My point is that tomndebb’s rights as a private individual are identical to his rights as a corporate representative. He doesn’t acquire any new rights when he puts his corporate representative hat on. He’s just using the rights he always has for a different purpose.
I did in several posts above.
When the ACLU files a suit over suppressing the book, would it be Das Kapital vs USA? I suspect not, I think it would be Amazon.com vs USA, or Library vs USA, or Book Owners vs USA. Specifically, a collection of human beings with standing to challenge the new law.
Yes, but they are not the originators of the speech being suppressed.
So?
Speech doesn’t have to be original to be protected. If I wanted to own a copy of Das Kapital, and the government raided my home to take it away, I sure as hell would think that my rights were violated, not the rights of some sheets of paper.
The book doesn’t have any right to exist, but I have the right to own it, read it, re-print it, or read from it out loud on a street corner, if I want.
So it is not their “freedom of speech” that is being violated.
Your “rights” would be but not your “freedom of speech”. The “freedom of speech” applies to the book, not to you.
There seems to be a misunderstanding here.
Who in this thread is claiming anything different?
The argument is whether the government can restrict speech solely on the grounds that it originates from (or is published by) a corporation, rather than an individual.
But doesn’t the corporation have First Amendment rights apart from the individual people that are employed by the corporation? That seems to be the inevitable conclusion of the existing case law.
Notice that the appellant was not the Times publisher nor any Times editor - it was the Times Corporation.
Like I said above - the Declaration of Independence was written by a committee, and as such reads differently than it would had it been written by a single person.
Also - there is the question of the unsigned editorial in a newspaper. Isn’t this best understood as a corporate work?
Terr, maybe I misunderstand your position, but wouldn’t the protection of disembodied speech be pointless, since such an entity could not enter a lawsuit and so the first amendment be effectively unenforceable in court?
A committee consisting of what? Were there members of this committee that were horses or chickens or dolphins?
Other entities can enter a lawsuit if they can show that violating the freedom of such disembodied speech damages them.
It seems like you three are going round and round about a false premise that is completely irrelevant. Read the text. The First Amendment doesn’t create an individual right; it restricts Congress.