Does free speech include a right to cause offense? Many thinkers have insisted that it must - but debate has raged for millennia over where the limits to insult can be set.
While some maintain Enlightenment values must include permission to shock, offend and even injure, there is a growing sense that rights must be balanced by responsibilities to one's community, in speech as well as action. And as technology has given each of us an worldwide platform to express any idea, anywhere, the potential for instant, global offense has only grown.
How are we to define how much is too much - and what really distinguishes insult from injury? Edward Stourton speaks to historians, theologians and philosophers to explore the outer limits of free expression.
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Convenient authoring in wiki and the social media that has followed it has created an engaged public.
I'm concerned that with increased abuse of social media will come increased control mandated by governments. How will this control then be extended to unlicensed web servers? Will ad-hoc service to the internet even be legal? Possible? See Expectation of Service
See Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England. wikipedia 