I am aware of that. In fact, what you said is more or less the point I was getting at: the right to free speech for corporations is based on constitutional law. That means the government can’t control what private corporations host on their platforms.
Again, I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding here, because I actually agree with what you’re saying. This may possibly be because I worded my point poorly, but my point is the same as yours: the constitution doesn’t prevent private platforms from being moderated and actually protects that right.
Look, I was specifically addressing the claim by the OP that 1A protections that protect corporations (and human persons) from government interference are “statutorily granted privileges” rather than the constitutionally guaranteed rights that they are. Yes, it’s also true that the Constitution says nothing about restricting corporations at all, but I don’t believe that was the claim being made by the OP. Rather, they were trying to claim that the 1A in the constitution does not protect corporations from the government like it does human persons, only statutes might, which is false. That’s the claim I was addressing.
I believe you’ve completely misunderstood everything I said. I was disagreeing with Faber and saying that platforms absolutely have the right to moderate as they see fit. Basically, I agree with you.
Re: Re: So your key assertion of "First Amendment rights&qu
Masnick asserts the above in connection with his wish that corporations have the power to control ALL speech on the Internet --
Actually, corporations only control the portions of the internet that they own. Removing a link to an article from Facebook doesn’t remove the article itself from the internet. Remove a post from Twitter doesn’t prevent the poster from posting it on Parler. This is what Masnick wants. More importantly, it’s what the law says.
-- and especially that of political enemies.
Nope. Masnick has supported the right of corporations to remove any speech from their platform, regardless of whether he agrees with that speech or their decision to remove it. You’re attacking a strawman.
It's truly a KEY assertion for him, so when he handily points out above that corps don't have 4th Amendment rights against arbitrary search -- on demand -- then his 1A assertions necessarily collapse.
Except the fact that he didn’t claim that corporations don’t have 4th Amendment rights—on the contrary—and the two claims aren’t inextricably linked given the fact that the Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that corporations have 1A rights in a separate case from any regarding the 4A rights of anyone. But, again, note that the target companies have the right to contest the broadness of the request. You’re completely misrepresenting what was said here.
Re: Corporations are NOT persons with rights: gov't can DEMAND i
I've sort of been waiting to use this point, heh, heh.
Actually, you’ve been repeating this point over and over again. You even start the very next sentence with the word “again” to show you’re repeating yourself.
Again, the first act of persons wishing to form a corporation is to ASK The Public for PERMISSION. Second act is to SIGN AN AGREEMENT TO SERVE The Public and PAY A FEE for the privilege.
First, you are never consistent on what “the public” means. Sometimes it seems to mean the government. Other times it means the general populace. Which one is it? Be clear and consistent!
If by “the public” you mean “the general populace/citizenry”, then no, corporations do not need direct permission from the public to form, and they do not need to sign an agreement to serve them.
On the other hand, if by “the public” you mean “the government”, then yes, corporations do need to ask permission, but that doesn’t really take much to get; more importantly, though, outside of obeying the same laws and regulations that anyone in that industry (including private human persons) has to obey, corporations do not need to serve the government, either.
The only ones corporations need to serve are the owners, managers, and/or shareholders. You may wish it otherwise, but your wishes are not the law.
Now, while it is true that corporations must pay a fee to be formed, that really adds nothing material to this discussion.
You just nailed down that corporations do not have FOURTH Amendment RIGHTS, but must DISH upon demand.
Nope. Corporations do have 4A rights. They have used those rights to successfully contest many subpoenas and warrants. The dissent even points out that it is quite likely that these companies will contest the broadness of this request. The Fourth Amendment applies to anyone with property to be searched or seized. Like the 1A, the 4A applies to all legal persons and is not restricted to humans or citizens. They don’t have to “dish upon demand” any more than you do.
Once again, that you don’t believe they should have those rights doesn’t mean they don’t.
Re: But, Maz, you ARGUE that corporations DON'T have to!
HOW DOES The Public benefit from it, then?
By allowing online platforms to exist that, taken as a whole, are diverse in viewpoints. Not that the views on any given platform are diverse, but those on the Internet as a whole. There’s also the fact that it protects users from being liable for content created by other users. (For example, in a reply.)
S230 benefits ONLY corporations.
Corporations aren’t the only ones who can own a website, y’know. Anyone who runs or uses an ICS is protected.
The Public is still controlled!
Nope. Only the privately-owned platforms are controlled, not the users themselves.
SO?
“So” without §230, you wouldn’t have any sites that accept content from just any user. They’d still have full control.
Re: NO ONE is mistaking a user's opinion for the "platform".
Does anyone except masnicks in a hurry believe that users on Facebook / Twitter are speaking with the corporation's authority? Or that the corporations are supportive of the views? HMM? Anyone want to claim that? -- NO ONE MISTAKES users for the corporation. There is NO such association in anyone's mind.
Uh, yes they do. It happens a lot. Techdirt has discussed a number of occasions where this has happened. If it didn’t, §230 wouldn’t be used so often.
Re: Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of T
Again not true! The Boston Tea Party was to STOP the British East India corporation from controlling ALL the tea in the colonies. It was approved by the gov't, as are, to lesser but still dangerous degree, corporations today.
The Boston Tea Party tells us absolutely nothing about the Constitution. That tale does nothing to disprove the AC’s point. It’s completely and utterly irrelevant.
Additionally, the British East India company was a legally enforced (not just approved) monopoly. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are not monopolies, legally enforced or otherwise. (See Bing, DuckDuckGo, MySpace, Reddit, 4chan, 8kun, Parler, Gab, etc.)
Mainly, though, We The People authorize gov't agents to protect us from tyranny off all kinds and sources, including corporations. WHY do you want Corporate Royalty?
We don’t want “corporate royalty”. That’s just poisoning the well again. The simple fact of the matter is that the 1A does no more and no less than to restrain the government with regards to how it interacts with the governed, which, under the law, includes corporations. Even the authority that we give the government to protect us from corporations is limited by the 1A. That you don’t like the results doesn’t make that any less true. And, again, restraining corporate speech ultimately constrains the speech of human persons as well.
Re: Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of T
Corporations are LEGAL FICTIONS, period.
And those “legal fictions” are still considered persons under the law, and they’re also run by human persons. That’s the point.
OH, so Maz is WRONG.
Not exactly. See, the reason corporations have rights, aside from the ones explicitly assigned from them, is that corporations are made up of/run by human persons, and those human persons have rights, which means that the corporations have rights.
Yes, one unaccountable weenie in a cubicle somwhere. Is that your idea of First Amendment rights for The Public? It's a lot like the Ministry of Truth, then.
Outside of whether or not the originator of certain speech is a public figure or not or a government official/employee or not, any details on who is making the speech—whether they be a corporate employee writing on behalf of that corporation or an employer or just some random private citizen—is completely and utterly irrelevant to whether or not the speech is protected by the 1A. Accountability is similarly irrelevant. In fact, the whole point behind the 1A protections of free speech is that, outside of a few very limited exceptions, people aren’t legally accountable for what they say, let alone for what others say using their platform. That’s also the point of corporations: to protect individuals from being legally responsible for the actions and speech of the whole.
Again, that you do not like this or the results is irrelevant to what the law actually is.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION
A) Lawyers can be and are often wrong. Do YOU say is "spam is speech"?
The Supreme Court is a group of judges, not lawyers. While the Supreme Court can and has been wrong, it’s fairly rare, and until they overrule themselves, they have the final word about what the law is.
Yes, spam is speech. If it consists of words, then it’s speech. Even if it doesn’t consist of words, it can still be speech. Is spam 1A-protected free speech? That depends, but the fact is that there is no exception that carves out all spam from 1A protection. That doesn’t mean all laws that restrict or ban spam are necessarily unconstitutional; that is decided on a case-by-case basis. Do I consider spam to be speech of equal value to other speech? No. However, that last one has no legal relevance.
What I or any private citizen thinks should be considered speech does not change what the law says is considered speech.
B) Try to keep that in mind and no one here ever again refer to my comments as spam!
Irrelevant. This has nothing to do with whether or not spam is speech under the 1A.
This person never called your comments spam.
Nothing you said disproves any allegation that your comments are spam. Just saying that they aren’t doesn’t make it so.
Not all spam is commercial in nature, nor does all spam originate from corporations.
B does not logically follow from A. Nothing about the SC ruling that a distinction exists between commercial and non-commercial speech says anything about whether or not your comments are spam. Technically, it doesn’t even say anything about whether or not your comments are commercial speech, though I doubt anyone would argue that it is.
C) SC has made clear distinction of "commercial speech". Look it up.
Yes, the SC has distinguished commercial speech from non-commercial speech. However, they did not say that commercial speech isn’t protected by the 1A, nor did they say that commercial speech isn’t speech. They simply said that whether or not speech is commercial in nature is a factor to be considered when deciding how to apply 1A protections in specific cases or when deciding how to decide the constitutionality of certain laws that regulate speech. In other words, this point is ultimately irrelevant.
Again, commercial speech is not the same as speech from a corporation. Speech can be commercial even if it originates from a private citizen and not a corporation, and speech from a corporation is not necessarily commercial.
The SC has not made a distinction between speech that originates from a private citizen and speech that originates from a private corporation. Quite the opposite, really.
“Techdirt doesn't have to host spam and the government can't make Techdirt host it. Why should the first sentence be true but the second one untrue?”
Oh, the government COULD so you're trivially wrong
Actually, it can’t. Unless there’s some sort of contract that explicitly says that Techdirt has to host spam, the government cannot legally force Techdirt to host spam. Period. Again, the 1A and property rights mean that the government can’t force Techdirt or any website to host content it doesn’t want to and isn’t contractually obligated to.
But The Public doesn't want corporate / commercial speech to have same right / privilege as our own, that's for sure.
Irrelevant. Again, 1A case law does not distinguish between corporate speech and non-corporate speech, and the distinction between commercial and non-commercial speech (which is not the same thing) is rather limited; commercial speech still receives most of the same rights and privileges that non-commercial speech does, even if the protections are somewhat weaker. (And in most cases, whether or not the speech is commercial in nature is not the determining factor for free-speech cases. It’s often the least important factor except for anti-trust cases or in calculating damages.)
Also, whether or not the public (as in the general population) wants corporate speech or commercial speech to have the same rights and privileges is ultimately meaningless. The only thing that matters is what the law say, and the ones who decide the law are legislators and judges, with the Supreme Court having final say on what the law says. The public doesn’t decide anything other than who the elected officials are and, depending on the city/state, deciding whether some bills should become local/state laws.
And seriously, please stop conflating commercial speech and corporate speech. They are not the same thing. Corporations can make non-commercial speech, and non-corporations can make commercial speech.
Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of The P
Corporations have permissions LIKE "rights", and for convenience the term is used, but are NOT persons having 1A rights.
The Supreme Court has expressly ruled otherwise. See, for example, Citizens United. I think they got some things wrong in that case, and I don’t like the results, but 1) that doesn’t change what the law is right now, 2) I can’t find any fault in their reasoning to apply 1A protections to corporations, and 3) the law in this area is unlikely to change anytime soon. Again, that you believe that corporations should not be considered persons under the 1A does not change the fact that they are.
You show that right here every day when removing "commmercial speech" -- which is usually termed "spam".
There are some major flaws here.
Spam does not have to be commercial speech. Non-commercial speech can also be spam. Spam is just unwanted, repetitious, or completely disconnected from the subject.
Not all commercial speech is spam. Advertising is commercial speech, for example, but that doesn’t make it spam.
Neither spam nor commercial speech have to originate from a corporation. Human persons and bots owned and run by human persons are just as capable of posting spam or commercial speech.
Not all speech that originates from a corporation is considered commercial speech or spam. For example, an article in a corporate-owned newspaper is considered to be speech made by the corporation that runs the newspaper (except letters to the editor and such) (as well as being treated as being by the named author), yet the article is generally not considered to be commercial speech and is never considered spam.
And then there’s this:
YOU do not personally regard that as "speech", only unwanted intrusion by a commercial entity. PERIOD.
Um, you do know that commercial speech is speech, right? The clue is in the name. Spam is also speech, as is speech coming from a corporation. Again, all of these things have been affirmed multiple times by multiple courts, including the Supreme Court.
Now, it is true that Techdirt does consider commercial spam to be an unwanted intrusion by a commercial entity, whether it be a corporation or a human being, and so it does treat commercial spam differently from other speech, but that doesn’t mean that it is not speech, nor that it is not being treated as such. Removing that speech only shows that Techdirt doesn’t consider commercial spam to be worth keeping on their platform in any way, which is their right under the 1A and property law. They could do the same with your comments, which are not commercial and (presumably) don’t originate from a corporation, and that would be perfectly fine under the law.
As has been pointed out to you multiple times, that a person or corporation can and does legally remove certain speech from their platform doesn’t mean that they believe that the removed content isn’t speech protected by the 1A. That is true even without §230.
Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of The Publi
Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of The Public.
So how could they possibly have "rights"?
Because the law gives corporations rights, including the right to own and control property. Basically, the public (through their elected officials and the judges that interpret the laws created by them) gave them rights.
Corporations are NOT in the Constitution and because artificial, CANNOT be "citizens".
You've been told this dozens of times, Maz
And you’ve been told dozens of times that that is irrelevant. Like it or not, under the law, corporations are legally considered to be persons, and outside a few exceptions (such as the right to vote in elections or hold public office), most of the rights granted by the Constitution (outside of what the government is able to do) are guaranteed for all persons, not citizens, so the fact that corporations cannot be citizens has nothing to do with why we’re saying that the law grants corporations the right to free speech, free association, and to own property. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the Supreme Court. They’ve ruled multiple times that corporations have rights, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
and YET STILL INTENTIONALLY LIE.
Again, the Supreme Court and the statutes that are used to establish corporations are what say that corporations have rights. You may not think that they shouldn’t have these rights, but that doesn’t change what the law is, nor does it make it a lie, let alone an intentional lie, to say that the law doesn’t conform to your expectations or desires.
Now, can you actually disprove these claims about what the law is? Simply saying we’re wrong doesn’t make it so. The last time I made these claims, you tried to get my opinion on what the law should say, which is irrelevant when my argument is about what you claim the law is.
Re: Re: The Password Is Freely Available To Anyone/not
There’s a lot to unpack here, but let me start with by far the least important: I’m not a Baptist. Nor am I Catholic, for that matter. I have no idea why you think I am.
Also, in case you missed it, we’re talking about someone who’s a victim of police abuse and state power, not an enabler of it.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Consti
Oh, and then there’s this:
“Your justification for changing it is just that you don’t like corporations having power over the platforms that they own and run. Most find that idea antithetical to capitalism and basic human rights to property.”
Said who? Not even the original AC said that. The original AC was complaining about corporate personhood. The closest they got to saying "corporations shouldn't have rights to their own property" was:
“Do you think that corporations do or should exist independently of The People's benefit? Or are we to loose immortal monsters on ourselves?”
If you think that you should have the right to swing your fist any/every where you please, damn anyone / anything else in the way, I would say that it's your opinion that is antithetical and against basic human rights.
Congrats. You completely misunderstood what I said. The OP has said corporations have the right to own property. I fully acknowledge that. I’m just pointing out that what the OP was asking for by saying corporations shouldn’t be able to moderate their platforms would violate those rights that we all agree corporations should have: the basic right to own property. Again, see my bulletin-board analogy, which was meant to demonstrate how property rights protect the right to moderate content on a privately owned platform.
Look, this same person has been saying this same thing about corporations not being persons in a number of threads on multiple articles, and the full context is that they don’t think corporations should be able to moderate their own platforms, so §230 should be repealed. That’s what I was referring to.
I apologize again for assuming you were them; that was me being careless. Rereading your comment again, your style is completely different, so I should have known better. However, just so you know, this person is pretty infamous on this site, so we may be referencing things said in a different thread on a different article. For example, the reason I know this person agrees that corporations should have property rights is that they brought it up to defend why they think corporations should be able to defend copyrights, which was something not previously mentioned by them in that thread.
So yeah, I think you’re missing a lot of context, and I’m sorry I mistook you for the OP.
On the post: FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies
Re: Again with the "Actually"
I am aware of that. In fact, what you said is more or less the point I was getting at: the right to free speech for corporations is based on constitutional law. That means the government can’t control what private corporations host on their platforms.
Again, I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding here, because I actually agree with what you’re saying. This may possibly be because I worded my point poorly, but my point is the same as yours: the constitution doesn’t prevent private platforms from being moderated and actually protects that right.
Look, I was specifically addressing the claim by the OP that 1A protections that protect corporations (and human persons) from government interference are “statutorily granted privileges” rather than the constitutionally guaranteed rights that they are. Yes, it’s also true that the Constitution says nothing about restricting corporations at all, but I don’t believe that was the claim being made by the OP. Rather, they were trying to claim that the 1A in the constitution does not protect corporations from the government like it does human persons, only statutes might, which is false. That’s the claim I was addressing.
On the post: FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies
Re: Nope. Actually.
I believe you’ve completely misunderstood everything I said. I was disagreeing with Faber and saying that platforms absolutely have the right to moderate as they see fit. Basically, I agree with you.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Re:
Re: ISPs, that’s where net neutrality is supposed to come in.
On the post: Florida State Police Raid Home Of COVID Whistleblower, Point Guns At Her & Her Family, Seize All Her Computer Equipment
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Password Is Freely Available To Anyone/not
Any idea why he thinks I’m Baptist? That one came out of nowhere.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re:
We knew this was coming. We also knew the same thing would happen under Trump. What’s your point?
On the post: FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies
Re: Re: So your key assertion of "First Amendment rights&qu
Actually, corporations only control the portions of the internet that they own. Removing a link to an article from Facebook doesn’t remove the article itself from the internet. Remove a post from Twitter doesn’t prevent the poster from posting it on Parler. This is what Masnick wants. More importantly, it’s what the law says.
Nope. Masnick has supported the right of corporations to remove any speech from their platform, regardless of whether he agrees with that speech or their decision to remove it. You’re attacking a strawman.
Except the fact that he didn’t claim that corporations don’t have 4th Amendment rights—on the contrary—and the two claims aren’t inextricably linked given the fact that the Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that corporations have 1A rights in a separate case from any regarding the 4A rights of anyone. But, again, note that the target companies have the right to contest the broadness of the request. You’re completely misrepresenting what was said here.
On the post: FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies
Re: So your key assertion of "First Amendment rights" is hooey!
Actually, it’s based on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. It’s a constitutionally granted right.
On the post: FTC's Misses Opportunity To Understand Social Media; Instead Goes For Weird Fishing Expedition Against Odd Grouping Of Companies
Re: Corporations are NOT persons with rights: gov't can DEMAND i
Actually, you’ve been repeating this point over and over again. You even start the very next sentence with the word “again” to show you’re repeating yourself.
First, you are never consistent on what “the public” means. Sometimes it seems to mean the government. Other times it means the general populace. Which one is it? Be clear and consistent!
If by “the public” you mean “the general populace/citizenry”, then no, corporations do not need direct permission from the public to form, and they do not need to sign an agreement to serve them.
On the other hand, if by “the public” you mean “the government”, then yes, corporations do need to ask permission, but that doesn’t really take much to get; more importantly, though, outside of obeying the same laws and regulations that anyone in that industry (including private human persons) has to obey, corporations do not need to serve the government, either.
The only ones corporations need to serve are the owners, managers, and/or shareholders. You may wish it otherwise, but your wishes are not the law.
Now, while it is true that corporations must pay a fee to be formed, that really adds nothing material to this discussion.
Nope. Corporations do have 4A rights. They have used those rights to successfully contest many subpoenas and warrants. The dissent even points out that it is quite likely that these companies will contest the broadness of this request. The Fourth Amendment applies to anyone with property to be searched or seized. Like the 1A, the 4A applies to all legal persons and is not restricted to humans or citizens. They don’t have to “dish upon demand” any more than you do.
Once again, that you don’t believe they should have those rights doesn’t mean they don’t.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: But, Maz, you ARGUE that corporations DON'T have to!
By allowing online platforms to exist that, taken as a whole, are diverse in viewpoints. Not that the views on any given platform are diverse, but those on the Internet as a whole. There’s also the fact that it protects users from being liable for content created by other users. (For example, in a reply.)
Corporations aren’t the only ones who can own a website, y’know. Anyone who runs or uses an ICS is protected.
Nope. Only the privately-owned platforms are controlled, not the users themselves.
“So” without §230, you wouldn’t have any sites that accept content from just any user. They’d still have full control.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: NO ONE is mistaking a user's opinion for the "platform".
Uh, yes they do. It happens a lot. Techdirt has discussed a number of occasions where this has happened. If it didn’t, §230 wouldn’t be used so often.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Re: "right of association" is not included in MECHANICAL HOS
Sorry. This was me. It logged me out while I was typing.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of T
The Boston Tea Party tells us absolutely nothing about the Constitution. That tale does nothing to disprove the AC’s point. It’s completely and utterly irrelevant.
Additionally, the British East India company was a legally enforced (not just approved) monopoly. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are not monopolies, legally enforced or otherwise. (See Bing, DuckDuckGo, MySpace, Reddit, 4chan, 8kun, Parler, Gab, etc.)
We don’t want “corporate royalty”. That’s just poisoning the well again. The simple fact of the matter is that the 1A does no more and no less than to restrain the government with regards to how it interacts with the governed, which, under the law, includes corporations. Even the authority that we give the government to protect us from corporations is limited by the 1A. That you don’t like the results doesn’t make that any less true. And, again, restraining corporate speech ultimately constrains the speech of human persons as well.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of T
And those “legal fictions” are still considered persons under the law, and they’re also run by human persons. That’s the point.
Not exactly. See, the reason corporations have rights, aside from the ones explicitly assigned from them, is that corporations are made up of/run by human persons, and those human persons have rights, which means that the corporations have rights.
Outside of whether or not the originator of certain speech is a public figure or not or a government official/employee or not, any details on who is making the speech—whether they be a corporate employee writing on behalf of that corporation or an employer or just some random private citizen—is completely and utterly irrelevant to whether or not the speech is protected by the 1A. Accountability is similarly irrelevant. In fact, the whole point behind the 1A protections of free speech is that, outside of a few very limited exceptions, people aren’t legally accountable for what they say, let alone for what others say using their platform. That’s also the point of corporations: to protect individuals from being legally responsible for the actions and speech of the whole.
Again, that you do not like this or the results is irrelevant to what the law actually is.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Re: Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION
The Supreme Court is a group of judges, not lawyers. While the Supreme Court can and has been wrong, it’s fairly rare, and until they overrule themselves, they have the final word about what the law is.
Yes, spam is speech. If it consists of words, then it’s speech. Even if it doesn’t consist of words, it can still be speech. Is spam 1A-protected free speech? That depends, but the fact is that there is no exception that carves out all spam from 1A protection. That doesn’t mean all laws that restrict or ban spam are necessarily unconstitutional; that is decided on a case-by-case basis. Do I consider spam to be speech of equal value to other speech? No. However, that last one has no legal relevance.
Irrelevant. This has nothing to do with whether or not spam is speech under the 1A.
This person never called your comments spam.
Nothing you said disproves any allegation that your comments are spam. Just saying that they aren’t doesn’t make it so.
Not all spam is commercial in nature, nor does all spam originate from corporations.
Yes, the SC has distinguished commercial speech from non-commercial speech. However, they did not say that commercial speech isn’t protected by the 1A, nor did they say that commercial speech isn’t speech. They simply said that whether or not speech is commercial in nature is a factor to be considered when deciding how to apply 1A protections in specific cases or when deciding how to decide the constitutionality of certain laws that regulate speech. In other words, this point is ultimately irrelevant.
Again, commercial speech is not the same as speech from a corporation. Speech can be commercial even if it originates from a private citizen and not a corporation, and speech from a corporation is not necessarily commercial.
Actually, it can’t. Unless there’s some sort of contract that explicitly says that Techdirt has to host spam, the government cannot legally force Techdirt to host spam. Period. Again, the 1A and property rights mean that the government can’t force Techdirt or any website to host content it doesn’t want to and isn’t contractually obligated to.
Irrelevant. Again, 1A case law does not distinguish between corporate speech and non-corporate speech, and the distinction between commercial and non-commercial speech (which is not the same thing) is rather limited; commercial speech still receives most of the same rights and privileges that non-commercial speech does, even if the protections are somewhat weaker. (And in most cases, whether or not the speech is commercial in nature is not the determining factor for free-speech cases. It’s often the least important factor except for anti-trust cases or in calculating damages.)
Also, whether or not the public (as in the general population) wants corporate speech or commercial speech to have the same rights and privileges is ultimately meaningless. The only thing that matters is what the law say, and the ones who decide the law are legislators and judges, with the Supreme Court having final say on what the law says. The public doesn’t decide anything other than who the elected officials are and, depending on the city/state, deciding whether some bills should become local/state laws.
And seriously, please stop conflating commercial speech and corporate speech. They are not the same thing. Corporations can make non-commercial speech, and non-corporations can make commercial speech.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of The P
The Supreme Court has expressly ruled otherwise. See, for example, Citizens United. I think they got some things wrong in that case, and I don’t like the results, but 1) that doesn’t change what the law is right now, 2) I can’t find any fault in their reasoning to apply 1A protections to corporations, and 3) the law in this area is unlikely to change anytime soon. Again, that you believe that corporations should not be considered persons under the 1A does not change the fact that they are.
There are some major flaws here.
Spam does not have to be commercial speech. Non-commercial speech can also be spam. Spam is just unwanted, repetitious, or completely disconnected from the subject.
Not all commercial speech is spam. Advertising is commercial speech, for example, but that doesn’t make it spam.
Neither spam nor commercial speech have to originate from a corporation. Human persons and bots owned and run by human persons are just as capable of posting spam or commercial speech.
And then there’s this:
Um, you do know that commercial speech is speech, right? The clue is in the name. Spam is also speech, as is speech coming from a corporation. Again, all of these things have been affirmed multiple times by multiple courts, including the Supreme Court.
Now, it is true that Techdirt does consider commercial spam to be an unwanted intrusion by a commercial entity, whether it be a corporation or a human being, and so it does treat commercial spam differently from other speech, but that doesn’t mean that it is not speech, nor that it is not being treated as such. Removing that speech only shows that Techdirt doesn’t consider commercial spam to be worth keeping on their platform in any way, which is their right under the 1A and property law. They could do the same with your comments, which are not commercial and (presumably) don’t originate from a corporation, and that would be perfectly fine under the law.
As has been pointed out to you multiple times, that a person or corporation can and does legally remove certain speech from their platform doesn’t mean that they believe that the removed content isn’t speech protected by the 1A. That is true even without §230.
On the post: USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law
Re: Corporations begin and exist only by PERMISSION of The Publi
Because the law gives corporations rights, including the right to own and control property. Basically, the public (through their elected officials and the judges that interpret the laws created by them) gave them rights.
And you’ve been told dozens of times that that is irrelevant. Like it or not, under the law, corporations are legally considered to be persons, and outside a few exceptions (such as the right to vote in elections or hold public office), most of the rights granted by the Constitution (outside of what the government is able to do) are guaranteed for all persons, not citizens, so the fact that corporations cannot be citizens has nothing to do with why we’re saying that the law grants corporations the right to free speech, free association, and to own property. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the Supreme Court. They’ve ruled multiple times that corporations have rights, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Again, the Supreme Court and the statutes that are used to establish corporations are what say that corporations have rights. You may not think that they shouldn’t have these rights, but that doesn’t change what the law is, nor does it make it a lie, let alone an intentional lie, to say that the law doesn’t conform to your expectations or desires.
Now, can you actually disprove these claims about what the law is? Simply saying we’re wrong doesn’t make it so. The last time I made these claims, you tried to get my opinion on what the law should say, which is irrelevant when my argument is about what you claim the law is.
On the post: Florida State Police Raid Home Of COVID Whistleblower, Point Guns At Her & Her Family, Seize All Her Computer Equipment
Re: re: Nonsense
Also, what’s with the topic name? Is that a reference to something? Seriously, who are you responding to?
On the post: Florida State Police Raid Home Of COVID Whistleblower, Point Guns At Her & Her Family, Seize All Her Computer Equipment
Re: Re: The Password Is Freely Available To Anyone/not
There’s a lot to unpack here, but let me start with by far the least important: I’m not a Baptist. Nor am I Catholic, for that matter. I have no idea why you think I am.
Also, in case you missed it, we’re talking about someone who’s a victim of police abuse and state power, not an enabler of it.
But seriously, what are you talking about?
On the post: Florida State Police Raid Home Of COVID Whistleblower, Point Guns At Her & Her Family, Seize All Her Computer Equipment
Re: re: Nabiki
WTF?
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Consti
Oh, and then there’s this:
Congrats. You completely misunderstood what I said. The OP has said corporations have the right to own property. I fully acknowledge that. I’m just pointing out that what the OP was asking for by saying corporations shouldn’t be able to moderate their platforms would violate those rights that we all agree corporations should have: the basic right to own property. Again, see my bulletin-board analogy, which was meant to demonstrate how property rights protect the right to moderate content on a privately owned platform.
Look, this same person has been saying this same thing about corporations not being persons in a number of threads on multiple articles, and the full context is that they don’t think corporations should be able to moderate their own platforms, so §230 should be repealed. That’s what I was referring to.
I apologize again for assuming you were them; that was me being careless. Rereading your comment again, your style is completely different, so I should have known better. However, just so you know, this person is pretty infamous on this site, so we may be referencing things said in a different thread on a different article. For example, the reason I know this person agrees that corporations should have property rights is that they brought it up to defend why they think corporations should be able to defend copyrights, which was something not previously mentioned by them in that thread.
So yeah, I think you’re missing a lot of context, and I’m sorry I mistook you for the OP.
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