Comment by 1337p337 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1337p337 | Hacker News Reader

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In what way has the government protected freedom of speech? The first amendment is about stopping the government from restricting speech, and it's only when the government restricts speech that there's even a reason. In fact, the government tries time and again to restrict speech, and if they decide, collectively, to block it, there's no recourse besides moving to another country.

You've got press blackouts in the 1940s, you have the PMRC triggering congressional hearings about musical content in the 80s, you've got crypto laws in the 90s, you've got the DMCA, you've got the DHS seizing domains, you've got calls to have Wikileaks banned. Your all-caps "the government" did these, and keeps doing them, and I don't know which government you're watching if you think that these elected officials and unelected bureaucrats shouldn't be kept on the shortest leash possible.

The Bill of Rights regulates no one but the government itself. The government has two roles: to keep others from infringing on my rights, and to keep its nose out of my damned business unles I infringe on others'. It's doing a lousy job, but that's a different issue.

There exists no private entity that can legally stop me from saying what I want. They can keep me from doing it on land they own or with resources they own, but that's fine. I don't want them to be able to freely use my resources without my consent, either. That's the concept of private property. But I can get a bullhorn and run down to city hall and yell, I can publish a newspaper, I can create a blog. If $company_x doesn't want to host my blog, I can get $company_y to do it. If my government can stop me on a whim, though, then I'm screwed.

(Edit: typos, damnable phone, it's trying to censor me.)

I agree with you that government should be kept on a short leash, for the reasons you state, but we don't want to strangle it, either - Government has a job to keep others from infringing on your rights. If ISPs are free to regulate traffic, then they have the power to strangle the business of a content provider by preventing their customers from accessing the content. Even if you argue that customers have chosen their infrastructure provider, how is the infrastructure provider not infringing on the rights of the content provider, which doesn't even do business with them?

I agree that the government's job is to keep others from infringing on individual rights, but I don't see a content provider's rights being violated. Let's say Verizon starts offering "everything on the net except NetFlix" as a package. They're not obligated to carry any traffic they don't want, and there's no law that stops them from blocking that traffic right now. They don't do it because they'd lose tons of customers; this is one evil thing that they have an incentive not to do. (If all ISPs, or even all ISPs in a given area do this, then rights are violated, and they'd get slapped with violations of the RICO Act; that's a different matter, though.) They lose money if they do it. What if the FCC decides to kill off NetFlix, though? The downside for them is that somewhere down the line (still waiting for this in the case of the DMCA...) a judge tells them they can't.

Let's say it's fine for the FCC (or another government entity) to do this, though. What if I run open WiFi, but I block bittorrent traffic? Have I violated my neighbors' rights? I think I can do what I want with my pipe, but would this be under the FCC's authority? I'm not a business, sure, but what about the WiFi at, say, Starbucks? I trust a non-monopoly much more than I trust a government, which has a de facto monopoly over imposing its will by force on the populace.

Built into the laws of this country is an inherent mistrust of the government., the idea that authority over the populace has a corrupting influence, and that it should be kept limited to the extent possible. You hope for the best (a benevolent set of leaders) but plan for the worst (a power-hungry group of totalitarians). The Constitution's plan for the worst is to avoid trusting in our leaders' benevolence and keep them from getting enough rope to string us up. It's what I love about this country.

I think most of the commenters here agree on that principle, so I would like to apologize as it seems I've been a little abrasive, and we're all on the same side here (at least apparently). But I am secure in my belief that the government is too big already and its authority needs to be reduced, not expanded in any direction.

We are really all on the same side - the concern on both sides is about centralizing power. Your concern is that we're giving government too much power, mine is that we're trading government power for corporate power, and we each see the power we grant as mitigated somehow - either by the 3 branches of government, or by the free market, and neither has faith in the other's mitigating force.

Starbucks free WiFi is an excellent point, which sheds light on the underlying philosophical debate. If an organization provides a resource (WiFi, water, a job), but only to a select group of their choosing, at what point do we call it supplying a service, and at what point do we call it discriminatory starvation? Is the glass half full, or half empty?

If there's competition, it's moot, but if there isn't any, we're giving the single supplier complete power over distribution (slippery slope to plutocracy argument). If we ban discrimination, it's also moot, but then we're giving government power to dictate rules for private organizations (slipperly slope to fascism argument).

There exists no private entity that can legally stop me from saying what I want

Correct! Your company can fire you for saying something bad about it online, but they can't throw you in jail. No one can throw you in jail for what you say online (with technical exceptions for some forms of hate speech I believe). Companies can't do it, nor can the government. Why? Because of... heh, The Government!

You've got press blackouts in the 1940s, you have the PMRC triggering congressional hearings about musical content in the 80s, you've got crypto laws in the 90s, you've got the DMCA, you've got the DHS seizing domains, you've got calls to have Wikileaks banned. Your all-caps "the government" did these

Yes. Sometimes the government violates its own laws. And when it gets caught doing that, other parts of.. The Government, actually spring into action. This is called the system of Checks and Balances, and you may have heard of organizations such as the ACLU and the EFF making use of it to correct the Government's behavior using... The Government.

The internet, as a whole, belongs to no one. It belongs to us all. In a sense, it is Public Property (on the whole). Protecting it is therefore the responsibility of The People, through the mechanism known as Government.

(Edit: BTW, you'll note that most of the examples you cited happen to be caused by contamination in The Government caused by the private sector, known as regulatory capture (as another commenter pointed out).)

> Why? Because of... heh, The Government!

ahem:

>> The government has two roles: to keep others from infringing on my rights, and to keep its nose out of my damned business unles I infringe on others'.

> And when it gets caught doing that, other parts of.. The Government actually spring into action.

You're making my point for me. And as far as I can tell, the government isn't doing much to stop itself in the last three cases, and last time I heard, some music still has "Warning! Explicit lyrics!" labels on it, so the PMRC ended up getting its way there.

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