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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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What could go wrong when you have a law on the books like that is the people in power will enforce it based on their concept of truth, not yours. The libel laws are the way they are currently because lawmakers and courts have, so far, chosen to err on the side of encouraging speech. Letting anyone say anything they want about politicians is probably better than limiting political speech, because, in the wrong hands, limits on political speech can be very dangerous.
Then there’s the classic “you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater if there is no fire” example. Maybe that could apply to knowing purveyors of disinformation, but you’d have to prove that they know what they are saying is false, and they intend harm. That’s a very high burden of proof, but if you can prove both of those then there’s a case for fraud.
This SCOTUS case has been largely overturned. It's from Schenck v. United States, a case involving people distributing fliers to draft age men during WW1 encouraging them to resist the draft. The ruling was narrowed in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) to only allow free speech restrictions based on imminent harm, not just making the government a little uncomfortable.
The specific example of causing a stampede in a crowded theater could be criminalized as imminent harm. Speaking of that specific scenario, apparently it had come up because there had been multiple deadly stampedes in crowded theaters from false alarms. I wonder if now we would not have that. People have been trained from childhood to evacuate a building in an orderly fashion.