On the plus side, a cursory Googling shows significant Streisand EffectâŠ
I guess it didnât work.
Fun part, the court published the supposedly offending text in itâs press release:
http://justiz.hamburg.de/oberlandesgericht/6103290/pressemeldung-2016-05-17-olg-01/
Also, they did not ban the text. Only the author is restrained from reciting it at the moment. We all may do so.
Germany needs multiple demonstrationsâŠwith a couple hundred thousand
people repeating the poem.
Just sell them all tshirts
I find it really exhausting to defend a satirist so weak as Boehmerman and a grammar-school humour poem like his. Germany has scores of more poignant, more intelligent critics than him. It would really help to get behind defending him (which is all good and appropriate) if he wasnât such a dupe and his poem wasnât so shitty.
This should lead to an outpouring of insulting poems by hundreds of amateur poets. They canât shoot us all!
It baffles me that people still get this wrong. ErdoÄan wasnât the target of his satire, at least not in terms of the insults themselves, and therefore the supposed âqualityâ of the poem is immaterial. Böhmermann himself has expressed exasperation that people take this poem at face value (âErdoÄan zu beleidigen ist mir zu doof.â â âInsulting ErdoÄan is beneath me.â) and, more importantly, in isolation, disregarding the context he and his sidekick so carefully put it in.
It was an attempt to show what is not possible in Germany. This is of course mildly humiliating for ErdoÄan himself, but the main effect (and, dare I say, the main intent) was to alert Germans to the precise boundaries that freedom of expression in Germany has â up until now I think it is a fair bet that most Germans thought we had âfreedom of speechâ but also some vague âright to not be insultedâ. Böhmermannâs piece has thrown these notions into sharper relief.
TV clown Böhmermann has no capacity of telling the precise boundaries of anything. I have been arrested for saying things in public, and they are nothing Böhmermann has on his radar. Iâm not talking about poetical quality here. Erdogan simply is such an easy target that even a nitwit like B. can vaguely shoot in his direction and still hit.
Some things have for good reason long been illegal.
Other laws are simply old, and do not serve the population.
To ensure they remain relevant and fair, laws should need a legal justification voted on every few decades.
Something shouldnât be illegal today simply because that law was meaningful and useful in 1844.
The US has a Supreme Court for that, what would you suggest for Germany, direct democracy?
in general I like the idea of laws with a âshelf lifeâ - if the parliament does not confirm it after <add number here> years the law is automagically canceled
not sure what youâre trying to say with this comment, constitutional courts are a defining element of all constitutional states
I hope you are aware that the US Supreme Court is pretty wimpy compared to its German counterpart.
The current government is required to evaluate any expired law and all results are public.
Canada has lots of laws that are irrelevant in the 21st century or completely overlap other laws.
Itâs inefficient and potentially dangerous.
Then what are they asking for on top of this?
So are laws, government, democracy, and not having laws, government, and having democracy.
Iâd go one further: it should be possible for an average non-lawyer to know at any moment whether they are likely breaking the law or not.
I donât know how things are in Germany but knowing what little I do about US law, Iâm not even confident our average lawyer can say that with any certainty.
I have more pressing concerns for both legal systems but I think that issue should be addressed.
âTwo Lawyers, Three Opinionsâ works in German exactly as well and is a common saying.
Absolutely!
