Months of harassment

[Verendal]

RE:Free speech.

1:That's a defense against *government* retribution and it doesn't apply to everything, for example you start yelling threats at people, especially government officials, you will VERY swiftly find out that no, it is not 'say whatever you want without consequence'. You still have responsibilities and limitations to rights, alongside those rights.
2:SE is a private company, and terms of service exist. You agreed to them. They have the right to refuse you service if you refuse to follow their rules. Yes, there are rules they can't make, IE, can't legally exclude by race/gender.
3:There is legal precedent, in the US court system, for 'fighting words'. "Fighting words are, as first defined by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The interpretations and legal definitions vary over time and from region to region, but basically if you start speaking to someone in a way clearly intended to anger them into a fight...You can be found legally to have 'struck first' making their actions self-defense.
4:When you're on the servers, even on these forums, you're on their private property. Not a public place, they quite literally own the servers and the data legally.

Now, for the final point you all seem to be ignoring.
5:SQUARE ENIX IS A JAPANESE COMPANY. NOT A UNITED STATES ONE. They operate in the US but are not, primarily, a US company. This influences a great many of their components of terms of service, due to privacy, copyright and data related laws in multiple nations applying to them...but it also amplifies point 4.

[SomeRandomHuman]

RE:Free speech.

1:That's a defense against *government* retribution and it doesn't apply to everything, for example you start yelling threats at people, especially government officials, you will VERY swiftly find out that no, it is not 'say whatever you want without consequence'. You still have responsibilities and limitations to rights, alongside those rights.
2:SE is a private company, and terms of service exist. You agreed to them. They have the right to refuse you service if you refuse to follow their rules. Yes, there are rules they can't make, IE, can't legally exclude by race/gender.
3:There is legal precedent, in the US court system, for 'fighting words'. "Fighting words are, as first defined by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The interpretations and legal definitions vary over time and from region to region, but basically if you start speaking to someone in a way clearly intended to anger them into a fight...You can be found legally to have 'struck first' making their actions self-defense.
4:When you're on the servers, even on these forums, you're on their private property. Not a public place, they quite literally own the servers and the data legally.

Now, for the final point you all seem to be ignoring.
5:SQUARE ENIX IS A JAPANESE COMPANY. NOT A UNITED STATES ONE. They operate in the US but are not, primarily, a US company. This influences a great many of their components of terms of service, due to privacy, copyright and data related laws in multiple nations applying to them...but it also amplifies point 4.

They are a Japanese company yes. No one is refuting that. The NA servers are still subject to US policies since they're not based on the Japanese Embassy. It just so happens that more than a few general rules of thumb are very similar if not the same in both countries.