XKCD Doesn’t Understand Free Speech — or The Difference between Legal and Moral Rights

Fans of censorship are fond of this XKCD:

The mouseover text for that XKCD: “I can’t remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it’s not literally illegal to express.”

Each panel is wrong, and so is the mouseover.

Panel One: The statement only refers to the legal right of free speech, and it’s objectively wrong. Every country can arrest you for what you say. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden will happily assure you that the US government has that power, and the Pirate Party will add that you can be arrested for sharing things corporations claim through copyright, trademark, or patent law. The list of limitations to legal free speech in the US is long.

But the difference between what’s legal and what’s right matters. I have a legal right to try to silence anyone I want to, but I have a moral obligation to support everyone’s right to speak, no matter how much I disagree with them.

The second problem with the first panel? It ignores private censorship. The ACLU notes:

Censorship, the suppression of…