Today San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn ruled in Jared Taylor’s favor during a hearing Thursday on Twitter’s request to dismiss. Dismiss what, many are asking?
I know, I was too. Keep reading:
What in the ever-loving…?
I agree with Mr. Carome and think it’s weird that he’d have to explain that to a SC Judge, but I’m not an official law-talking guy so maybe it’s not that weird. But the argument put forth by Mr. Taylor’s law-talking guys also seems weird to me:
Judge Kahn at least thinks this is a legitimate enough argument for the court proceedings to continue, but I’ll be ddamned if I can figure out why this wasn’t immediately tossed out of court; it seems completely unreasonable.
Twitter operates on a public resources, the internet and the airwaves. Without that it wouldn’t and couldn’t exist. They should not be allowed to censor.
Twitter is a private company and can censor anyone they feel like for any reason whatsoever.
I guarantee you if I go on some places like /r/The_Donald on Reddit and say anything remotely liberal they will ban me in a heartbeat. And that’s fine as far as the law goes and I will not be suing them over it.
This is no different.
I am amazed this judge is so far off base (unless I am missing something). This is high school level civics stuff.
The airwaves they are using are owned by Verizon and AT&T and Sprint and so on who purchased the spectrum from the government for cell phone use.
You and I pay our cell providers for use of those airwaves.
They are not broadcasters and we do not get the signals for free like broadcast TV so they are not regulated.
The internet is also not a public resource. It is all privately owned and we pay for its use. Same as cable TV (which is why cable TV is able to offer nudity and violence and whatnot that broadcast TV cannot).
Twitter is a communication system provider, the Dope is not. The situation is the equivalent of an ISP not allowing the Dope to operate because they don’t like what Cecil, or Ed, or you or I believe in even though the Dope has not violated any rules of the internet.
It is not a cite. You asked a question that I had already provided an answer to.
There are not unlimited airwaves. You may not consider these things to be public resources, maybe the law doesn’t either, but I help pay for them and I do. If twitter wants to buy all of the land to run cable to your twitting device without using eminent domain or public airwaves for people to say “I’m tweeting now”, then they can censor anything they want. But they didn’t do that, they couldn’t possibly do that and have enough users to make it worthwhile at the price they would have to charge.
There’s another more important principle here, I may not like what you say, I may hate what you say, I may hate you, but I will defend with my life your right to say
your loathsome speech. Freedom of speech is the most fundamental freedom, without it none of our rights can be maintained.
Verizon and AT&T and their like buy radio spectrum for cell phone use. You rent use of that spectrum. They are not broadcasting to the public. They are broadcasting to their subscribers. They are agnostic (at least so far) about what content you request and is sent to you via the cell network.
That or you are renting a hard wired pipe to your house from an ISP. Again not public, akin to cable TV so not regulated as a public resource.
And as for your last bit ONLY the government can deny you your first amendment rights. Twitter can’t. The SDMB can’t. Reddit can’t. Breitbart can’t. YouTube can’t. Take your pick. They can all censor you on their own platform at a whim for any or no reason whatsoever. None are required to carry your or anyone else’s message.
If any of what you say is well accepted I still disagree with it. The government has the right to regulate all of these services in the public interest. The government can regulate services using no pubic resources if it is in the public interest. Neither you nor I decide these things, they have to be decided through the courts when they come into question. I have given my opinion on the subject, I think the judge should stand up to your kind of reasoning, and apparently he has. I sincerely doubt this will make it through the process and that Nazi asshole will be censored.
You’ll change your mind on the subject once your right to free speech is taken away.
