Portal:Freedom of speech

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Freedom of speech portal

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice". The version of Article 19 in the ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or the protection of national security or public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals". (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read "tweets", which are text messages limited to 140 characters. Registered users can read and post tweets but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS, or mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has offices in New York City, Boston, San Antonio and Detroit. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and by July 2006, the site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 500 million registered users in 2012, who posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day. Twitter is now one of the ten most visited websites, and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."

More selected articles

More...

General images

The following are images from various freedom of speech-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1George Orwell statue at the headquarters of the BBC. A defence of free speech in an open society, the wall behind the statue is inscribed with the words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", words from George Orwell's proposed preface to Animal Farm (1945). (from Freedom of speech)
Image 2First page of John Milton's 1644 edition of Areopagitica, in which he argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643 (from Freedom of speech)
Image 3Orthodox priest Libor Halík with a group of followers. Halík has been chanting daily for over five years against abortion via megaphone in front of a maternity hospital in Brno, Moravia. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 4In Panegyricae orationes septem (1596), Henric van Cuyck, a Dutch Bishop, defended the need for censorship and argued that Johannes Gutenberg's printing press had resulted in a world infected by "pernicious lies"—so van Cuyck singled out the Talmud and the Qur'an, and the writings of Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and Erasmus of Rotterdam. (from Freedom of speech)
Image 5Local issues are often the subject of free speech. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 6The Free Speech Flag was created during the AACS encryption key controversy as "a symbol to show support for personal freedoms". (from Freedom of speech)
Image 7In Brazil, freedom of assembly and expression are Constitutional rights. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 8Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for discussing the Bucha massacre in Ukraine on a YouTube stream. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 9Title page of Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or List of Prohibited Books (Venice, 1564) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 10Charitable organizations can use the freedom of speech to campaign and lobby government ministers. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 11Laws of holocaust denial 2022 (from Freedom of speech)
Image 12Restriction of apostasy by country (2020) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 13Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 14Article 299's prosecution have surged during Erdogan's presidency. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 15The Bill of Rights 1689 grants the parliamentary privilege for freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament and is still in effect. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 16An "unexpurgated" edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1959) (from Freedom of speech)
Image 17Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)—Article 19 states that, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (from Freedom of speech)
Image 18A map of nations which have Lèse-majesté laws as of September 2022 (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 19The Newseum's five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 20Permanent Free Speech Wall in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. (from Freedom of speech)
Image 21Map showing U.S. states where anti-BDS legislation has passed, is pending, or has failed as of November 2023 (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 22Orator at Speakers' Corner in London, 1974 (from Freedom of speech)
Image 23This 1688 edition of Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (1260) was censored according to the Index Librorum Expurgatorum of 1707, which listed the specific passages of books already in circulation that required censorship. (from Freedom of speech)
Image 24Punk band Visací zámek which composed a popular song "The President Is a Faggot" about Václav Klaus, 2003–2013 Czech President (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 25A protest outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London against detention of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, 2017 (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 26Protesters exercise freedom of speech to hold a vigil in front of the Zimbabwean Embassy in London, 2005. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 27De Schreeuw (The Scream) is a memorial commemorating Theo van Gogh and a symbol of the freedom of speech. (from Freedom of speech by country)
Image 28A map of countries which have lèse-majesté laws as of January 2023 (from Freedom of speech)

News

Freedom of speech on Wikinews

Selected biography

Jonathan L. Zittrain (born 24 December 1969) is a US professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a faculty co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Previously, Zittrain was Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford and visiting professor at the New York University School of Law and Stanford Law School. He is the author, most recently, of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It; and co-editor of the books Access Denied (MIT Press, 2008) and Access Controlled (MIT Press, 2010). Zittrain works in several intersections of the Internet with law and policy including intellectual property, censorship and filtering for content control and computer security. He founded a project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society that develops classroom tools.

More selected biographies

More...

Did you know...

... that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press that Henry Kissinger (pictured) did not have to release phone transcripts that were made while he was Secretary of State?
...that James Lingan, officer of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, was beaten to death by a mob in Baltimore, Maryland for defending the freedom of the press?
... that Ukraine is considered to have the greatest freedom of the press of all the former Soviet Union states?

More did you know facts

More...

Selected quote

“

If all of mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

”

— John Stuart Mill

More selected quotes

More...

Related portals

In this month

5 February 1857 – Ratification of the Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857, establishing individual rights such as freedom of speech; freedom of conscience; freedom of the press; freedom of assembly; and the right to bear arms
8 February 1957 – Death of Zechariah Chafee, an American judicial philosopher, civil libertarian and advocate for free speech
20 February 1943 – Freedom of Speech painting published in The Saturday Evening Post
25 February 2005 – Harriet Freezerring Emancipation Prize awarded to Ayaan Hirsi Ali (pictured) by Cisca Dresselhuys, editor of the feminist magazine Opzij

More anniversaries...

Subcategories

Category puzzle

Select [►] to view subcategories

Recognized content

This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Freedom of speech}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.