But literally all modern states have media censorship. Literally all of them. For example, prohibitions on libel or fraud. That’s censorship. Confidentiality of national secrets is a form of censorship. Hell, even copyright laws can be interpreted as a form of censorship.
Libel/slander is a civil suit, not a crime. Fraud is falsification yielding a gain. Private institutions can and should determine their own code of conduct.
The problem comes into play the day that SCOTUS puts an asterisk on the first amendment to determine an intangible. As soon as the government has the precedent to enact censorship legislation, the tool will be available to whatever corrupt leader decides to wield it.
I’m not deflecting. I don’t understand your question. Fraud involves a contract or gain. That’s not protected by free speech.
I think the problem stems from your lack of understanding of how the Constitution protects freedom of speech. I’m simply saying once we grant the government permission to silence our enemies, they can use that power to silence us.
What does “protected by ‘free speech’” even mean? Who is this free speech and how are they protecting or not protecting anything?
Fraud is a form of speech. It’s putting ideas out into the world – ideas that induce a false understanding in another, typically to reap some material benefit to the fraudster… but lots of the protected forms of speech do that.
The state punishes this speech by outlining a procedure for a harmed party to punish the fraudster, backed by the authority of the state (i.e., lawsuits).
Just because speech is part of a contract doesn’t magically transmogrify it into non-speech. Besides, what even constitutes a “contract” isn’t something we can say is fully and perfectly defined…
So here we have speech and punishment for it. That sums up to censorship. And how do we decide what is and isn’t “fraud” and so does or doesn’t qualify as protected speech? It’s complicated. Very complicated. We have a huge statutory framework. Legal tests. We’re still trying to specify the line. The target shifts through all of history. Cases get overturned and updated and our frameworks and tests evolve. Sometimes we go too far. Sometimes not far enough. Sometimes the shifting reality of how our society operates changes the balancing point. Sometimes we have simply been wrong and regretted it.
Now I think I know what you actually are trying to say. That political speech needs to be highly protected from government meddling. That’s hardly a radical idea. I don’t know any credible person who disagrees with it.
But there’s also a significant legal grey area between which, for example, it becomes hard to identify where political speech ends and direct calls to violence start. Surely it isn’t protected for a political leader standing in front of a riled mob to point across the street to his political enemy and shout “go kill him, now!” But where’s the exact point where the rhetoric shifted from “proper” political speech to a call to violence, exactly? How much subtext and implication are we going to accept? How riled does the crowd have to be? Either way, by outlining a point where speech can end you up punished, we’ve censored that speech. And censorship through civil action is still censorship, don’t be confused.
In its best form, the state exists to help balance rights in tension. When one person’s speech rights are out of balance with the harms that speech inflicts on another (such as in fraud or an incitement to violent), the state exists to mediate that. And we should want it to be just and fair when it does, and balance that tension in a way that creates the best possible environment. Join the reasonable people and discuss where you think things fall on that balance. Don’t pretend there’s some magical and inviolable difference between this censorship and other kinds that are acceptable, though. Have a reason.
Fraud involves intentional deception to gain something of value, usually money. One commits fraud through false statements, misrepresentation, or dishonest conduct intended to mislead or deceive. This article looks at types of fraud crimes and the criminal and civil penalties for fraud.
Fighting words are words meant to incite violence such that they may not be protected free speech under the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court first defined them in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire (1942) as words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.
I’m not suggesting we go backwards. I’m concerned about the repercussions of allowing SCOTUS to set the precedent of what can and cannot be said or written by citizens or media to protect the feelings of others. That sets the precedent for a crime of opinion regarding freedom of speech.
I know it’s a harsh stance, and as an empathetic person, I hate that I can’t trust my government enough with the power to protect the vulnerable. I simply don’t trust them enough with that power.
Plenty of protected political speech involves deception with gain (especially gain of political office). Inciting violence is already against the law… and that law is a form of censorship.
I’m concerned about the repercussions of allowing SCOTUS to set the precedent of what can and cannot be said or written by citizens or media to protect the feelings of others.
And I am saying they already can do and did and you need to engage with that and not pretend there’s some magical line that cannot be crossed. Defining what is and isn’t protected speech is a complex and ever-ongoing negotiation. The links you provided are evidence of this – are evidence that I am right. There isn’t a clear categorical definition that separates the protected from unprotected – what is protected and isn’t protected is defined only by where the censorship starts.
You should be highly concerned with the repercussions of the SCOTUS’s decisions. They’re a corrupt institution that historically nearly always act as a brake on expanding civil rights. Good news for you on this subject, this SCOTUS would never let a hate speech law stand – they quite like to see vulnerable people persecuted. More good news: there basically are no hate speech laws. The only government agencies censoring political speech right now are far right conservative ones like Florida, doing the exact thing you fear. It aint progressives and it aint happening with support of progressives.
But you can’t pretend that speech isn’t speech and censorship isn’t censorship just to make your own political ideology easier to reckon. That’s just embracing censorship in a different way.
Again, many forms of censorship are uncontentious. Here we have links to two forms of censorship that are such. If there’s some new kind of censorship you find objectionable, identify it and make the case for why it is worse than its counterfactual.
That’s fair. I disagree that fraud applies to your point, because there is a transactional gain involved, but I agree that inciting violence is a limit on free speech.
The difference with hate speech, that specifically doesn’t lead to a crime like inciting violence, is that it’s ambiguous. It’s determined solely by the victim, without a tangible effect. That’s exactly the type of legislation that would lead to media censorship and control by a corrupt government.
But literally all modern states have media censorship. Literally all of them. For example, prohibitions on libel or fraud. That’s censorship. Confidentiality of national secrets is a form of censorship. Hell, even copyright laws can be interpreted as a form of censorship.
Libel/slander is a civil suit, not a crime. Fraud is falsification yielding a gain. Private institutions can and should determine their own code of conduct.
The problem comes into play the day that SCOTUS puts an asterisk on the first amendment to determine an intangible. As soon as the government has the precedent to enact censorship legislation, the tool will be available to whatever corrupt leader decides to wield it.
You aren’t answering me. You’re deflecting.
Are we legalizing fraud or not?
I’m not deflecting. I don’t understand your question. Fraud involves a contract or gain. That’s not protected by free speech.
I think the problem stems from your lack of understanding of how the Constitution protects freedom of speech. I’m simply saying once we grant the government permission to silence our enemies, they can use that power to silence us.
What does “protected by ‘free speech’” even mean? Who is this free speech and how are they protecting or not protecting anything?
Fraud is a form of speech. It’s putting ideas out into the world – ideas that induce a false understanding in another, typically to reap some material benefit to the fraudster… but lots of the protected forms of speech do that.
The state punishes this speech by outlining a procedure for a harmed party to punish the fraudster, backed by the authority of the state (i.e., lawsuits).
Just because speech is part of a contract doesn’t magically transmogrify it into non-speech. Besides, what even constitutes a “contract” isn’t something we can say is fully and perfectly defined…
So here we have speech and punishment for it. That sums up to censorship. And how do we decide what is and isn’t “fraud” and so does or doesn’t qualify as protected speech? It’s complicated. Very complicated. We have a huge statutory framework. Legal tests. We’re still trying to specify the line. The target shifts through all of history. Cases get overturned and updated and our frameworks and tests evolve. Sometimes we go too far. Sometimes not far enough. Sometimes the shifting reality of how our society operates changes the balancing point. Sometimes we have simply been wrong and regretted it.
Now I think I know what you actually are trying to say. That political speech needs to be highly protected from government meddling. That’s hardly a radical idea. I don’t know any credible person who disagrees with it.
But there’s also a significant legal grey area between which, for example, it becomes hard to identify where political speech ends and direct calls to violence start. Surely it isn’t protected for a political leader standing in front of a riled mob to point across the street to his political enemy and shout “go kill him, now!” But where’s the exact point where the rhetoric shifted from “proper” political speech to a call to violence, exactly? How much subtext and implication are we going to accept? How riled does the crowd have to be? Either way, by outlining a point where speech can end you up punished, we’ve censored that speech. And censorship through civil action is still censorship, don’t be confused.
In its best form, the state exists to help balance rights in tension. When one person’s speech rights are out of balance with the harms that speech inflicts on another (such as in fraud or an incitement to violent), the state exists to mediate that. And we should want it to be just and fair when it does, and balance that tension in a way that creates the best possible environment. Join the reasonable people and discuss where you think things fall on that balance. Don’t pretend there’s some magical and inviolable difference between this censorship and other kinds that are acceptable, though. Have a reason.
Fraud is not deception. It’s deception with gain:
https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/fraud.html
Inciting violence is already against the law:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_words
I’m not suggesting we go backwards. I’m concerned about the repercussions of allowing SCOTUS to set the precedent of what can and cannot be said or written by citizens or media to protect the feelings of others. That sets the precedent for a crime of opinion regarding freedom of speech.
I know it’s a harsh stance, and as an empathetic person, I hate that I can’t trust my government enough with the power to protect the vulnerable. I simply don’t trust them enough with that power.
Plenty of protected political speech involves deception with gain (especially gain of political office). Inciting violence is already against the law… and that law is a form of censorship.
And I am saying they already can do and did and you need to engage with that and not pretend there’s some magical line that cannot be crossed. Defining what is and isn’t protected speech is a complex and ever-ongoing negotiation. The links you provided are evidence of this – are evidence that I am right. There isn’t a clear categorical definition that separates the protected from unprotected – what is protected and isn’t protected is defined only by where the censorship starts.
You should be highly concerned with the repercussions of the SCOTUS’s decisions. They’re a corrupt institution that historically nearly always act as a brake on expanding civil rights. Good news for you on this subject, this SCOTUS would never let a hate speech law stand – they quite like to see vulnerable people persecuted. More good news: there basically are no hate speech laws. The only government agencies censoring political speech right now are far right conservative ones like Florida, doing the exact thing you fear. It aint progressives and it aint happening with support of progressives.
But you can’t pretend that speech isn’t speech and censorship isn’t censorship just to make your own political ideology easier to reckon. That’s just embracing censorship in a different way.
Again, many forms of censorship are uncontentious. Here we have links to two forms of censorship that are such. If there’s some new kind of censorship you find objectionable, identify it and make the case for why it is worse than its counterfactual.
That’s fair. I disagree that fraud applies to your point, because there is a transactional gain involved, but I agree that inciting violence is a limit on free speech.
The difference with hate speech, that specifically doesn’t lead to a crime like inciting violence, is that it’s ambiguous. It’s determined solely by the victim, without a tangible effect. That’s exactly the type of legislation that would lead to media censorship and control by a corrupt government.