4 ms·

Not a fan of the pro-gov person not seeing the connection to the first amendment and writing code a software engineer does not want to write. I do hope this cas

Not a fan of the pro-gov person not seeing the connection to the first amendment and writing code a software engineer does not want to write. I do hope this case gets thrown out early or ends up SCOTUS.

nickff 11y ago
Many of the pro-gov people in this debate do not believe in corporate free speech. This makes some sense, as broad approval of corporate free speech would require agreement with the Citizens United opinion, as well as a dim view of many parts of the Dodd-Frank regulations.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  I've always wondered what the anti-Citizens United people thought of Michael Moore's videos. To protect himself from lawfare from the people and corporations he was exposing he in incorporated. Exactly the same process Citizens United took only their target was Hillary.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  Corporations are groups of individuals. Individuals have free speech rights. They do not lose those rights by working in groups. That doesn't require Citizens United or Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad; it takes (among many other arguments) recognizing that compelled speech from a group means compelled speech from the individuals comprising it. There are substantial arguments that need making about whether code is speech, whether compelled production of code is compelled speech, whether compelled signing of code is compelled speech[1], and so on. But I don't see any reason why those arguments should have different answers when applied to the group of people comprising a corporation than when applied to individual people. [1] For that one, see Wooley v. Maynard, which even in the dissent said 'For First Amendment principles to be implicated, the State must place the citizen in the position of either apparently or actually "asserting as true" the message'; that sure sounds like the function of a digital signature to me.
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    OK? So the court can compel Apple to write the software-- not individual employees. I don't think anyone is considering holding individual employees in contempt. But yes Apple as a corporation can be punished financially if they refuse, if you hold that corporations don't have speech rights. Your point is not consistent.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Yes, but compelling Apple the corporation boils down to compelling individual employees. If the corporation is ordered to write some code, they have to find a way to do so unless they can prove that they are literally unable to (which isn't credible in this case). That would presumably ultimately mean telling some engineers that they have to do this or leave.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        > That would presumably ultimately mean telling some engineers that they have to do this or leave. They just might. The problem is that there will always be people who will do it for a small amount of money or because of a misplaced sense of patriotism.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      That was not at all my point. I'm saying that you should be able to reason naturally from "individuals have rights" to "groups of individuals have rights", without encountering some massive disconnect when the group of individuals happens to have formed a company. If code is speech, and compelling the development and signing of code is compelled speech and thus prohibited, then it shouldn't matter whether the legal entity charged with the development and signing of that code is a company or an individual. It's wrong to compel an individual developer to develop and sign a backdoored version of a program they personally wrote and personally hold the signing keys for, and therefore it's wrong to compel a company to develop and sign a backdoored version of a program they collectively wrote and collectively hold the signing keys for.

nickff 11y ago

Many of the pro-gov people in this debate do not believe in corporate free speech. This makes some sense, as broad approval of corporate free speech would require agreement with the Citizens United opinion, as well as a dim view of many parts of the Dodd-Frank regulations.

merpnderp 11y ago
I've always wondered what the anti-Citizens United people thought of Michael Moore's videos. To protect himself from lawfare from the people and corporations he was exposing he in incorporated. Exactly the same process Citizens United took only their target was Hillary.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
Corporations are groups of individuals. Individuals have free speech rights. They do not lose those rights by working in groups. That doesn't require Citizens United or Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad; it takes (among many other arguments) recognizing that compelled speech from a group means compelled speech from the individuals comprising it. There are substantial arguments that need making about whether code is speech, whether compelled production of code is compelled speech, whether compelled signing of code is compelled speech[1], and so on. But I don't see any reason why those arguments should have different answers when applied to the group of people comprising a corporation than when applied to individual people. [1] For that one, see Wooley v. Maynard, which even in the dissent said 'For First Amendment principles to be implicated, the State must place the citizen in the position of either apparently or actually "asserting as true" the message'; that sure sounds like the function of a digital signature to me.
- bpodgursky 11y ago
  OK? So the court can compel Apple to write the software-- not individual employees. I don't think anyone is considering holding individual employees in contempt. But yes Apple as a corporation can be punished financially if they refuse, if you hold that corporations don't have speech rights. Your point is not consistent.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Yes, but compelling Apple the corporation boils down to compelling individual employees. If the corporation is ordered to write some code, they have to find a way to do so unless they can prove that they are literally unable to (which isn't credible in this case). That would presumably ultimately mean telling some engineers that they have to do this or leave.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      > That would presumably ultimately mean telling some engineers that they have to do this or leave. They just might. The problem is that there will always be people who will do it for a small amount of money or because of a misplaced sense of patriotism.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    That was not at all my point. I'm saying that you should be able to reason naturally from "individuals have rights" to "groups of individuals have rights", without encountering some massive disconnect when the group of individuals happens to have formed a company. If code is speech, and compelling the development and signing of code is compelled speech and thus prohibited, then it shouldn't matter whether the legal entity charged with the development and signing of that code is a company or an individual. It's wrong to compel an individual developer to develop and sign a backdoored version of a program they personally wrote and personally hold the signing keys for, and therefore it's wrong to compel a company to develop and sign a backdoored version of a program they collectively wrote and collectively hold the signing keys for.