What is the line between freedom and responsibility?

When is the connection between speech and violence sufficiently close that the speaker can be charged criminally for his words?

"We're going after anyone who had any part of getting this party started," East Lansing Police Public Information Officer Kym Johnson said on Sunday. "We are going to do our best to prosecute those individuals who started this whole resurrection of this Cedar Fest all the way to the last person we arrest tonight and tomorrow."

Not so fast.

In the immediate aftermath of Cedar Fest, the block party that got out of control last weekend in Lansing, Mich., police officials put out the word that they were looking for the person or persons who had advertised the party to the Michigan State University "community" through "Facebook."

In case you're not a party person, or the parent of one, Facebook has become the vehicle of choice for young people to advertise big parties full of people they don't know. The idea is that you "post" the party so everyone in your "community" can see the invitation and RSVP. But communities, Facebook-style, are not Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Anybody with an e-mail address from an institution, and some without one, can join a community, and then people in one community can extend invitations to other communities, to the extent that legendary political organizer Saul Alinsky could never have dreamt.

But to what end?

In the case of Cedar Fest, the end seemed to be encouraging a riot, or so the police claimed, with reason. By the time they arrived on the scene and began making arrests, the crowd of thousands was chanting for tear gas.

Is the person who started it — whoever posted on the site encouraging people not only to come and bring others, but also to stand up to the police when they did — responsible for the riot that ensued?

That was, understandably, the way the police saw it, at least initially.

But when they tried to present the case to the prosecutors, they ran square into the protection for free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. In a series of landmark opinions that predate Al Gore's invention of the Internet, much less the dispute about who invented Facebook itself, the Court imposed strict limits on the ability to punish speech on the grounds that it incited violence. It is not enough for the speech itself to be violent; it is not enough that the speaker encourages and prods others. To survive constitutional scrutiny, it must be proved that the speaker intended to incite imminent violence, and that he did so.

Freedom is a lot easier to defend when the subject is civil rights than when kids are rioting for no good reason in East Lansing, or when Muslim radicals are denouncing America, as the videotapes being played in a London courtroom where eight men are on trial for an attempted bomb plot targeting transcontinental flights chillingly reveal. What price freedom? The First Amendment reflects a delicate balance, built not only on the words of the Constitution, but on our willingness to exercise self-restraint in testing its limits. What the Facebook sponsors did was wrong, even if it cannot be criminally punished. Turning the Internet into a loudspeaker for violence and hatred is the surest way to destroy the very freedom that allows it to flourish.

Cedar Fest was banned in 1987 because the celebration became an excuse for a riot. It was revived this year via Facebook. Some traditions deserve to die — in cyberspace and in real time. This is clearly one of them.

On Tuesday morning, Tom Wibert, chief of the East Lansing Police Department, told reporters that it was "less and less likely" that charges would be filed against the Facebook account holder who organized the street party. "At this point, the prosecutor is saying no. … We presented a case to the prosecutor, and it's unlikely we can charge him with electronically inciting a riot."

The announcement for Cedar Fest has since disappeared from Facebook, which is how it should be. Next time, the result could be different. Freedoms are fragile.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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