(11-24-2018, 07:59 AM)palaisbellevuebz Wrote:

(11-24-2018, 06:34 AM)Belschaft Wrote: Yes - adding "in my opinion" doesn't change anything.

"In my opinion player X has manipulated the election results" is the same thing as "player X has manipulated the election results".

If you are publicly expressing a view on another player you have a responsability to make sure it is fair.

However, nothing should stop an individual from expressing his or her opinion on another indvidual. No one shall be able to sue someone for how they choose to think or what they choose to express. If that is the case, I'm sure people would be so scared of getting sued for defamation, they would not open their mouth and allow themselves to truly say what they think. And when the people refuse to participate, speak up and stand for what they believe in, that's when you know a democracy's collapsing. I would like to use the example of Donald Trump. One could say: "I think he has a very, very bad personality and he's a bad person." Now, Trump may not necessarily be a bad person. But you don't see his people going around filing lawsuits against every single person who said that he's a bad guy. I'd like to quote from former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Lewis Powell who said this in the case of Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.: "Under the First Amendment (freedom of speech) there is no such thing as a false idea... It requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters." I don't want our people to constantly worry whenever they want to say something because they fear they would be sued for defamation. Smear campaigns are a total difference to opinions. 

I think the example you provide is an interesting one because the statement "I think Trump has a very, very bad personality and he's a bad person" should be easily recognizable as an opinionated one, and in that case, there is no standard of what constitutes truth. On the other hand, if I understand correctly, the primary purpose of the currently proposed amendment is as a reaction to events in the recent Local Council reaction, in which one user's online posts were manipulated and taken out of context — a situation that provides a clear standard of what is truthful and what is false or misleading.

Furthermore, in the context of the Local Council election, the matter at hand is direct interference in our region's democratic systems. To use an example from real life, I think very few people would argue that fake news on Facebook, for example, is protected under the First Amendment despite it being a blatant falsehood — I personally haven't heard anyone complaining that social media companies are removing fake news, and pretty much everyone seems to agree that fake news is a problem that needs to be addressed.

That being said, I do understand your concerns. It's one thing to express an opinion about an individual (or group), but it's another to support that opinion with false or misleading "evidence" — the issue that confronts us, perhaps, is whether the difference is significant. Does providing misleading evidence actually significantly increase the effectiveness of a smear campaign? And if not, how much of a distinction should we make in our laws?

The reason I wrote these thoughts as questions is that I am currently undecided; I don't really know what my personal answers are to these questions, and I'm also not really sure how relevant they are. But if they are relevant, I am eager to hear the opinions of others.

(11-23-2018, 11:49 PM)Amerion Wrote:

Quote:(9) Defamation shall be defined as the communication of false or misleading information about an individual to a recipient, for the purposes of damaging the standing of that individual and done so with a reckless disregard for its factual accuracy.

(10) Bribery shall be defined as the receiving or offering of undue patronage by or to any individual in order to influence behavior that the recipient would otherwise not alter.

Noted. I've amended the language to include misleading information. However, I am also partial to specifying that the information must be 'grossly misleading' because how one interprets misleading information is a subjective judgement and it would be better to have a higher bar for such offences.
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Actually, now that I think about it, I think "grossly misleading" would be the wording I prefer, and it should help to prevent ordinary speech from being attacked as defamation.