Well, I'm glad SCOTUS seems to be doing something right. So much of their decisions seem to be on the side of entrenched/powered/moneyed interests, whether its the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance reform, or the granting of increasing rights to corporations (like Hobby Lobby).
Its a conservative Supreme Court that had come down strongly in favor of free expression and religious freedom. E.g. Brown v. EMA, the video game free speech case. Different sides of the same coin.
What is insane to me are people who agree with Brown but disagree with Citizens United. A political movie isn't free speech, but Grand Theft Auto is?!
To me, the common thread is that they all come down on the side of greater freedom of expression and freedom to take actions consistent with beliefs. But both the Citizens United and Hobby Lobby decisions are anathema in circles such as many tech communities. I suspect a lot has to do with personal disagreement with the beliefs of the organizations involved even though the discussion often gets reframed. Around catchphrases like "corporate personhood" in the case of Citizens United.
As a soundbite, it's such a red herring anyway. Of course corporations act like individuals in some ways (and not in others). Corporate entities can enter into contracts that aren't tied to a particular employee. They generally have freedom of speech. But they can't be put into prison (except metaphorically.)
The issue was who made the political speech and whether it was electioneering (promoting a candidate). Before CU, corporations, associations, and unions could not spend their money on buying ads or air time to do electioneering.
I think the point of this law was to control the effect of money on politics. If these independent expenditures (IEs) were restricted, then campaign spending would be done through the campaign.
Campaign donation limits would further decrease the influence of the wealthy and organizations on elections. Again, these limits exist specifically for this purpose.
These laws just dealt with the obvious: money has a huge influence on how much speech you have, and the only way to make speech more equal is to put restrictions on how much money you're allowed to spend on speech. The laws were limited to political speech during elections.
Furthermore, there is a distinction between personal and commercial speech and election speech, and election speech is more tightly regulated, and always has been. Our system is supposed to be one-person-one-vote, and likewise, the restrictions on speech are used to try and achieve one-person-one-voice in elections.
Citizens United was a bad decision because it extended the general personal free speech rights to election-related speech by corporations, associations, and unions.
It's led to the creation of associations that accept donations, and then produced electioneering materials and buy media as IEs.
I work for the AFL-CIO union, and the leaders at the national level happen to think that Citizens United was a bad decision, as well. They've issued statements about it.
Nobody was stopping them from making or distributing the movie. The case concerned restrictions on the airing of ads in a narrow window of time to prevent unlimited use of money for electioneering purposes.
The District Court determined that the movie itself was "electioneering communication":
> After viewing The Movie and examining the 73-page script at length, the court finds Mr. Morris's description to be accurate. The Movie is susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.[12] The 280*280 Movie is thus the functional equivalent of express advocacy. See WRTL, 127 S.Ct. at 2667 (setting out the "functional equivalent" standard). As such, it falls within the holding of McConnell sustaining, as against the First Amendment, § 203 insofar as it bars corporations from funding electioneering communications that constitute the functional equivalent of express advocacy.
This essentially prevented the group from airing the movie on television within 30 days of the Democratic Primary (i.e. the very period during which one might want to air a movie advocating for or against a candidate!) The group would have faced civil and criminal penalties for airing the movie.
And you've just gotten to the heart of why it's different from Brown. Money corrupts politics and threatens democracy. There is no such problem with violent video games.
If you think it's "insane" that we make this distinction, all I can say is that I think you're insane for not making it.
There was nothing about that movie that was related to "Money" per se. This wasn't the Koch brothers conspiring with George Soros. This was a couple of goofballs editing together some news footage and dubbing over some scary narration. That is, shit that happens on youtube every day. You know, speech. After the FEC has silenced all the little guys who dare criticize a candidate, do you really think the Kochs will be reduced to normal private citizens?
> After the FEC has silenced all the little guys who dare criticize a candidate, do you really think the Kochs will be reduced to normal private citizens?
Exactly. People vastly misunderstand Citizens United.
Fox News is Rupert Murdoch buying airtime in bulk for his political speech. Unless you propose to shut it down along with every other privately owned media company, money is speech.
If laws were made with the philosophy that they must perfectly solve all aspects of a problem, there would either be no laws, or there would be complete totalitarianism. Thankfully, people rarely subscribe to absolutist philosophies once you actually get them to think about a topic.
So what practical solution are you proposing? Rupert Murdoch gets as much speech as he can afford to buy but some smaller entity can't buy more than some arbitrarily set small amount of airtime preceding an election?
The rules were limited to corporations, associations and unions. Individuals were not restricted in this type of speech. Citizens United was a nonprofit corporation.
Yes, which was the heart of the CU decision: if individual are unlimited, and corporations, associations, and unions are collections of individuals, then how can those be limited?
Put another way, the CU decision argued that individuals do not give up their right to free expressions just because they decided to pool their money in a particular way.
Remind us again, what's the problem with money and politics? Is the problem really that some people make money by commenting on politics? I guess you're thinking of like, Rush Limbaugh? Maybe Jon Stewart? Really? Please think more carefully.
If money is like cooties, in that it ruins everything it touches, no matter what actual role it plays in the situation, then everything in this world is screwed up forever. But, that's not the case. The real problem with money in politics is the corruption of political, regulatory, administrative, and legislative decisions. When you fixate on stupid shit like some movie some dudes made, that idiocy is quite useful for those who benefit by that corruption.
The irony of your statement is that Rockstar Games almost certainly has a ton more money than Citizens United, and is a for-profit corporation on top of all that. Citizens United is just an advocacy organization, no different than Sierra Club, etc. Who exactly is the "moneyed interest" here?
I must have missed the part where Rockstar Games is engaged in electioneering at all, much less with Grand Theft Auto. Could you point me to some sources on that? As it stands, your comment has absolutely nothing to do with my statement.
My point is that Rockstar Games is a wealthy for-profit corporation, while Citizens United is a political organization funded by individuals. The latter seems for more worthy of having free speech rights than the former.
Your point, which I think is a fundamentally flawed and even dangerous view of speech rights, is not actually relevant to the philosophy you don't understand but claim is insane.
The speech CU engaged in implicates practical problems violent video games do not. The question has never been one of worth. If it were, I'd have a long list of people I'd like locked up, starting with all politicians and lawyers.
No, the interest in remedying those problems overcomes the protection to which all speech is entitled. Why do you find this surprising? It's the same way any speech restriction is upheld.
(I'm very confused as to how you came to this conclusion, by the way, and would appreciate an explanation. That it's a matter of what "deserves" protection is exactly the idea the comment you replied to sought to dismiss, so somehow you've interpreted my statements exactly backwards.)
From what I understand, speech restrictions are upheld in very narrow ways:
- "time, place, and manner" restrictions such as not yelling at 4 AM in a residential area (these must withstand what's called "immediate scrutiny", which basically says that the restrictions must be content neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a specific government interest, and leave ample opportunity to share outside of the specific circumstances)
- "content" restrictions, such as restrictions on direct threats or child porn. These must pass strict scrutiny (narrowly tailored, serve a specific government interest, and be the least restrictive means to serve that interest.)
The government's interest has never been in "remedying" the problem of people speaking about politics, regardless of money (it does have an interest in stopping bribery, but that's a different issue.) Indeed, Kennedy's majority opinion in Citizens United is quite direct about wanting to allow more people to speak about politics -- specifically, allowing associations of people (ie, corporations, unions, etc.) the same ability to speak that single wealthy individuals have. The alternative to CU is frightening -- the only people whose political messages could be heard would be the few with the money to own media companies, or the few with the social networking apparatus to create faux-viral content.
This parallels older supreme court decisions such as:
Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819)
Providence Bank v. Billings, 29 U.S. 514 (1830)
Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886)
United States v. United Auto Workers, 352 U.S. 567 (1957)
In my opinion, restrictions on electioneering spending do pass strict scrutiny.
> The government's interest has never been in "remedying" the problem of people speaking about politics, regardless of money
Money is all that is at issue here. Like many others, I categorically reject the notion that money is speech, and have done so for a very long time in the face of far more detailed and principled arguments to the contrary than have been presented in this thread.
> (it does have an interest in stopping bribery, but that's a different issue.)
Bribery is not a different issue -- campaign contributions, direct or not, are bribery.
> allowing associations of people
I will never consider "associations" that shield their members/owners from personal liability to be entitled to speak or do anything else without the permission of society.
The alternative to CU is not frightening. The alternative to CU is recognition of the obvious: Limited liability entities are not entitled to any rights, political campaigns should be publicly funded, and individual spending on electioneering should be strictly limited.
Notice I keep saying "electioneering", not "politics", because the conduct at issue is expenditure of money on electioneering, not speaking about or spending money on politics in general. This is just one example of the vast disconnect in evidence here.
If a single wealthy person is, non-anonmously, going to be allowed to electioneer, that's actually the price that should be paid for restrictions on associations.
People can judge the message by the speaker. When billionaiare Meg Whitman ran for office, her ads were on every single commercial break. She still lost. People saw through her.
When you have a multitude of associations, you can't tell who is saying what, and it creates confusion.
Whatever they bias is, invalidating software patents is an action that favours entrenched/moneyed interests. It favours them almost as much as it favours small inovative firms and sole professionals.
> invalidating software patents is an action that favours entrenched/moneyed interests
Not true. Large firms & patent trolls hold the patents and have the resources to deal with the legal expenses. Small innovative firms & sole professionals tend to not have legal departments, large amounts of capital (& time) to spend on legal "non-innovative" matters, nor do they have patent troves.
Invalidating the software patents increases freedom to create & innovate and reduces centralization of power, legal trifling, and bureaucracy.
I think it is true. Ending software patents is great for startups, but it's good for Google, Apple, and Microsoft, too.
The big companies aren't getting much value for what they spend on the patent system and their valuations depend on growth of the software ecosystem that requires startups.
The ones that will lose out when software patents aren't lucrative are the entrepreneurial lawyers who found a loophole in the system and mercilessly exploited it. Several of the "inventors" in the patents in op were patent attorneys with no experience in computer networks and software. They saw a chance to cheat and they took it; no technology was required.
Well, Intellectual Ventures will lose out, too. They're large in the sense that they're winning more than the tens of millions that small time trolls do, but not compared to IBM or Amazon.
It's true that large firms and NPEs hold the patents and can better enforce their patents, but "patent trolls" (aka patent license companies that specialize in holding and enforcing patent rights as a business model) can be in some ways a benefit to smaller firms for a couple of reasons:
1) The smaller firms don't have the ability to aggressively defend their patents against larger competitors (and would simply have their invention used by the big players without a patent). Instead, the smaller firm can essentially outsource this to a patent licensing firm that specializes in it (standard division of labor), for example selling the patent while maintaining a license to use it themselves (or any other of a multitude of arrangements that essentially let them fight the big players).
2) If the smaller firm doesn't have the resources to actually introduce and sell their invention in the marketplace, they can sell it to a patent licensing firm that can use the patent within their portfolio to license to the main players in the market. This could arise when, for example, the small company comes up with an important new innovation in smartphones, but the small company lacks the resources to actually create a viable physical product on its own.
