Most important 1st Amendment case this decade

Now I would like the gentle reader who has followed the debate from here to "Dubya took away my freedom" then to "Privacy issues II" to reread the first link in its entirety..

The issue raised is that the writer, residing in the US and writing a book intended for distribution in the US, has been sued in a British Court by a person NOT A BRITISH SUBJECT and found culpable.

Whether or not she receives relief in the US court systems, her freedoms have been abridged. As have ours to read and study ideas.
Further..Her freedom to travel is now restricted, SHE CANNOT TRAVEL TO Great Britain without fear of sanction. The decision of the US court may NOT alter that fact.

I hadnt thought I would need to explain it further. I would have thought that folks would understand that freedom of speech in a public forum was at least as important as the DERIVED and ABSTRACTED right to keep private conversations private.

Yes, you read that right... the Privacy issues were NOT addressed by the framers. That they didnt have telephones is not the issue, they STILL had private communications, if only by means of sealed letter by courier.
The framers knew that full well, as they no doubt used such means AND YET THEY DID NOT SPECIFICALLY ADDRESS IT.

So we are dealing then with two levels of freedom of speech.

The right to make a statement no matter how unpopular or offensive to some group or individual, and the right to keep that statement secret.

Now consider that the laws of the United States do NOT protect freedom of speech without restriction. There certain things you may not advocate: the primary one being the violent overthrow of the US. The second being engaging in a conspiracy to commit a felony {itself implying private communication}.

So THEN we come to the regulation of the government to discover such. And that is where the debate evolved.

But it begs the primary issue. If one loses the right to make a public statement that offends the rich and powerful, do we not lose our freedoms?

Further if those freedoms are abridged and the author levied against by a foreign court without jurisdiction, is that not more outrageous?

More so that one of the primary tools of the rich and powerful is the threat of lawsuit, which in the US system inevitably would dampen expression by knowledge that even winning such a case is now prohibitively expensive?

Now tell me again WHY we are so much MORE concerned with what MIGHT happen than what ALREADY HAS HAPPENED!

The FREEDOM OF SPEECH that matters most is the PUBLIC ONE!!!!!