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To what extent does MONEY=SPEECH?
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You can take it as an argument either way really. And it's very useful because if you aren't thinking about what constitutes speech and the freedom thereof, what the fuck do you think you are saying when you are talking about "free speech"?
No, but it does mean that with your money, you just bought more speech.
If no one read your blog, you weren't communicating. You weren't speaking.
Now you just paid money and you are, because people are now reading your blog.
Money => Speech
No, I've merely pointed out that the formulation of "free speech" you are using makes no fucking sense because it doesn't seem to include listeners.
And I'm not particularly envisioning any policy right now. I'm pointing out how we already regulate free speech and how this inherently makes some people's speech more "free" then others. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
Who gets to decide who's speech gets heard? Because once you say "the market", as we do most of the time currently, money becomes speech in a sense as money buys more/better/freer speech.
Indeed. And society already does this. So why are you so up in arms about the method that is used? Why is the current one all about justice and equality and another method, that does exactly the same type of thing, tyranny?
As I said, speech is regulated. It's always regulated and always will be. The question is, what method is used to do that. We are already infringing on people's "freedom of speech" because people can't communicate with everyone the instant they desire to. Our speech is already limited.
You say " The right to be heard speaks directly to your right to disseminate speech, but that is its extent.", but heard by whom? How can this be it's extent when it doesn't even answer the basic fucking question of who is listening. Who can listen.
We already engage in censorship. We do it by bank account and by a host of other means. But money, being the topic of this thread, is the one I'm specifically pointing out.
I don't have the money to make a broadcast over the TV or the radio and so I am censored. My voice goes unheard. Just because no one is directly holding me down doesn't mean I'm not being stopped.
And thus we return to the question not of whether we should limit speech, because it's ridiculous to pretend it's not happening already, but to the question of how we should limit speech. Based on what?
Right now, we often use market forces. But by doing so, we inherently tie a large part of freedom of speech to money. To go back to political speech for a second, money buys political speech. No question. Start a PAC, buy an ad, wield 10x the influence of anyone on this forum instantly, just because you've got the cash.
And thus money more or less becomes speech. Having that money and spending it is communicating ideas through a whole host of means.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Society is not the government. The bill of rights protects a total freedom of speech. What your are suggesting is that the government now systematically limit freedom of speech in some way.
That is not the same as society filtering what voices become popular and which do not.
Regulations are very few and they should stay that way. It's fine to discuss changing the amount of speech we regulate and in what ways but we need to be very cautious. Suggesting that speech is already regulated as a defense of more regulations doesn't strike me as a very cautious or sensible approach to this topic.
As to whether or not people,can't communicate with each other the instant they desire, I would say that that is completely and probably false. Even those on welfare are usually provided with internet access. What the hell are you talking about?
I keep asking what you mean by "who can listen?" the answer is "anyone can listen to anyone else." People have total freedom in this society to speak and be heard. They may not have equal success or equal entry points, but nobody is prevented from being heard.
You seem to be suggesting otherwise and I literally do not understand your idea that people with less money have less "freedom" to be listened to. That's like saying I have less freedom to buy a Lexus than someone making more money than me. That may be true semantically but it has no relevance in a discussion on what legal freedoms the government should protect or regulate.
I don't think I can really respond to any more of this because you keep relying on this fundamental point that to me is just not correct. I see vaguely where you are coming from but I think you are applying a broad definition of "freedom" in a context where such a definition is wrong.
Unless you're advocation for total socialism here. Are you? I don't know what else to derive from your concept of equal lists hood or whatever. How can the government ever guarantee any such thing?
I think this is a totally irrational concept of censorship. And almost every cable network has some kind of public access channel, so you could look into that if you really want to be on TV. Fox News is only one wealthy media corporation. What about a film or game studio? I don't have the ability to wake up tomorrow and make a 60 billion dollar film or game. But they probably can. Does that mean I am being censored? It strikes me that you would answer yes, and I find that silly.
it makes total sense. That is the definition our government operates on. The right to be listened to has been protected by the supreme court various times as well, in the ways already discussed in this thread. The government can't say "don't say this" and they also can't say "don't sell his book" (or a dozen other variants of that kind of chilling effect).
That definition makes total sense, because the bill of rights, especially freedom of speech, was not enacted to protect us from our wealthy neighbors being able to more effectively communicate than us. It's fine if you want to argue that that should be part of its interpretation, I guess, but to argue that the definition of "freedom of speech" being discussed here "makes no fucking sense" is ludicrous. It's exactly what freedom of speech means at this moment in time.
And if you want to argue for a fundamental restructuring in disseminating speech, I feel you should be able to conceptualize and communicate how speech in society would function. I'm not asking for an intricate flow chart here. Just a vague idea of what you're talking about would be nice.
The First Amendment does not protect a "total freedom of speech" by any stretch of the imagination, and the government already does systematically limit freedom of speech in a whole bunch of ways.
Poor use of words. My other points remain. That the govrnment does restrict speech to some small degree doesn't justify an argument in favor of this severe, upheaving type of restriction shryke seems to be suggesting,
I think "a whole bunch of ways" is misleading. The restrictions to free speech are pretty exceptional. What's being discussed here is a vast, fundamental restriction that, at least in my view, contradicts a free market society.
This has to be the goosiest thing you've said. It does no such thing, and this is a point the SCOTUS has made several times.
No, there are a whole fuckton of restrictions on free speech. Libel, slander, shouting fire in a crowded theater, obscenity, electioneering, harassment, and on and on and on.
I already responded to this. It's 1:50 and I'm typing this in my bed on an iPad. Yay freedom of speech.
But thanks for ignoring the rest of my post in favor of trying to show me up for a single mistyped word.
I guess we'll have to disagree on what constitutes "a whole fuckton."
I don't dispute that there are various restrictions to free speech. But the argument that restrictions exist therefore other restrictions are okay too is kind of dumb. I mean it's fine to point that out as a prelude to discussing what you think another valid restriction might be, but to reassert it over and over as if it has some kind of bearing on whether or not THIS kind of restriction is something we should entertain is silly
Fun fact: the restrictions on political ad spending that was part of campaign finance law until Citizens United overruled it was based on existing restrictions on electioneering, so arguing that one restriction exists and therefore other applications of that same restriction based on changes in technology should also perhaps exist as well is kind of not dumb.
No, I'm showing you up for your continued issue of working to honor the letter of the law while violating its spirit. The point that's being argued consistently is that there is more to freedom of speech than just "the government can't restrict you". Look at the discussion we had recently about people on BOTH sides of the spectrum having their jobs used to restrict their freedom of speech.
There's a serious problem when companies can buy up the loudest megaphones, turn them over to ideologues, and in doing so give themselves a national heckler's veto. And some of us think that it does, in fact, reach that extraordinary level.
I'm not advocating violating the spirit of the law, I think we just have two different concepts of what the spirit of the law is. I've been trying to get someone, anyone, to explain to me what should be done to equalize speech and the nature of public discourse after any new regulations are made. I think it's necessary to provide some kind of clarity on that if we want to discuss the spirit of free speech.
Whether or not the spirit of free speech is maintained or violated in a situation like this depends as much on the how and the what-after as the why. People are only talking about the why here and saying "see, this isn't cool" and I can understand that to a degree but to discuss then spirit of free speech without discussing how tit would be restricted and what the nature of "free speech" would be after is pointless.
So I very much would like to hear some at least hazy idea on what people mean beyond "fuck, we have this problem - let's do something about it" because I don't see how it can be done, in the framing many people have provided, without totally fucking up the nature of free speech as we mean it in this country, current restrictions and all.
This would only be true if ink was the only thing that you could buy by the barrel. The wealthy, through branding, quite literally BUY trusted social identities with which to make use of their barrels full of ink. Whether they drive traffic to a blog is irrelevant if they have the ability to ensure that the traffic they drive to that blog is all of people who've just come there for the sole purpose of immaturely mocking it and possibly maliciously attacking it.
I really can't stress this enough, there's an inherent danger in allowing the ability to purchase social trust and then use that social trust entirely in an unregulated way. This is where it gets interesting because why the hell do you think Citizens United even happened? Corporations are trying to be seen as people, or at least pseudo-entities comparable to people so they can gain public trust because of doing some good things well and then use that trust that may be acquired in one area to exploit you in another.
Unlike people a company is far, far more removed from any negative consequences of its actions in our society versus an individual. Go read Ross' Caveat Emptor thread if you just want to understand the sort of people who you are allowing to find ways to use money to exploit your trust. We have every reason to regulate speech by a commercial entity, ESPECIALLY one that purports to be telling the unvarnished truth.
Sorry, I'm late to this game.
But freedom of speech is a protection against the power of government. As such, it is ultimately neither of these things above. It is a freedom to listen and hear. These days we get all snooty about our "individual rights," but I don't think that freedom of speech was ever really about your individual right to express yourself, and certainly not about your right to reach others. Those things are effective means in this, sure, but nevertheless, the key element here is that as a free, voting citizen, I am entitled to hear any ideas that I want. I'm entitled to access anything that's out there, and the government cannot step in and decide what kinds of speech are good for me and what kinds aren't. Especially when we're talking about political speech.
Exceptions based on practical dangers and harms are one thing. They don't involve political censorship. The issue of today is straight-up political censorship, and as such is completely different from other practical exceptions.
That's the whole point, isn't it? That government can't stop you from hearing a message it doesn't want you to hear? That's how we get political freedom out of this. Not because we're all children who need the satisfaction of having Mom put our finger-painting up on the refigerator of society... screw that. Grow up. The point is that if there's a newsletter, or a painting, or a movie, or a song, or whatever it may be, and it's making waves with the people and changing their minds, getting them to think or see or believe differently, then this is a free society and the government is the absolute last organization we should allow to come in and say, "no, stop listening, that's not fair, that's not the kinds of stuff you should hear!!!"
Whether or not we define the funds that paid for the message to be from a "person" or not is just a distracting dickwaggle. Whether or not a corporation is a person was never a significant issue and arguably never an issue at all. The idea that the government should step in and protect me from hearing too much corporate-funded political speech, though, is quite a stark insult to free speech. It's the government deciding for me what are good political ideas and what are bad political ideas. That's so very much not what they are supposed to do in a free-speech society. I don't need the government to decide for me that corporate-funded speech is bad speech. Maybe I don't agree that it is. Maybe I think that corporate-funded speech is even better and more important than Joe the Plumber's lawn art. Maybe you think I'm wrong about that. Whoop-dee-doo. Just don't tell me that the government needs to step in and decide in your favor, because that means the government just pulled one over on both of us.
As for the "bullhorn," the idea that money will drown out other voices... how was your lengthy stay on Mars? Nice to have you back. Been to digg lately? Reddit? CNN.com? The P-A forums? Twitter? Have you noticed how no message goes out anymore without a comet-trail of comments from the masses? My TV stations go to 9999. I remember when it was 3, and I'm not that old. Hell, I even fast-forward through those expensive political ads. The bullhorn, if it ever existed, was in the hands of liberal print and TV media tycoons of decades past, and has no relevance today. Today there is a firehose of speech from a nearly infinite number of sources open to practically everyone, and no way that any group could use money to steer it all. Today individuals can communicate and be heard across the country in so many easy ways, that it makes the very idea of a bullhorn an infinitessimal possibility compared to past decades. Did you notice how Obama used new-fangled whoozits like Twitter to draw in a game-changing record amount of individual contributions? Did you ever stop to think about ridiculous it is to claim that we are under threat from a drowning-out corporate bullhorn?