Free as in speech

Posted Aug 10, 2006 1:57 UTC (Thu) by sanjoy (guest, #5026)
In reply to: Free Intel i965 graphics drivers released by beoba
Parent article: Free Intel i965 graphics drivers released

So what consequences are allowed?

It's a continuum. More consequences for speaking means less freedom of speech. So it has been a centuries-long battle between those who want to extend the sphere of freedom, by reducing official and private consequences, and those who want to restrict it.

Even in the land of the free, a few laws protect one even from privately generated consequences. For example, the Civil Rights Act 1964 forbids employers from retaliating against employees who protest race-based discrimination in hiring. This issue arose when the American Institute of Physics fired an employee who protested their all-white hiring policy at the editorial level. As a result of a many-year public campaign, with a bit of added force from the Civil Rights Act, the organization settled monetarily and agreed to mend their ways. It's one example of how freedom of speech is extended: slowly and with lots of effort.