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It's terrible precedent. What about the first amendment? Software is speech.
by nnx 6y ago
It's terrible precedent. What about the first amendment? Software is speech.
- evfanknitram 6y agoHow is software "speech"? Do you consider all software "speech"? Do you think any form of software should be allowed, no matter what?
- nnx 6y agoYes, all software is speech and any form of software should be allowed. If not, who decides what software is allowed or not? Will I need to get a license from the government before I push my PR to a repo?
- Minor49er 6y agoDo you consider blueprints and mechanical diagrams to be speech?
- anonymousab 6y agoUnder the US constitution and given legal precedent, absolutely.
- milktoast 6y agoWhat if you made the same argument for photography and freedom of speech? > Yes, all photography is speech and any form of photography should be allowed. > If not, who decides which photography is allowed or not? Will I need to get a license from the government before I publish a photograph online? You see the problem here, don't you? There are many cases where a photograph can be illegal.
- anonymousab 6y agoSure. There are also many cases where any kind of speech can be illegal, depending on the context and content of the speech. That does not mean that form of speech is not constitutionally protected. Legally, whether photographs are speech seems to come down to whether they are taken with communicative intent or not.
- nnx 6y agoThis is within the well known (and tested) limits of freedom of speech... which neither TikTok or WeChat software were found guilty of (with or without due process).
- actsasbuffoon 6y agoI don’t think software is speech, but to play devil’s advocate for a moment; if money is speech then why can’t software be speech? Both propositions seems equally ridiculous, but the Supreme Court has affirmed that money is speech.
- DennisP 6y agoThe Ninth Circuit affirmed that software is speech in Bernstein. It's the reason cryptography is no longer heavily restricted by the US.
- Radle 6y agoExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There's no evidence at all that software can in any capacity be speech as defined under the us constitution.
- DennisP 6y ago"One of EFF's first major legal victories was Bernstein v. Department of Justice, a landmark case that resulted in establishing code as speech and changed United States export regulations on encryption software, paving the way for international e-commerce." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
- DSingularity 6y agoTerrible precedent it may be yet the idea that software is speech is probably even worse. You can’t just equate software with speech because to prevent an outcome you dislike.
- nickles 6y agoThe Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that software is speech in Bernstein v United States. The precedent already exists. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
- DSingularity 6y agoI will acquiesce to that argument if we were discussing the government attempting to prevent tiktok from open sourcing their implementation. It is a stretch, however, to present this decision as a precedent preventing the government from regulating application markets.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Invictus0 6y agoMaybe this is my mechanical engineering brain kicking in but isn't software more akin to machinery? I press the run button and gears turn and oil burns and a piece of toast comes out.