Hacker News Reader

Comment by micks56 | Hacker News Reader

It is not a Constitutional question, and I am not thinking of something in contract law. To be a First Amendment issue, there MUST be involvement by the Federal Government, or a State Government (via the 14th Amendment), or by a State Actor (a person or entity that appears to be the State Government).

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

There is nothing in there that says companies (ex. TechCrunch) have a right to print whatever they want, whether by free speech or by free press. It only says the government cannot pass a law that prevents the printing of free speech.

View on HN

>There is nothing in there that says companies (ex. TechCrunch) have a right to print whatever they want, whether by free speech or by free press.

Right, there are narrow restrictions for e.g. libel. In that example those restrictions apply to congress's ability to regulate libel, and it has been in the past been a constitutional question.

How would you hypothesize that Twitter could go after TechCrunch without invoking a law at either the federal or state level?

Think of free speech as a noun. Perhaps it should be written as free-speech. What this means is that 1st Amendment protections don't apply to all forms of speech, only free-speech. Examples of things that are not considered free-speech are trade secrets, hate speech, and libelous/slanderous speech. Congress and the States can regulate and pass statutes on those as they wish. They are not afforded Constitutional protection.

The 1st Amendment doesn't grant me the right to write what I want on this forum, even if it would fit in the free-speech classification. Paul Graham can take down whatever he wants, whenever he wants. If Paul Graham became governor of California, he couldn't pass a statute that banned talking about Twitter and TC in online forums. That would run afoul of the 1st Amendment.

I am not sure that I understand your question on how Twitter could go after TC. How would anyone go after another entity without Federal or State law? I doubt there is a local ordinance about this wherever those two companies are located, and I doubt International Law would apply.

If Twitter wanted some sort of non-legal recourse, they could 1) talk it out with TC, 2) reach an out of court settlement, or 3) start the first SMS-organized boycott of a web site.

> They are not afforded Constitutional protection.

That isn't the case. Courts may, for instance, decide that a trade secret law that punishes leakers who were party to a contract or who obtained information through illegal means (such as via trespass) can be punished, but that such a law can't punish third parties who broke no law nor violated a contractual agreement in obtaining the secrets (such as is the case when they are mailed to you without solicitation).

All of the examples you cited (trade secrets, hate speech, and libelous/slanderous speech) have numerous caveats (trade secrets are limited by to what degree they have become public, hate speech is only exempted narrowly through title VII ( http://www.aclu.org/studentsrights/expression/12808pub199412... ), truth is an absolute defense against libel (that is in no way a tautology; it isn't an absolute defense in say, England)) that have been settled upon over time via drumroll answers to constitutional questions rendered by courts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com