As is corporate speech.
Corporations are fictional entities on paper. They can’t speak. If you hear speech, it came from a human.
It was an interesting thought experiment that got off track.
Speech cannot be regulated. The status of the speaker, or source, is irrelevant to that.
So you’re admitting that non-humans can have rights?
So..you’re rejecting the proposition that free speech applies only to human-generated speech. But you’re saying that AI speech is only protected because it is considered a proxy for human speech…
Do you not see why this is incoherent?
Yeah, nice addition of that bracketed word.
Former state secrets aren’t state secrets. I was talking about state secrets.
All I’ve said is that I don’t believe that organizations’ rights are entailed by individual’s rights. I haven’t said that organizations do not or should not have freedom of speech.
Yet you just said AI speech is only protected because it is taken to be a proxy for a human’s speech.
That wasn’t the part of what you said that I was agreeing with. I was agreeing that organizations do not inherit the rights of their members.
But now you ask, sure, non-humans can have rights.
No, I’m saying that you may need to think of it as “proxy.” I’m saying it doesn’t matter.
Speech is free, the source doesn’t matter.
But even if they are still secrets, it’s not a crime. For instance, it’s a crime for a CIA agent to pass a secret to a news paper - but NOT a crime for the paper to publish it.
The crime in that case is not really a speech issue, even though it involves conveying information.
Yes, I believe you’ve said exactly that.
So can non-human entities have speech rights? Yes or no?
No, I’m saying that it was a proxy, but that’s not the reason.
Can non-human entities have speech rights? Yes or no?
Glad to hear that.
So let’s not hear any more about corporations not having rights simply because they aren’t human.
Yet you’ve also said several times it’s free because a human created it.
Life’s too short for me to get you to take one position or the other, so fine: I accept that you don’t believe that source matters and that the speech is free because the source is a human.
This is factually wrong however. I think you may be confused because once a CIA agent has revealed a secret to the world, it is no longer a secret, so the papers can do what they want with it (though even there it has been contested in court several times).
Genuine secrets however are explicitly not protected speech as described in the Espionage Act.
Fine, you can quote where I said such a thing then.
Yep.
That isn’t my point at all. My point on that matter was simply that organizations do not necessarily inherit all the rights of their members. I’ve said this very clearly several times yet you keep misstating my position.
Just pointing out that a human did. You can think of it however you choose.
Fine. Same difference.
Sigh.
We know that there are some narrow, logical exception to free speech - mostly because they involve ACTS that happen to involve speech. Nobody disputes this fact or the exceptions. The fact that they exist, however, don’t justify any and all exceptions. I could drive a truck through your exception.
Good. Glad that’s over. What’s left of your argument?
I may have mistaken you with other posters, or misunderstood you. In any event, what’s left?
You disputed it.
And “the existence of an exception justifies all exceptions” is a straw man and has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
My argument has not been affected at all by you repeatedly misstating it. I summarized it just now in post #57. I’m not going to repeat it.
Let’s sweep all the other stuff aside and get right to it then, okay?
You said in post 57:
So do you now disagree?
Fine, then I’ll amend it to say that a corporation should have any speech rights that a group of people has. Is that really all we’re arguing about?
And I’ll ask again: Do you believe that groups of people should have lesser speech rights than individuals?
Nope. Why would my position have changed?
Do you know what entailed means? Because I might understand why you think there is an inconsistency in my position if you are misinterpreting that word.
Well this is quite a different thing to your original point.
Whether a corporation inherits all the individual rights of its members and whether it inherits just the collective group rights of its member set has very different implications.
Anyway, if you’re asking me about the general case of whether corporations necessarily inherit the collective group rights of its member set, the answer is still “no”. I can think of examples of things a group of people are allowed to do that their corporation would not.
If you’re simply asking me whether corporations should have free speech, my answer is “yes, with a caveat”. My own position is that the current interpretation of the first amendment is flawed, and as it’s pretty arbitrary which rights we pass on to corporations, there is leeway there for reconsidering the issue.
You say “ask again”, when did you ask the first time?
But my answer to your leading question is that I don’t believe that groups should necessarily have less speech rights than individuals, nor do I believe they should necessarily have more speech rights, nor do I believe that they necessarily should have the same rights.
Such as the disbursement of money for electioneering communications?
The lawyer really argued for it. It didn’t establish precedent, but the argument existed. Not to mention, there is now precedent for a broadcaster’s first amendment right to lie.
While the wording was hyperbolic, a court decision could have decided corporations could have all the legal rights of people at the time and more recent precedent overrided that. It can certainly happen in reverse, as in the case of Citizens United overturning Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce - which was a suit based on the fourteenth amendment. Michigan found “[laws burdening the Chamber’s political expression] are justified by a compelling state interest: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption in the political arena by reducing the threat that huge corporate treasuries, which are amassed with the aid of favorable state laws and have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas, will be used to influence unfairly election outcomes.”
Basically, regulating Commerce between the states. As it happens, democracy may not be synonymous with liberty. Bribery laws are a restriction on speech (a corporation cannot appoint a Congress member as a spokesperson), but they are in the interests of a functioning democratic state. As it happens, campaign contributions and donations to candidates are functionally equivalent (as you argue spending money on speech is the same as speech) to bribery. As it happens, direct corporate contributions ought to help Democrats.
Mixed metaphor. Individual disbursements on electioneering material are legal.
Except those passive investors reap the benefits of holding a share in that corporation without being held to the costs when they arrive.
Except the Supreme Court has already determined that Congress can regulate the time, place and manner of political speech and there are even more stringent restrictions on commercial speech (see tobacco) subject to the Central Hudson test. The right to speech is not the right to an audience. In England, political advertising is banned from television and radio and parties which can then choose time slots. Television is owned and operated for the public interest and they can determine, more or less, what content they desire on the television. A similar system is in place in the US with the FCC, which may fine individuals or groups of individuals for airing their views (even their political views) at the wrong time or in the wrong place.
Which the pertinent part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act wasn’t doing. It was outlawing corporate disbursements on electioneering communications.
No.
And my previous comment still stands.
But it didn’t.
I was being sarcastic. Thanks for noticing.
What’s that have to do with speech?
This is neither a time place and manner issue nor commercial speech.
This is not England.
Our Bill of Rights was written directly in response to abuses by the government back in England.
See Buckley v. Valeo.
No? The relevant segment of BCRA specified a time during which electioneering communications were not permitted. The content of the specific speech would be permitted at other times and it passes two prongs of the intermediate scrutiny (content neutral, significant government interest) and arguably passes the others (narrowly tailored and ample channels).
There was precedent for the opposite interpretation too: McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.
It specified a particular SOURCE of speech for censorship. That’s not time and manner, it’s a fundamental violation of the First Amendment.
Go overturn Buckley and get back to me.
If you want me to explain why Buckley was right - and give you examples that will force you to agree - let me know.
Except BCRA didn’t censor electioneering communications, it just restricted expenditure on them for a certain time by certain groups. Just as certain groups cannot protest the president at certain times and places.
You’re still so completely full of it.
To compare an outright ban on any spending on speech by an entire class to a restriction on (all, not just some) people mounting protests for security reasons is just a fucking joke. It would be laughed out of court. I shouldn’t have to explain why.
Not a legally protected class.
This post has no meaning in this debate. You seem to be applying the language of discrimination law. I’m simply using class in the general sense.
All classes are legally protected by the First Amendment, meaning that the government may not create any particular class to remove protection from based simply on whether the government thinks that class’s speech is somehow illegitimate or the people can’t handle the influence.
Then why even bring the term up? The whole thread is a litany of exceptions to the first amendment.