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>I don't understand your points.

Here's the Cliff Notes version:

The examples you brought up as arguments to why free speech can't be absolute (which I didn't argue for in the first place) are contrived and unrelated to free speech.

They are also already covered by existing laws, such as laws against conspiracy to commit murder, about the right of exclusion, etc. If anything I'm separating concerns, mixed up for no good reason.

As for my statement about FA, it's pointing how its protections are rendered moot, since they don't apply to private businesses and thus don't protect speech (the kind that matters, not mob hits) in places where the public discourse really happens nowadays. So, it's not "sufficient free speech protection" anymore.

I added it to further the discussion, what with FA being the very topic of this subthread, and not some randomly "mixed concern"...




> They are also already covered by existing laws

The First Amendment supersedes law by determining whether it can be law at all, so whether it's covered by "law" is actually only half the story.

> The examples you brought up as arguments to why free speech can't be absolute

I started with deliberately stupid examples to make my point: Free Speech was always clearly limited, by necessity.

> it's pointing how its protections are rendered moot

That in itself is debatable. What evidence do you bring that this is somehow worse than it used to be? It used to be the case that, to get _any_ significant speech, you had to get your work published. Now you can just shoot it off on Twitter, Reddit, HN, take your pick.


>I started with deliberately stupid examples to make my point: Free Speech was always clearly limited, by necessity.

Which is neither here, nor there. Conspiracy to commit murder, as per the "mob boss gives an order example" would always be illegal regarless of our "free speech" stance, and the First Amendment didn't come into play determining whether that "[could] be law at all".

It was rather the other way around: the First Amendment was drafted with the certainty that such a thing isn't about free speech and will always be illegal.


> It was rather the other way around: the First Amendment was drafted with the certainty that such a thing isn't about free speech and will always be illegal.

This isn’t really backing up your point that the First Amendment isn’t sufficiently protecting free speech.




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