ThinkingNectar

I wrote about Baywords just in my previous post. And was pretty eager to try it out and so when to register for an account. The steps were simple.

• Enter a user name
• Enter an email address
• Pick a blog name
• Check email for activation link
• Activate
• Login and you are ready to blog! Hello Mr WordPress.

What surprises me was the lack of any terms and conditions. Any (or lack of) user agreement to read. And to cut the chase short, I registered just to see if moderation is activated for comments on BayWords blogs. And moderation is indeed on.

As in my previous post, I asked:

Will commenting be moderated on Baywords?

If moderation is activated, how will free speech be respected? It really makes me think. Hence I checked out Wikipedia and it reads this:

Freedom of speech is being able to speak freely without censorship. The right to freedom of speech is guaranteed under international law through numerous human-rights instruments, notably under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, although implementation remains lacking in many countries. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes preferred, since the right is not confined to verbal speech but is understood to protect any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country, although the degree of freedom varies greatly. Industrialized countries also have varying approaches to balance freedom with order. For instance, the United States First Amendment theoretically grants absolute freedom, placing the burden upon the state to demonstrate when (if) a limitation of this freedom is necessary. In almost all liberal democracies, it is generally recognized that restrictions should be the exception and free expression the rule; nevertheless, compliance with this principle is often lacking.

That is just the introduction. It makes for a interesting read. But moving on, the coin have 2 sides and it is greatly summarised by a quote on the same Wikipedia entry:

“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.”

–Noam Chomsky

I comprehend it as a stand that without restrictions or control, freedom of speech of one viewpoint will be met by freedom of speech of another viewpoint. The environment hence now could have conflicting ideas and concepts of which the creators of such ideas have to accept exist. The creators have to accept that there are different point of views, not necessary agree with such point of views.

Back to comment moderation. Initially it is my impression that comment moderation will be against
what BayWords stands for. Dwelling a little more, a blog owner can moderate comments on the post, but cannot stop the ideas from appearing on other blogs. Accepting their existent does not mean agreeing with the ideas.

On a side note, the entry have this particular line about Swedish laws:

In Sweden a law called “Hets mot folkgrupp” (“Agitation against an ethnic group”), usually translated to hate speech, denies promotion of racism and homophobia.

Now at least I know there is one out of bound marker.