We’re constantly reminded everywhere in our modern society that we have the right to free speech. But what good is free speech without the right to read?

This week some store in Canada sold a few of those new Harry Potter books early by accident. As a result of this, the publisher was able to get a judge to rule that the people who bought the books weren’t allowed to read them until whenever it is that the book is officially released. So J.K. Rowling is allowed to stop people from reading the books that they bought legally. What?

In an article about this whole situation by The Times, it quotes a lawyer saying that “There is no right to read.” So we’re allowed to say whatever we want, but we can’t read it? Isn’t that possibility a little scary?

Basically, we can’t read whatever we want.

Doesn’t that seem a little odd? But, now that I think about it, it’s true. There is no right to read in the law. We’re not allowed to read the secret documents that contains Microsoft’s technical specifications for their proprietary file formats. We’re not allowed to read their source code. We’re not allowed to read any secret government documents. We’re not allowed to read anything that may offend people.

So I guess we don’t really have free speech either. Darn.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 16th, 2005 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Free. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.