Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/8243678
A Chinese music student was convicted on Thursday of U.S. charges that he harassed an activist who posted fliers at the Berklee College of Music in Boston supporting democracy in China and threatened to report her activities to Chinese law enforcement. A federal jury in Boston found Xiaolei Wu, 25, who sent the activist online messages saying he would chop off her hands and demanding she tear down her “reactionary posters,” guilty at the end of a four-day trial.
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This has nothing to do with “free speech” and people need to stop misusing that concept. Free speech only protects you from the government impairing your speech, not other people or even businesses.
For example, If a mall decided to say “you’re not allowed to say bad things about China on our property” they could eject you from their property if you did say something bad about China. You don’t have the right to free speech on their property. Just like websites can ban you from saying specific things on their sites as well.
This is about threatening other people, you’re not allowed to do that for any reason, speech or otherwise. That’s why this asshat’s conviction is for cyberstalking and threat charges.
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You’re wrong. This has absolutely nothing to do with 1a. The legal right to free speech has nothing to do with other individuals, or other governments.
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They aren’t exercising their right to free speech unless the US government would like them not to say it but is restricted from preventing them.
If the government doesn’t care, it’s just called talking.
If I have a gun but the government doesn’t care, am I not exercising my 2a rights?
The government can’t restrict your right to free speech until you exercise it. They didn’t, which is why this isn’t a 1a case, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t exercising their rights.
No, you are not.
You have a right to not be unduly burdened by the government in owning or procuring a gun.
It does not follow that because the government is not allowed to arbitrarily restrict your ability to own a gun, you therefor have a “right to own a gun”. For example, if you do not own a gun, and everyone who does own a gun doesn’t want to give/sell you a gun, your 2a rights were not violated.
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Putting up a lost cat flyer, and having some random person yell at you for it is not exercising the “right to free speech” (for either party).
You have a right to not be unduly burdened by the government in speech/expression.
It does not follow that because the government is not allowed to arbitrarily restrict your speech/expression, you therefor have a right to speech/expression in all contexts. For example, if you want to go on a rant about your personal beliefs, the government unduly burdened you. However this will not stop the owner of the grocery store from calling the cops to have you trespassed for bothering all of the customers.