I can already hear the cries of censorship. "What do you mean crimes aren't protected speech?"
This case isn't really so bad because there's no prior restraint, no tools being taken away, or new tools for the government.
There is still concern that charges could be heaped on someone to the point they feel the need to plea bargain for something that is either a very minor offense or protected speech.
Not always. Not saying it is here, but I think it depends on the context. Arab Spring, for instance.
Fast forward a decade later, and now the attitude is the complete opposite.
People do what it takes to survive. Trump usurping power and ending 230 years of US democracy represents an existential threat. Don't be shocked that a lot of people and companies are not on-board with that idea and are willing to take extreme measures to prevent it.
I'm saying there is no reason to be surprised when you're asking platforms to ignore Trump's attempt to end democracy and they decline.
To give a hypothetical: if Trump's followers were harassing Matt Prince's family every day at home, work, and school there wouldn't be any hand-wringing about "free speech" or "censorship" from Cloudflare. Anyone related to Trump would find themselves banned in short order. That would be purely a move of self-preservation.
Similarly a lot of platforms (and donors) realize these people are no longer useful idiots but deluded to the point of ransacking the house of Congress in an attempt to overturn the election. That's really dangerous and could destabilize the country and even the world. When faced with an existential threat don't be shocked when people are unwilling to sit down and debate on behalf of MAGAs/Fox News acting in bad faith.
1: https://newrepublic.com/article/160922/capitol-riot-revealed...
1776?
There is that little affair from 1765 to 1783 that gets generally good press, though. "Context is for kings" is tinged with irony on that one.
> This case isn't really so bad because there's no prior restraint, no tools being taken away, or new tools for the government.
Jokes aside, any sentence which contains "no tools being taken away" around messages such as this one are is assuming too much about the future - it is entirely within the power of both executive (FCC) and legislative (Congress) to curtail the use of specific tools, including radios. It shows that someone in the agency has thought that this particular case warrants making a public statement, which is an escalation.
Gets good press, but, compared to the Commonwealth countries, it's not clear it was really necessary or beneficial.
When you say countries inspired by the revolutionary war, you probably don't mean "North Vietnam."
“Freedom of speech”, much like “freedom of religion”, is an empty statement. — no man wants true freedom in either, so one is only free so long as it not thread over the bounds of the law, and it can thus be surmised as “One has the right to commit legal actions.”.
It's entirely different from such matters as “right to a criminal defence attorney when charged with a crime”, which many do feel should be absolute, and that all other laws must bend and give way to accommodate it.
One already has the freedom to do whatever one wish, so long as it not thread over the bounds of the law.
Are you appealing to the desires of the crowd (bandwagon fallacy), or to a moral principle? I'm talking about moral principles, which the laws and the government ought to uphold.
If they don't, the law and/or government is in the wrong. The right to speak your mind is a moral right; arguably, the right to defend yourself with an attourney is a subset of this. The law is not the arbiter of what is right, or what rights humans possess "inalienably". The law only enforces and protects those rights (since it's inefficient for each person to defend their own rights against everyone else: "I will have my attourney at my trial, I challenge you to duel if you disagree").
If freedom of speech is impinged, then a human right has been trampled upon. If a private individual forces someone else to be silent, they are morally in the wrong, even though there's no law against it. If the US government did it, then the US acted against its constitution and broke a moral principle, if not the laws on the books.
If not, then you do not believe in absolute freedom of speech, but only freedom of speech within the confines of the law.
It's a cute 'gotcha', but you're not actually saying anything that relates to what I said. I said 'moral principle', not 'absolute', and you continue to refer to 'the law'. You're not distinguishing between the laws the government decides upon, and the moral principles we use to evaluate good laws and bad ones.
From the outset, I said that there is a difference between saying that freedom of speech is something the government allocates to us, and something which the government ought to allow. Do you think the government gets to decide what we are, and are not, allowed to say?
I simply said that the claim of believing in “freedom of speech, except where one not” is an empty, useless, and trivial statement.
Everyone believes in “freedom of speech, except where he draw the line”.
I'm arguing that the government is not who gets to determine what that hierarchy is, and thereby determine what gets to superceed freedom of speech.
I really don't want anyone - liberal, conservative, Christian or radical Islam - enforcing their determiniation of moral hierarchy on me. Do you?
To be clear, are you taking the position of the anarchist here? I mean no disrespect, I only wish to understand your position. I think most people would say, with various exemplars, that the government can legitimately have a blacklist maintained over certain speech, very much in the same way it can have one over certain actions.
This is not an appeal to popularity, it is a statement of the non-anarchist position. You may think it is invalid, but by the same token, I think that consistently you'd have to see laws against murder or child rape to be invalid.
Each does whatever they like, so long as they do no harm to anyone else. Where the least common ground exists, interactions are polite and restrained (to the mathematical extreme of minimizing any information transfer at all, if zero common ground exists); where greater common ground exists, speech and action can be more unrestrained.
If harm is done, then the harm itself is the issue. Hyperbolic example, to make it super clear: it's perfectly fine to shout 'fire' in a crowded building; however, if you cause harm you're on the hook. Not because you shouted "fire", but because you (one way or another, the means is irrelevant) caused people to be trampled.
The difference between that and the similiar position stated earlier is small, but I think there's a bright line: whether the speech is restricted, or the doing of harm is restricted. It's a trivial difference at face value, but the logical derivations are very different.
If one of the desert island castaways attempts to do harm to another, the rest of them might naturally band together to prevent and reconcile it. That's where I see government involved: the banding together, to prevent and reconcile harm done.
In that way, morality is untouched. No one inflicts their views on anyone else. Total ignorance of all moral hierarchies is preserved. Government says nothing about what may or may not be said. The only view inflicted on anyone is the minimum precept, 'do no harm to others'.
The whole point of the constitution is to put a limit on the law. The government cannot pass a law forbidding a certain kind of speech as it would be unconstitutional.
> One already has the freedom to do whatever one wish, so long as it not thread over the bounds of the law.
You have it backwards. The law can dictate whatever it wants so long as it does not thread over the bounds of the constitution.
This reminds me of a question on the US immigration card for non-citizens - it asks if the traveler intends to rob a bank. If you want to be let in, you have to check "no" of course, but anyone who then robs a bank while on vacay will face an additional perjury charge.
I'm not sure if this accomplishes anything other than the usual "tough on crime" stuff.
Aah got it, that makes sense now. So it's not just political posturing for the extra-tough- on crime stuff.
Until you go to a US court, you probably think it's that simple. This is very wrong.
There are plenty of US laws that are so broad (or narrow) that nothing or everything fits or are so badly written as to be ineffectual. There are also silly laws in place, which are not enforced. The act is likely going to be adjudicated based on current prevailing influence holders, of the time and area. This is why moving jurisdiction is typically the simplest way to indemnify a defendant.
Take the levels of scrutiny applied to laws and regulations in equal protection lawsuits, for example. Why is judicial review for racial discrimination covered under strict scrutiny, but sex discrimination only covered under intermediate scrutiny? There's no statute prescribing this—American courts invented it.
To put it another way, you probably won't be charged just for selling drugs over a radio frequency. You'll be charged for the regular crime of selling drugs and an additional charge of using radio to commit that crime.