

How The EFF Lost Its Way By Defending Hate Mongers And Tunnel Rats - vijayr
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/16/how-the-eff-lost-its-way-by-defending-hate-mongers-and-tunnel-rats/

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yummyfajitas
This article completely misses the point. If "Tunnel Rat" made death threats,
that's illegal and a matter for the police to deal with.

The EFF is opposed to _prior restraint_ of free speech: they are shutting down
the entire website (including whistleblower documents about Apex Tech) and
preventing Tunnel Rat from speaking in the future just in case he does
something illegal.

People who want to attack free speech will start with racists and
pornogrophers. Unfortunately, to defend free speech, those are the people the
EFF needs to defend.

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cduan
> Kurt would not respond to the substance of what I asked. The jist of his
> response: “A court order should not shut down any website unless the
> entirety was not protected speech. While a ‘true threat’ is not protected
> speech, there are many views which are protected, even if repugnant”.

Forgive me if I misunderstood, but Kurt's response was perfectly apt. The
article's author tried to compare a blog with a single unprotected post to a
website entirely filled with direct calls to violence.

Kurt's response distinguishes these two cases. Shutting down an entire blog
due to one post is different from shutting down a website filled entirely with
unprotected material.

