Portal:Freedom of speech Information

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Freedom of speech portal

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that "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".

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". The version of Article 19 in the ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals". ( Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

Golos Truda ( Russian: Голос Труда English: The Voice of Labour) was a Russian-language anarcho-syndicalist newspaper. Founded by working-class Russian expatriates in New York in 1911, Golos Truda shifted to Petrograd during the Russian Revolution in 1917, when its editors took advantage of the general amnesty and right of return for political dissidents. There, the paper integrated itself into the nascent anarcho-syndicalist movement, pronounced the necessity of a social revolution of and by the workers, and situated itself in opposition to the myriad of other left-wing movements. The rise to power of the Bolsheviks marked the turning point for the newspaper however, as the new government enacted increasingly repressive measures against the publication of dissident literature and against anarchist agitation in general, and after a few years of low-profile publishing, the Golos Truda collective was finally expunged by the Stalinist regime in 1929.

More selected articles

More...

General images

The following are images from various freedom of speech-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1First page of John Milton's 1644 edition of Areopagitica, in which he argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643 (from Freedom of speech)
Image 2The Bill of Rights 1689 grants the parliamentary privilege for freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament and is still in effect. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 3 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 4The Newseum's five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 5An "unexpurgated" edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1959) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 6In Panegyricae orationes septem (1596), Henric van Cuyck, a Dutch Bishop, defended the need for censorship and argued that Johannes Gutenberg's printing press had resulted in a world infected by "pernicious lies"—so van Cuyck singled out the Talmud and the Qur'an, and the writings of Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and Erasmus of Rotterdam. (from Freedom of speech)
Image 7 George Orwell statue at the headquarters of the BBC. A defence of free speech in an open society, the wall behind the statue is inscribed with the words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", words from George Orwell's proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945). (from Freedom of speech)
Image 8 De Schreeuw (The Scream) is a memorial commemorating Theo van Gogh and a symbol of the freedom of speech. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 9Protesters exercise freedom of speech to hold a vigil in front of the Zimbabwean Embassy in London, 2005. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 10Members of Westboro Baptist Church (pictured in 2006) have been specifically banned from entering Canada for hate speech. (from Freedom of speech)
Image 11 Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that "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". (from Freedom of speech)
Image 12Orator at Speakers' Corner in London, 1974 (from Freedom of speech)
Image 13 Punk band Visací zámek which composed a popular song "The President Is a Faggot" about Václav Klaus, 2003–2013 Czech President. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 14Orthodox priest Libor Halík with a group of followers. Halík has been chanting daily for over five years against abortion via megaphone in front of a maternity hospital in Brno, Moravia. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 15In Brazil, freedom of assembly and expression are Constitutional rights. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 16Local issues are often the subject of free speech. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 17Title page of Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or List of Prohibited Books, (Venice, 1564) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 18Permanent Free Speech Wall in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. (from Freedom of speech)
Image 19This 1688 edition of Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (1260) was censored according to the Index Librorum Expurgatorum of 1707, which listed the specific passages of books already in circulation that required censorship (from Freedom of speech)
Image 20Countries with laws against Holocaust denial (from Freedom of speech)
Image 21The Free Speech Flag was created during the AACS encryption key controversy as "a symbol to show support for personal freedoms". (from Freedom of speech)
Image 22 Charitable organizations can use the freedom of speech to campaign and lobby government ministers. (from Freedom of speech by country)

News

Freedom of speech on Wikinews

Selected biography

Judith Fingeret Krug (March 15, 1940 – April 11, 2009) was an American librarian, supporter of freedom of speech, and prominent critic against censorship. Krug became Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association in 1967. In 1969, she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation as its Executive Director. Krug co-founded Banned Books Week in 1982. She coordinated the effort against the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which was the first trial by the United States Congress at a form of censorship of speech on the Internet. Krug strongly opposed the notion that libraries ought to censor the material that they provide to patrons. She supported laws and policies protecting the confidentiality of library use records. When the United States Department of Justice used the authority of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 to conduct searches of what once were confidential library databases, Krug raised public outcry against this activity by the government. In 2003, she was the leader of the initiative to challenge the constitutionality of the Children's Internet Protection Act. Her efforts led to a partial victory; the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the law was constitutional, however computers at the library could have filtering software turned off if requested to do so by an adult guardian. Krug warned that the same filters used to censor Internet pornography from children were not perfect and risked blocking educational information about social matters, sexuality, and healthcare.

More selected biographies

More...

Did you know...

... that Ludvig Meyer (pictured), the defender of writer Hans Jæger during the high-profile censorship case in 1886, later became the leader of the Norwegian Labour Party?
... that due to widespread censorship and control of media in the Eastern Bloc, underground distribution of clandestine information became common?
... that human rights activist Ayse Nur Zarakolu, an Amnesty International " prisoner of conscience", was arrested 30 times and jailed four for violating censorship laws in Turkey?

More did you know facts

More...

Selected quote

“

Proponents of using government authority to censor certain undesirable images and comments on the airwaves resort to the claim that the airways belong to all the people, and therefore it's the government's responsibility to protect them. The mistake of never having privatized the radio and TV airwaves does not justify ignoring the first amendment mandate that "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech." When everyone owns something, in reality nobody owns it. Control then occurs merely by the whims of the politicians in power. From the very start, licensing of radio and TV frequencies invited government censorship that is no less threatening than that found in totalitarian societies.

”

— Ron Paul, Congressional Record, " An Indecent Attack on the First Amendment", (March 10, 2004).

More selected quotes

More...

Related portals

In this month

9 May 1943 – Birth of Kiyoshi Kuromiya in an internment camp; he was a leader in the struggle to maintain freedom of speech on the Internet, participating in the successful lawsuit against the Communications Decency Act
12 May 2011 – PROTECT IP Act introduced in the United States Senate by Patrick Leahy
14 May 1940 – Death of Emma Goldman (pictured) an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches
20 May 2010 – Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, held in support of free speech and freedom of artistic expression of those threatened with violence for drawing representations of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad

More anniversaries...

Subcategories

Select [►] to view subcategories

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech by country

Freedom of speech by continent

Blacklisting

Books about freedom of speech

Censorship

Encryption debate

Free speech activists

Free speech case law

Pirate parties

Speech crimes

Recognized content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot ( talk · contribs). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{ WikiProject Freedom of speech}}) or categorized correctly. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.