But you're still being held liable for that damage, despite the fact that you did not cause any physical damage. It was just words, and yet their effect is considered damaging.
That's aside from the fact that there's also a thing called "punitive damages", so that still is quite explicitly punishment. So these are words that do damage, and they're punished for.
> if a threat is a threat to do something illegal, how can a threat to do something completely legal be a threat?
I guess I should explain the terms I use a bit better. You're right that words can mean different things, and I'm talking about the legal concepts of threat and blackmail, but in my too-brief explanation of blackmail, I use the word "threat" in one of its other meanings.
So here's what I mean by threat and blackmail:
Threat: expressing an intend to hurt someone. Here, hurting someone is illegal, but expressing the intention to do so is illegal as well.
Blackmail: expressing an intend to reveal embarrassing information about someone unless they do something, in order to coerce them to do that thing against their will. Here, revealing the embarrassing information might be totally legal. In fact, if the information is about a crime the target committed, revealing it might even be the right thing to do. And yet saying you're going to reveal it unless they do a particular thing, is illegal.
In any case, I think we have established that there are forms of speech that are illegal, are considered damaging, and/or are sufficiently harmful or damaging to warrant compensation or punishment.
So to get back to the original topic: is hate speech damaging? And is it sufficiently damaging to warrant compensation or punishment? And if we were to conclude that they are, legislating that is not necessarily a more significant infringement on the freedom of speech than the existing laws against libel, blackmail and threats are.
> But you're still being held liable for that damage, despite the fact that you did not cause any physical damage. It was just words, and yet their effect is considered damaging.
It is a complete defence to an accusation of libel that what you wrote is true.
That is, libel means publishing damaging lies about someone. In most jurisdictions, it also means that the lies were malicious: the writer or publisher intended to cause damage. Damages are assessed as lost money; if the lies hurt your feelings, you won't get damages. But if your hurt feelings required therapy, you can sue for the therapist's fees.
It's annoying (understatement) that damage to reputation is assessed in this way; it means that rich, famous people get much larger awards than ordinary people, because they lose more money from damage to reputation (they have more money to lose, for one thing). You can't sue someone for torpedoing a $1M deal if you aren't the kind of person that makes $1M deals.
> It is a complete defence to an accusation of libel that what you wrote is true.
Obviously. It would be a bit too dystopian if the truth was illegal (though in oppressive regimes it often is). I agree that it's a problem that harmful lies about rich people are punished harder than lies about poor people, because they can attach a larger monetary value to the damage. That's of course a product of the fact that it's a civil issue and revolves around damages. Getting rid of that artefact would probably involve making all lies illegal, and I think everybody here agrees that that would be a couple of steps too far.
And then there's the fact that the entire justice system is simply far more accessible to rich people. And they do sometimes use it to try to suppress inconvenient truths.
But you're still being held liable for that damage, despite the fact that you did not cause any physical damage. It was just words, and yet their effect is considered damaging.
That's aside from the fact that there's also a thing called "punitive damages", so that still is quite explicitly punishment. So these are words that do damage, and they're punished for.
> if a threat is a threat to do something illegal, how can a threat to do something completely legal be a threat?
I guess I should explain the terms I use a bit better. You're right that words can mean different things, and I'm talking about the legal concepts of threat and blackmail, but in my too-brief explanation of blackmail, I use the word "threat" in one of its other meanings.
So here's what I mean by threat and blackmail:
Threat: expressing an intend to hurt someone. Here, hurting someone is illegal, but expressing the intention to do so is illegal as well.
Blackmail: expressing an intend to reveal embarrassing information about someone unless they do something, in order to coerce them to do that thing against their will. Here, revealing the embarrassing information might be totally legal. In fact, if the information is about a crime the target committed, revealing it might even be the right thing to do. And yet saying you're going to reveal it unless they do a particular thing, is illegal.
In any case, I think we have established that there are forms of speech that are illegal, are considered damaging, and/or are sufficiently harmful or damaging to warrant compensation or punishment.
So to get back to the original topic: is hate speech damaging? And is it sufficiently damaging to warrant compensation or punishment? And if we were to conclude that they are, legislating that is not necessarily a more significant infringement on the freedom of speech than the existing laws against libel, blackmail and threats are.