I'm pretty close to a free speech absolutist and I have concerns about Brazil's free speech protections but the reasoning here has little resemblance to legal scholarship and is dangerously close to crackpottery. If the conclusion is correct it should be supported by citations to well regarded Brazilian legal scholars not an amateur anal…
I'm pretty close to a free speech absolutist and I have concerns about Brazil's free speech protections but the reasoning here has little resemblance to legal scholarship and is dangerously close to crackpottery. If the conclusion is correct it should be supported by citations to well regarded Brazilian legal scholars not an amateur analysis of two aspects of Brazilian law without any supporting caselaw.
Even seemingly simple laws often are formulated against interpretational principles and norms and assuming you know what (a foreign language) law must mean absent any precedent, norms of construction or context is how sovereign citizens get into trouble. And, even when a court does make a mistake, every functioning legal system demands appeals via the normal process and harshly punishes outright refusal.
And I don't even see a facial argument that this judge isn't applying Brazilian law correctly. Yah it's speech and the court ordered some of it (seemingly pretty specifically) to be taken down but different countries understand free speech guarantees to cover different things and no one prevents judges from ordering any takedowns (copyright, defamation, blackmail etc) so why assume the judge in Brazil isn't correctly applying Brazilian law?
To be clear, maybe we should call for Brazil to have different laws but my point is just that the weak cites to a few laws plus Musk's assertion it violates Brazilian law isn't convincing nor explain why he can't count on the ruling being overturned on appeal.
The letter is "Against Censorship and Its Academic Supporters", if one finds censorship objectionable then it is reasonable to object to censorship even when the censorship is legal. If the law is not being applied correctly then it is objectionable in every way. It is highly likely X/Twitter's behaviour in Brazil is intended to comply with the law and is guided by professionals rather than "amateurs", although I have to say the idea that citizens cannot know what laws mean is completely absurd and obviously disproved by people obeying them.
The letter is written by Luciano de Castro, I know nothing about him but I have a gut feeling that somehow he might know what this "foreign language" law means and the context around it.
Citizens generally learn what the law prevents not by reading it themselves and guessing but by looking at what courts have ruled and summaries thereof. That's how I know that lethal self-defense is legal even though many of the laws against violence don't even mention it (because it's an interpretational principle that judges read in a necessity defense).
And if the letter merely critisized the state of Brazilian free speech laws fine and if it said that those laws are so bad it's better if X pulls out of Brazil I'd be willing to listen. But it defends Musk ignoring the apparently procedurally valid demands of a Brazilian court of law **as a matter of Brazilian law**.
And unless one has a good argument that the courts in a country are fundamentally illegitimate (eg Russia) we think one usually that the correct response to a valid court order is to comply unless it is so clearly beyond the normal functioning of those institutions as to be fundamentally illegitimate. That's why we expect both political parties in the us to obey SCOTUS deciscions they deeply disagree with.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people obey the vast, vast, vast majority of laws, this would not happen if it was true that nobody knew what the laws meant until a body of case law had been established. Your views are completely absurd.
The third paragraph of the letter argues that the demands are not legal. It starts with the sentence: "Brazil’s law establishes that any judicial order to remove content from a social platform must specify what content is to be removed".
Regardless of the law, it's immoral to assist in politically motivated censorship. Laws and courts are not fundamentally good things in themselves. Some laws can be good, some can be bad.
I'm pretty close to a free speech absolutist and I have concerns about Brazil's free speech protections but the reasoning here has little resemblance to legal scholarship and is dangerously close to crackpottery. If the conclusion is correct it should be supported by citations to well regarded Brazilian legal scholars not an amateur analysis of two aspects of Brazilian law without any supporting caselaw.
Even seemingly simple laws often are formulated against interpretational principles and norms and assuming you know what (a foreign language) law must mean absent any precedent, norms of construction or context is how sovereign citizens get into trouble. And, even when a court does make a mistake, every functioning legal system demands appeals via the normal process and harshly punishes outright refusal.
And I don't even see a facial argument that this judge isn't applying Brazilian law correctly. Yah it's speech and the court ordered some of it (seemingly pretty specifically) to be taken down but different countries understand free speech guarantees to cover different things and no one prevents judges from ordering any takedowns (copyright, defamation, blackmail etc) so why assume the judge in Brazil isn't correctly applying Brazilian law?
To be clear, maybe we should call for Brazil to have different laws but my point is just that the weak cites to a few laws plus Musk's assertion it violates Brazilian law isn't convincing nor explain why he can't count on the ruling being overturned on appeal.
The letter is "Against Censorship and Its Academic Supporters", if one finds censorship objectionable then it is reasonable to object to censorship even when the censorship is legal. If the law is not being applied correctly then it is objectionable in every way. It is highly likely X/Twitter's behaviour in Brazil is intended to comply with the law and is guided by professionals rather than "amateurs", although I have to say the idea that citizens cannot know what laws mean is completely absurd and obviously disproved by people obeying them.
The letter is written by Luciano de Castro, I know nothing about him but I have a gut feeling that somehow he might know what this "foreign language" law means and the context around it.
Citizens generally learn what the law prevents not by reading it themselves and guessing but by looking at what courts have ruled and summaries thereof. That's how I know that lethal self-defense is legal even though many of the laws against violence don't even mention it (because it's an interpretational principle that judges read in a necessity defense).
And if the letter merely critisized the state of Brazilian free speech laws fine and if it said that those laws are so bad it's better if X pulls out of Brazil I'd be willing to listen. But it defends Musk ignoring the apparently procedurally valid demands of a Brazilian court of law **as a matter of Brazilian law**.
And unless one has a good argument that the courts in a country are fundamentally illegitimate (eg Russia) we think one usually that the correct response to a valid court order is to comply unless it is so clearly beyond the normal functioning of those institutions as to be fundamentally illegitimate. That's why we expect both political parties in the us to obey SCOTUS deciscions they deeply disagree with.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people obey the vast, vast, vast majority of laws, this would not happen if it was true that nobody knew what the laws meant until a body of case law had been established. Your views are completely absurd.
The third paragraph of the letter argues that the demands are not legal. It starts with the sentence: "Brazil’s law establishes that any judicial order to remove content from a social platform must specify what content is to be removed".
Regardless of the law, it's immoral to assist in politically motivated censorship. Laws and courts are not fundamentally good things in themselves. Some laws can be good, some can be bad.