With the pending lawsuit directed at Netflix and the original series 13 Reasons Why allegedly inspiring a teenage girl to take her own life, it is worth understanding a bit about how a lot of the arguments regarding free speech and media and alleged "inspiration" have played out.
Lawsuits of this sort being found in favor of the plaintiffs and finding publishers, filmmakers, studios, etc. liable are extremely rare. That said, it has happened.
The most notable exception to the rule that I can think of is the book Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, which was written as a how-to book in how to get away with killing people and was ultimately used in a triple murderer in 1993 by a guy carrying out a contract. The court eventually did rule that the publisher could be found civilly liable and the publisher subsequently removed the book from publication.
This case is somewhat interesting to me because, first of all, the book was clearly only intended for entertainment purposes. Originally the book was being written as a true crime novel; but, the author was best known for nonfiction and thus changed the formatting of the book to appeal to her readers. I think it's safe to assume that, if it had remained a novel and were simply incredibly well researched and people started copying the details, it wouldn't have been much of a discussion.
Further still, it's hard to argue that the 1993 murderers were "inspired" by the book. It's pretty clear that the murderer was inspired by money; but, one could say that the book made him confident enough that he'd get away with it that he'd take the risk. Also, he almost did get away with it and the thing that broke the case open was a component of the book that he didn't follow.
No matter where you stand on this one case, it's pretty clear that the intent of the author and the publisher was never a major component in the ruling. The argument that the book "inspired" or "incited" a crime is pretty thin. Namely, most of the go-to arguments that people use in favor of censorship or holding media creators liable mostly didn't play into the court's decision.
People my age and older either vaguely saw first hand or are closer to the political pushes for censorship and or state labeling of certain music and especially the arguments against violent video games in the wake of the Columbine shooting. We're all familiar with the Tipper Gore crusade and the claims that musicians were putting subliminal messages to commit suicide into their music. We all know the claims that mass shooters are regularly boys who play violent video games. Much of the war on porn is based around claims that porn creates a "sense of entitlement" to women's bodies and can drive men to think nothing of committing a rape.
Namely, the popular arguments are built around those arguments of "inspiration" or "incitement" or "sending the wrong message."
Only incitement would be a constitutionally relevant complaint; but, you're not gonna get very far when it comes to books, movies, television, music, etc. Incitement need to be pretty clear, deliberate, and focused in order to qualify in this country. No publisher of the text of the Hadith is going to face legal liability for publishing the language that's genocidal toward Jews and you're allowed to preach those passages. You'll get in trouble if you preach that, give people a map to a gun store and a synagogue and say "Go for it."
"Inspiration" is an even higher bar and I don't think anybody will ever win a case by arguing that the wrong message was sent.
It's really unfair and unrealistic to hold media creators liable for people being inspired into action by the media. People take works of art how they will. There's also a "chicken or the egg" question in most of these cases.
Yeah, a lot of mass shooters have been found to have had violent video games; but, most young boys do. I did. We're they inspired by the video game; or, were they inspired to play the video game because of a predisposition toward violence? Did the girl who killed herself get inspired by 13 Reasons Why; or, was she driven to the show because she was in a bad place?
I don't see many, if any good reasons to dramatically alter course in how we view First Amendment protections. If anything, we should become more free and the bar for being found liable for something that you said or wrote or showed should be dramatically raised rather than lowered.
