The future of free speech
 

Since this seems to be a popular topic, I thought some would be interested in Jeffrey Rosen's opinion:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...vW#more-111987

We can discuss this without actually getting political (by focusing on technology and philosophy), so please do!

Re: The future of free speech
 

It's funny, the biggest obstacle to free speech everywhere, is governments.

There are some similarities between the web and Radio Caroline, the Pirate radio station that broke down a lot of censorship present in radio in their time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline

True Freedom is Scary!:eek:

Re: The future of free speech
 

Sometimes freedom is needed so people can make mistakes for other to learn from...

Re: The future of free speech
 

It's a general phenomenon not only tied to free speech. When the concept of human rights was born, it was - roughly - to protect citizens from those who had power. Those who had power were, of course, the administrations and their representatives. It was unthinkable at that time that any company could ever have more power than a state.

This has changed a lot. Today, the power is in the hands of a few selected multi-national companies. Legislations are being influenced by those companies. There's probably not one single western parliament that makes decisions without being exposed to lobbying.

Even worse, decisions that aren't and never will be subject to any law are made by companies ... and they influence your lives just as laws would. When facebook decides you must not place ads for your small business there, but all of your competitors may, they can well ruin you with that (if your business model required these ads).

So what we have today is the companies that threaten both individuals and administrations... plus a collection of basic human rights (such as free speech) that protects the individual from the administrations. Nobody's protecting anyone from those who have the power today: the companies; the capital.

Re: The future of free speech
 

My freedom to create another avenue for people to freely speak their minds will always be something never fully controllable by corporations. Even pretending for a moment the corporations get down to the media level and start controlling the wires and trying to prevent people from sending whatever data they want to and from servers, we are in a free market so smaller time competitors that fully allow freedoms to post/print whatever will rise to the top.

It's the beauty of a free market. If AT&T decided they were no longer going to allow X-type of content to travel their wires, then a bunch of us get together, and create Freenet, an ISP that simply provides a "dumb pipe" to send data over we would suddenly receive all the business.

YouTube is not the end-all, be-all of video sites on the Internet, and any censored content is easily obtainable at other places where they will not censor. As long as the free market remains open (as it should), the people will continue to be truly free as entrepreneurs will simply start up other means for people to freely express themselves.

Re: The future of free speech
 

If/when the electronic press is too censored, will print come back with a vengeance?

Re: The future of free speech
 

Doubt it. Much easier to run some wires and let people get on a new uncensored Internet. :D

Re: The future of free speech
 

Thank you Laughingstok. I think we are in perfect agreement. The free market will decide which companies will survive, and thus what free speech shall entail.

Ultimately, though, I think Education will play the most important role in the future of democracy and capitalism. A bunch of idiots trying to play with money does not equal a successful capitalist model nor a successful democracy.

Re: The future of free speech
 

That's what I want to believe, but don't.

Free markets just don't work. Take regulation away, and monopolies always emerge. A sad testament to human nature.

I'm more for Fair markets. There's where free speech can thrive. The facebooks of the world would rather have managed speech.

/me sees Jens and awaits disagreement :D

Re: The future of free speech
 

There have always been groups of people determined to shut you up. Sometimes in the form of governments, sometimes corporations, and sometimes angry mobs.

Funnily enough, our biggest stick against the latter two is the government. What we need is a better general appreciation of free speech. Sometimes it feels like the only thing moderating public opinion is a sportsteam-like dedication to the constitution/national identity, without understanding what it really means.


With venture capital, no doubt... :)

The real problem is not that we'd be unable to communicate. It's that most people would be unable to communicate. Right now, the average user isn't going to get off Facebook or Google no matter how much they start censoring themselves.

People act all indignant when corporations try to appease lunatics, but who are we kidding here - wouldn't you? If we truly want corporate products to respect freedom of speech, the decisionmakers need to be backed up by society. Now it's more like damned if you do, damned if you don't. Too many people will side with the complainers out of political correctness or actually agreeing with censorship of anything unpleasant to someone.

Don't expect balance any time soon though, because there's just as many people who think freedom of speech means the right to force people around you to listen to you. This, for example, is just total failure on all sides of the issue.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Huh, even you two are already almost agreeing with each other :) . The market WILL decide what free speech is, but it also implies that we may not like the result. There's really no reason to believe the average person will remain vigilant enough about every transaction they make.

It is a gaping flaw in the US constitution that corporations can restrict free speech through their actions, but on the other hand regulation would probably be too difficult and oppressive in itself. Can we read managers' minds and figure out why they didn't hire someone, and do we want trolls to start appealing their bans in the courts?

Ultimately, we just need a population that understands and supports free speech. By the time you need technological countermeasures, you'd better be using them to plan a revolution.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Well in our managed economy (Since the SEC exists we don't really have a true "free market") will still have a very close to truly free market. Sure the government likes to come in with socialistic ideas to try and put a band-aid on the massive lay-offs that inevitably occur in a free market when a shitty company refuses to conform and ultimately dies (Car companies anyone? :D)

But essentially the "phoenix effect" still occurs. If a big company does a crappy job, it fails and a new, better company rises from the ashes.
Same thing with any company that tries to control free speech in the context of this argument. Big bad brother company enforces censorship, and it dies from lack up support and a new company arises.

They can never FORCE you to use their product. They can try and build a monopoly so the only viable option you have is their product, but then again theres still nothing stopping others from creating a superior one.

A persons unalienable rights are simply as they are, pure and untainted. People can spin whatever they want to try and take it away from you, but the bottom line is, they can't without brute force. And then they're breaking the law. The only organization that can truly run unchecked are governments as they ARE the standards. So it takes a revolution. And now we're getting into a whole other ball of wax. :D Thus a government that would truly be ran by the people, for the people is one that ebs and flows with the societal norms of the day. If 90% of people become brainless idiots who drool at their computer because they don't care they're being censored, then unfortunately that's the way the world is going to become. But guess what, if 90% of people don't care, then society has deemed that is the proper way for people to live. (Sociology anyone? :D)

Re: The future of free speech
 

Nice thread I cant discuss without mentioning politics, certain religions and caricatures :/

So I will read and not discuss :p

Re: The future of free speech
 

Absolutely. If you suddenly were unable to send your mother an email because your ISP deemed it unworthy, and I came to you and all your friends and said "Give me a few bucks and we'll start our own ISP and grow it over time.." you would either agree or continue dealing with the censorship.

Re: The future of free speech
 

I prefer math. They've just found a very inefficient local maximum :D


Sure, but you'd need so many people agreeing with you that things would never have gotten so bad in the first place. Infrastructure is expensive, and I'm assuming there wouldn't be any line sharing in this future.

Re: The future of free speech
 

As with anything, it would start small. I never said it would be easy or straight forward, but the bottom line is, it would exist. Hell, pirate networks and separate internets already exist on the globe. It's nothing for a group of people to start running wire and getting people on board to join the new "Free Net" or whatever if such censorship occurred. Hell, they've already got phone plans where anyone on the plan can call someone else for free, or things like magic jack which kind of sort of puts you on a different network than normal phone users.

Again, tihs is all just fun speculation, but at the end of the day, if I connect two machines to each other via a wire and talk, no one can censor it. :D It's just a matter of starting it over and telling the big companies to go f themselves.

Plus, I GUARANTEE the day ISP's start trying to charge or cut you off because you are doing something they don't agree with, people will drop and go to other means.

Luckily ISP's are almost literally a dime a dozen. Comcast tried to do the whole "We're monitoring you!" b.s. and people drop from the and go to Insight, Windstream and others quite regularly. :D Free market in effect.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Heck, even better. The medium already exists. The wires are ran. All you gotta do is encrypt or change the actual protocol in which your network communicates and send it on its way. You could do this on such a complex level that aside from cutting the wire, theres not much they could do. And then theyre just spiting themselves. :D

Let freedom ring baby!

Re: The future of free speech
 

I don't know, man. The only monopolies I deal with on a day-to-day basis are specifically imposed on me by the government. My water, power, and garbage collection are all imposed by the city government. The USPS is protected by the US gov't.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Hence my emphasis on Education at the end of my post. Americans today are a bunch of idiots. If we don't put lots of emphasis on educating not only our youth but our adults as well then our capitalism will fail us (as it already does from time to time). Not only that, but our federalist democracy will fail us.

Education is the most important component in everything anyone does ever.

If we have a society of well educated people, I think you would find the free market truly would regulate itself, monopolies or not.

Having done extensive research on starting up an ISP in my old rural hometown, I can tell you its incredibly easy. Depending on the scale of what you're trying to accomplish, Venture capital may or may not be needed.

Hooking up ~1000 customers in a 150 sq mile area: no venture capital required. Bootstrap all of it.

Hooking up ~50,000 customers in a municipal environment: Venture capital probably required.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Those *should* be benevolent monopolies, especially in a representative form of government-- but I admit they don't always work out that way.

And a general FYI to readers/posters here: you're all doing a great job in the discussion. I think you all realize politics is not the same as civics. ;)

Re: The future of free speech
 

Regardless of whether anyone is an idiot, I don't believe people have the time to be knowledgeable about the vast majority of things they buy. People underestimate what luxury it is to go buy absolutely anything from a store while remaining fairly confident that you're not making a huge mistake. Modern society depends on this efficiency to some extent.

Then there's the problem that just a few people who don't care could ruin it for everyone else (for example the environment).

Re: The future of free speech
 

How is that a rebuttal to his point? There is currently regulation, and you claim you don't encounter unofficial monopolies. Who says it would stay that way?

It's peculiar we're discussing this here. Even though I don't hate them, Microsoft was a practical monopoly for almost two decades and caused immense harm just by forcing everyone to adapt to them. Linux wouldn't be a competitor if it weren't for the countless hours people wasted reverse engineering file formats.

Just because even monopolies will eventually fail doesn't mean they can't cause a lot of harm before that.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Reading this thread certainly has made me feel old, even if I'm still on my early thirties.

Print never really went anywhere as far as I'm concerned. On-line I spend 90%+ of my time on gadgets, entertaiment and porn. The last one on that list is the only one I could think anybody even trying to censor. The stuff that might be censored (politics, economics, science, etc) I still get almost exclusively from 'old media', and the on-line stuff is usually deriatives from old media (blogs commenting on stuff on old media etc).

Personally I still see on-line media as people who couldn't make it in the old media. Becoming a luddite, I guess.

Re: The future of free speech
 

I want to Thank jnwi's last post :D

Re: The future of free speech
 

can we say this....


George Carlin's 7 Dirty Words

.....:rolleyes:

Moderator edit: no, but you can link to it. ;)

Re: The future of free speech
 

I miss George......:(

Re: The future of free speech
 

People have ~20 years before they become mainstream consumers. I'd say thats plenty of time to learn enough everything they need to know to get started. In the US today though, the average college student today is an idiot. The fact that we even tolerate people being able to drop out of high school is abhorrent the more I think about it.

I am a (recently decided) minarchist libertarian, and I struggle to compromise that belief with the absolute need for people to be educated in order for the world to work.

This is the other end of my "Education" rant. Properly educated leaders would know that anticompetitive practices will lose them money, sometimes in the short run, but always in the long run.

Re: The future of free speech
 

mmurfin87, not every person is above average intelligence. Not every person has a good grasp of abstract thinking. Etc etc. I'd like to think education is the solution, too, but it isn't for everyone. Some people will just not get the concepts we're discussing. Even the simple ones. And I know too many, personally...

Re: The future of free speech
 

Thank you Moderator ;)


...well you see thats why we having this conversation in first place. Which is shouldn't be at all because its a common sense that people should be free to express there thought. I think thats main problem in society that people always compromise and not honest then they pay big price for that. And thanks to people like George Carlin who put piece of mind in peoples brain and Nikola Tesla to whom world should be thank for all what he did for humanity and who died in his hotel room poor and later forgotten. And barely anybody know who even created wireless technology and many other who really made a change in this world. But somehow we all know who Edison was. I wonder why ...:rolleyes: And about this guy Grigori Perelman who refuse to accept million dollar prize from so call honorable scientific society (whatever crap that is) for what he just believe in. This guy solve bigest problem in mathematic The Poincaré Conjecture that nobody could in 100 years. Thats a lot of power and hes truly a free man. Nobody questions anymore people accept like a zombie whatever happening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfkw...eature=related

Re: The future of free speech
 

Thwer isn't a "Thanks" button so I have got to post...

Right on!

In regard to this and your previous post. :)

Re: The future of free speech
 

True, there are people out there who really are mentally challenged and will unfortunately probably never be able to complete high school. Its a sad but true fact.

That said, the VAST majority of people are capable of doing great things. They're just not prompted to do it for various reasons.

I almost believe a college education should be a requirement for citizenship. I'm not talking just for immigration, I'm talking for EVERYONE. Born here or not, if you're not educated you shouldn't vote.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Now that's just insane. You'd bankrupt the country and set up a very nice system for future brainwashing attempts.

But going back to what I said earlier, it's not just about intelligence. You need to be intelligent enough to understand the issues, yes, but you don't want to have to check the internet for corporate abuse every time you buy a coffee maker or a new brand of vegetables. (And who's going to enforce trademark law anyway?)

Today people don't even take the time to research complex products, such as computers, and that's something we might be able to work on in the education system.

Re: The future of free speech
 

As opposed to free speech today? Look up "The Love Police" on youtube.

Re: The future of free speech
 

no, there was no opposition implied by the title.

Re: The future of free speech
 

I like your rebuttals so please dont take my brevity now as an insult. im just tired and busy so Im going to be short.

I dont understand how you think the country would go bankrupt. I'm not saying the government should finance it all. Although it would be a good investment for any government. The more its citizens know, the more money they can make, the more taxes the gov't can collect. I think there are plenty of ways to reform/partially-privatize education that will simultaneously improve it and make it more efficient.

Barcode Scanning Corporate Research App. Done. Scan the barcode of the product you want to buy and pull down ready information telling ypu everything you need to know. I already use my n900 to browse NewEgg and Amazon prices/reviews when I'm at Best Buy.

The point is that a well educated population will be less likely to do stupid things at all levels. Consumers will be less likely to do blatantly stupid things, corporate executives will be less likey to stupid greedy moves (because they really are stupid and will lose money more than they make it), and gov't officials will be less likely to engage in stupid attempts at brainwashing.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Short is good :)

But this is limited. You need the lower levels of workers too or the higher levels can't function.

Even if the government didn't finance it, that would remove 4 years of working life from everyone, regardless of whether their preferred work needed the degree. That's an unsustainable cost to the economy.


This is certainly true. I just wouldn't go too far.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Absolutely not. Taking away a mans voice leaves him with no other choice but to become violent.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Education and intelligence are two different things... AFAIK, there's evidence that education makes people more intelligent (while most of us think that you need to be intelligent to receive proper education.)

I'm with mmurfin87 on this. Things don't work without education. Politics, economy, social life... it all gets out of hand if people aren't able to make sound decisions based on facts and reason.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Agreed.

I did say I "almost" believed it. It sounds good to say that stupid people shouldn't vote (until they "earned" it by getting "educated"), but there are so many caveats that its an untenable idea.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Several points:

1. "and if I really say it, the radio won't play it, so I'll just have to lay it
between the lines" Old Peter Paul and Mary hit, "I dig rock n roll music"

2. "AFAIK, there's evidence that education makes people more intelligent "

This is an interesting issue in itself. Intelligence is SUPPOSED to be this inherent thing detected by IQ tests. Someone made it up as a concept, then found evidence for its existence.

However, the fact that various exercises CAN change your intelligence as measured, proves to me that the original concept was false. So there really is no such thing as intelligence in general as a static thing.

3. I have realized more and more that companies have no interest in freedom. It became really clear to me the first time I took a drug test. This was for a job in which it was very important that I not run people over or otherwise endanger their safety. Right, I was applying for a job as an editor, and you can imagine what I might do to people if I had once smoked marijuana! I might mess up subject-verb agreement!

4. I have often suspected that companies search sites like this for information about job candidates. Then, when someone is being considered for a job, these companies go to the hiring agency and say, "we have information about your candidates that you can't get anywhere else!" For a small fee they provide information about the "character" of the job candidates by grabbing their old Internet messages.

I've helped hire many people, and I was never approached by such a service, but I don' t think technology had gotten that far yet. I wonder if it has now?