Talk:Chilling effect

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Removed the following text:

"The landmark California Supreme Court case Varian v. Delfino is a classic example of this chilling effect."

and the commercial link

"*Be careful who you SLAPP - A book about chilling free speech on the Internet."

I feel that the SLAPP link is enough on this subject. The rest is a PR campaign by people involved in the case.

kmccoy (talk) 07:35, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] US-centricism

The article is written as though the First Amendment applies everywhere. Could someone recast it? Estrellador* 14:15, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I did a small change to try and help it along a bit in this direction. --Lisa 00:44, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of the term

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but the article itself professes ignorance, and no-one else has mentioned it here. It seems to me that this is merely the misunderstanding of a common, older cliche. While it may now have become a proper term in common usage (although I haven't seen it anywhere else), it seems very likely that it would have originated from one or a few people's misunderstanding of a phrase such as, "this would have a chilling effect on free speech." In the previously standard usage, the meaning of this phrase would be that the effect on free speech would be "chilling" (please note the small "c"), in as much as it would be terrifying enough to "chill one to the bones", or to make one shiver involuntarily with fear. If this were a proper term, I would expect it to be named after an entity such as a person, place, or organisation, and therefore also to be capitalised. I'd like to point out that the stated example of usage in the article does not use capitalisation (viz. "Chilling Effect"), increasing the probablilty that this is a simple misunderstanding rather than a legitimate term. --Nezuji 07:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think you are stating the obvious. :); I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that there is a guy "Chilling", or indeed anything other than the ultimate derivation. But the term I think can be used in caps to refer to the specific usage it has gained over the years. 9/11 may have had a chilling effect on free speech, but the attacks alone could not exercise a Chilling Effect. Anyway, YMMV and IANAL. Sdedeo (tips) 07:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The article says that the term may have originated in the ruling for Lamont v. Postmaster General, but I cannot find the term anywhere in the ruling. I had thought that it was first used by the Court in Dombrowski v. Pfister. Is there anyone out there better versed in First Amendment law who might know definitively?--24.91.134.186 17:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This Article Is Not Neutral

Hi.

Please forgive my lack of Wikipedia understanding. This is my first contribution of any kind at all; and I don't feel confident enough to go ahead and edit this article, yet I think it must be changed considerably.

While I do believe I understand the subject the author is referring to in this article, it is, as another commenter has pointed out, not neutral. I do not fault the author, or question his/her intentions, but I feel this article is not strictly neutral by Wikipedia's guidelines. The subject here is referencing the "Chilling Effect Doctrine" which you can see more on Answers.com:

http://www.answers.com/topic/chilling-effect-doctrine

And there is also a Website "www.chillingeffects.org".

However, the phrase -- chilling effect -- is a combination of existing terms: the term "chilling" has been in use since long before the US government; and what's more is that in fact the exact phrase "chilling effect" would have been used to refer to the "chills up the spine" effect a macabre event or scene can have on a person, long before this doctrine.

Whether the doctrine's use of the term "chilling" incorporates the macabre, or in fact just any "cooling" effect, which is seen to lead to slowing down -- as in slowly freezing waters which eventually become completely still -- I do not claim to know; but the article's title is very misleading, as it seems to me that the far more obvious meanings of the phrase are those in the macabre genres.

You can find seemingly limitless sources of such usage in literary genres like mystery and crime or detective stories.

The motion picture director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980: see Wikipedia) could be one of the most famous sources for finding this precise phrase and proving that this usage is secondary in notariety to the meaning as would be in reference to Hitchcock's genre -- having nothing at all to do with this subject. Here is an article about Hitchcock that uses this term:

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-movies7sep07,0,4600518.story?coll=cl-calendar

This page on the PBS wesite for the show "Mystery" uses the phrase http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/mystery/american/newsletter_20040806.html:

This is a mystery book named "Chilling Effect": http://www.amazon.com/Chilling-Effect-Lucinda-Hayes-Mysteries/dp/0870817876

This horror review uses this phrase http://www.cinemarati.org/index.php/archives/hardware-and-dust-devil-the-horror-films-of-richard-stanley/

There will be countless others, dating back centuries for the afficianado.

And there is another aspect that further places this reference lower on the list of potential meanings: there are countless other references to uses of this phrase borrowed also in a wholesale manner from the macabre origin, and used in double-entendre:

A NASA article uses the double entendre referrring to early arctic thaw: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features-print.cfm?feature=430

A double-entendre used to refer to a shirt that keeps you cool: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel_services/trvl_gear/item/nrs_mystery_short_sleeve_shirt.htm

Another double-entendre about frozen poultry: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=32293

These double-entendre's absolutely do not refer to the "Chilling Effect Doctrine", but rather to the macabre.

So now, to emphasize what I'm trying to point out: there are three things:

1. The phrase contains the word "chilling" which should have its own de-referenced definition. 2. This precise phrase is far more commonly associated with the macabre. 3. The phrase is used commonly in double-entendre which seems to also warrant an explanation before leading to the "Chilling Effect Doctrine" that is the subject of this article.

I cannot see that this page can be up there with not a single mention of the potential disambiguation from "chilling"; the other usage in the macabre; nor the double-entendre; and it thus cannot claim neutrality. These seem very obvious to me. In fact, alongside the "www.chillingeffects.org" Website, this comes of as being far too un-neutral. Therefore I think it needs to be changed. And the title should likely be changed if it is primarily about this doctrine, and it may still need to refer to the more common usage.

And I'll re-iterate that I am not faulting the author, just trying to add as much verifiable information to make this point clear. Others will see it even more obviously than me.

I do not know what the correct proceedure would be for me to contribute more to this. I don't actually feel qualified to add authoritative content. And I'm not sure what I would put on the page if I went ahead and edited it. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone who can do more.

And I also made a note on the "Chilling" page, which also does not mention the macabre.

Thanks. -Steven Coco.

Hi Steven -- I think your quarrel is not that the article is "non-neutral" (e.g., it only protrays one side of a debate), but simply that it does not discuss unrelated material. However, simply because a phrase is often used does not mean it should be defined and discussed in wikipedia -- see WP:ISNOT, wikipedia is not a dictionary. I don't think you've established that "chilling effect" meaning "something that scares you" is a technical term deserving of inclusion. To put it another way, we don't have a separate entry for "humorous effect", because there is no special meaning of the term beyond what its components suggest. Sdedeo (tips) 21:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi.

Well overall I'm lost; so I have to bow out; but I do see more now...

Good luck.