anyone they don't like for arbitrary reasons

I feel like Americans hold a uniquely strong distrust of their government. If you're British you just have to suck up the fact that Parliament can pass any bill they like to do whatever the hell they like with a simple majority, but it's been _working ok_ for a few centuries now.

[Kalium]

> I do not want this, but I feel the press in the UK counter-balance that pretty effectively. Rich people seem to love bringing down other rich people

Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the crazy American in this thread.

> I feel like Americans hold a uniquely strong distrust of their government. If you're British you just have to suck up the fact that Parliament can pass any bill they like to do whatever the hell they like with a simple majority, but it's been _working ok_ for a few centuries now.

There's a pretty strong argument that India, Australia, and indeed the US are clear signs that it hasn't been working OK for a few centuries now. All of them learned a few things about what Parliament might get up to when you can't riot under their noses to drive home the objections.

[foldr]

>Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the crazy American in this thread.

Where are you getting the idea that newspapers in the UK have rights that individuals don't?

[Kalium]

Parent said that newspapers counterbalance the potential to use libel law to silence people. This suggests to me that publishers have de facto protections and rights that individuals do not.

I would love to learn that I have been badly misinformed, and it is in no way true that infamously flexible UK libel law is not mostly defended against with a well-funded legal department.

[foldr]

You’ve certainly been misinformed if you think that there is some kind of special free speech protection in the UK that applies only to publishers.

I don’t know of any country in the world where having money and resources doesn’t confer all kinds of advantages. It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a list of fundamental rights which de facto aren’t available poor people in the USA. (Just think of all the people jailed under plea bargains because they couldn’t afford proper legal advice. Plea bargains aren’t a thing in the UK.)

Certainly, you are better able to defend against a libel action if you have a lot of money. But in fact private individuals would rarely be sued for libel unless they were rich, as it otherwise wouldn’t be worth it. The libel laws (which I’m not a fan of) have the largest chilling effect on small to medium sized publications, not on individuals.