[who_would_fardels_bear]

"Pretending this is about sovereign nations doing as they please is just that, pretending. It is organized Islamic radicals and their leftist supporters"

If the laws are written clearly and correctly then Islamic Jihadists would be kicked out of the courts immediately upon filing these suits, wherever.

Unfortunately the laws as written in Canada are neither clear nor correct.

But this is the way it should be: the Canadians are conducting an experiment in trying to protect peoples' feelings at the expense of other peoples' freedom of speech.

Hopefully the western world will wake up soon and realize that the experiment has failed and every country should adopt laws closer to what we have in America.

If our US government can use international trade agreements to get the other countries to modify their laws, e.g. if you want to be able to sell Canadian published works in America, then you have to allow us to sell our works in Canada without fear of litigation, then that would be OK.

But if the other countries decline to do so, then that's what happens.

Nobody is born with the right to sell whatever they make to whereever they want to sell it. If our government is too wimpy to project our values to other countries, then our businesses will suffer the consequences.

BTW, we at FreeRepublic all agree that everything that comes from the pen of Mark Steyn is the exact opposite of offensive. However, there is much disagreement here about whether something like "Deep Throat Part 23" is offensive. If a company makes such a movie and successfully sells it in America, I will not be one of those fighting for them to also be able to sell it in Saudi Arabia or China. If those countries want to ban such material, more power to them.

And if they want to sue the makers in the case that they accidentally get away with selling a few copies to the Saudis, then we should allow the Saudis to file the papers and let the courts deal with it.

[JasonC]

Sorry, you are hopelessly misinformed. No alleged right to sell anything anywhere is involved. What the lawsuits against Steyn's publishers and himself actually seek, is (1) cease and desist orders forbidding him to publish such material and (2) their own control over his publisher's publication. Specifically, "they have demanded the right to a cover story in Maclean’s, with full editorial control over content and art".

There is simply no way to square this circle, try as you might. Nothing the multiculturalist left or the Islamic radicals using them are doing, is in any way a matter of legitimate freedoms, nor does any the opposition to them stem from claiming non-existent economic rights. Nor is any of this confined to their borders, sovereign style - Canadians have been ordered by these commissions to remove content from US based websites, and as already mentioned Islamicists in Europe have sought international arrest warrants against those whose speech they dislike.

They are just utter goons and do not have a leg to stand on. But their enablers do not want to stand up to them, because it is not a multiculturalist PC thing to do in their book. Those supporters, including sitting judges in several countries issuing coercive orders, want to let their mascots run roughshod over the rights of others, just by pretending to "be offended". It is obscene, and you should not be defending it, in any shape matter or form.