This is also free speech

I was really unsatisfied about what I'd written about the Danish cartoons. I felt it didn't explain why I felt the way I did, and didn't tease out the important issues. So here's my attempt to explain where I stand . Like I already said I don't have a clue what's going on in the wider conflict, and lacking in knowledge I'm trying to refrain from commenting.

I should make something clear straight up: I don't think we have free speech when speech is something that can be bought and sold. But I still want to examine censorship, and the way it operates.

The first distinction I'd like to make is between a companies and people. I don't actually believe that companies should have the rights of people (which isn't surprising - I don't believe they should have any rights, because I think they shouldn't exist). Howard Zinn is the expert in all this, but the idea that companies should have all the rights of people was created about 150 years ago, because it suited the needs of capitalism.

The most important way corporations are different from people is that corporations need to return a profit, and every decision they make must be contribute towards this goal to create a dividend. This means that in the press all sorts of censorship takes place in order to ensure that this profit continues. I'm willing to bet that the reason the Dominion Post and the Press apologised for printing those cartoons and promised they weren't going to do it again didn't have anything to do with any actual people, but was because our exporters were getting pissed. Fonterra and the meat-board were not happy, and they have a more direct line to The Dominion Post than you or me. Any media that is beholden to their advertisers, grandstanding about free speech leaves a bad taste in their mouth.

I do believe that media should be free from government censorship. Mostly for lack of a better model, than because I think it's standing up for freedom of speech, because it's not.

Censorship by non-state forces is a different matter. Now non-state forces is a pretty wide category, but the first point I'd like to make is that for any kind of censorship to have effect those trying to censor you must have some kind of power over you.

I could get fired for writing this blog if I worked in a government department, or quite a lot of other jobs (not the one I've got though, luckily). That is censorship.

I'm not sure a whole lot of people being angry at you, or even burning your countries embassy on the other side of the world, is censorship. People in Pakistan have no power over the media in Denmark, and whatever power they have, the consequences won't be on the Danish media.