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That’s a common misconception. The supreme court has ruled that free speech applies to places that act as a public square. That’s why, in some areas, malls aren

That’s a common misconception. The supreme court has ruled that free speech applies to places that act as a public square. That’s why, in some areas, malls aren’t allowed to kick out protestors, because they mall is considered a public square in the community. Currently they don’t consider any online platform a public square, but nothing prevents them from changing their mind on that issue

Dracophoenix 5y ago
While I'm not fond of Apple's schizophrenic application of its own contracts, your statements miss some considerations in those Supreme cases 1.physical presence 2.access to private infrastructure for the common person In both cases, protesting from a company-town owned (and therefore private) sidewalk or within a mall (only in California) is allowed due to the fact a person had to be there to enjoy the right to free expression and the access to private infrastructure granted to the average person under normal circumstances must be granted to a common protester. Neither the web nor the App Store would qualify as a public square any more than privately owned networks on cable TV. There is no physical presence (self-explanatory) and access to private infrastructure for the common person is the same for the common protestor (Apple's way or the highway in both cases). In other words, it doesn't change Apple's position. In fact there would be plenty of Supreme court issues against such a decision. One such argument is that, given code=speech, Apple carrying an application against its will would be compelled speech. As I've previously said, I don't agree with the idea that Apple or the App Store must be subject to anti-trust provisions (e.g public square, common carrier, etc).Apple shouldn't have to bear a fiduciary relationship with developers or consumers. Apple should just follow a consistent contract and not reinterpret it willy nilly.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  I feel the points mark similar allegories to physical presence. The idea is that you cannot just shoo protestors to protest in a little corner of the town where few see them. Because that impacts the effectiveness of a protest and can effectively squash revolution before it begins. In this respect, with the conglomeration of the internet into a few dozen big news hubs you can argue that the defense of "don't do this on Twitter, protest on your own blog" is becoming increasingly similar to "don't protest in the mall, do it at your own home". spinning up a competitor to twitter to get the reach needed to effectively protest is about as feasible as buying a lot of land in a public area to protest on (heck, nowadays, change that to any land at all). The metaphor isn't perfect, but that's because the digital space is a very different area , and I sort of hate the constant comparisons of the internet to physical land in terms of ruling. If we had access to instant, worldwide teleportation technology in the 1700's, I'm sure we'd need entirely new rulesets and ethics to take this into account. That's basically what the digital space is.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    >The idea is that you cannot just shoo protestors to protest in a little corner of the town where few see them. Because that impacts the effectiveness of a protest and can effectively squash revolution before it begins. That might have been the idea of the California Superior Court. However, the Federal Supreme Court's role in that decision (Pruneyard) was relegated to determining the technical merits of whether the protesters' positive right to free speech guaranteed under the California State Constitution conflicts with the negative right to freedom of speech (that is freedom from government-compelled or government-limited speech)under the Federal Constitution [1]. The finding was that, in the case of shopping malls, California's interpretation is, with in its own borders, acceptable so long as protesters are given no special rights dissimilar to those of the conventional shopper. The protesters would have those rights so long as a) a protester has physical presence and b) a protestors access to infrastructure (i.e. areas to walk around) is the same as that of the common shopper. These requirements don't work for protesting at Costco[2], much less protesting on Twitter or the App Store. If comparisons between not being able to protest on websites and "don't protest in the mall, do it at your own home" are being made, then these comparisons are superficial at best. A mall is different from a home in use and limitations. That's obvious from their respective designs. However, all websites have the same starting requirements (i.e. buy a domain name, rent/build/collocate, add HTML) and the same opportunities to be designed to the full needs of their owners. That's what one is purchasing when he or she owns a website. The right to a canvas. Not the right to a Twitter and the attention and investment that follows it. And spinning up a financially successful alt-Twitter was never a guaranteed right to begin with, anymore than spinning up an alt-Apple or alt-Microsoft would be. There is no secret money-making lever jealously guarded from the public by the mega-corporations to prevent fledging websites from becoming behemoths in their own right. The Internet is a medium. It doesn't solely or consistently function as a pulpit, product, or a content factory. It has no defined, concrete purpose in the way the Pruneyard Shopping Center did. >The metaphor isn't perfect, but that's because the digital space is a very different area , and I sort of hate the constant comparisons of the internet to physical land in terms of ruling. If we had access to instant, worldwide teleportation technology in the 1700's, I'm sure we'd need entirely new rulesets and ethics to take this into account. That's basically what the digital space is. I'm not requiring that the metaphor be perfect. But a metaphor or, more appropriately, an analogy, must be "like for like" even if such an analogy is not 1:1. To go back to protesting in a mall, competition in the digital space isn't banked on "land" or "territory". Facebook and its success isn't predicated on IPV4 address ownership or domain names in the same way that a manorial lord is with respect to his fiefdom. There isn't a neat division between hobby forums or commercial websites as there would be between a house and a mall. Apps are not based on "physical value" (nearly zero) or "physical size" (none). Thus comparisons to land or common areas are irrelevant. While what constitutes a "digital space" is hard to enumerate, it's clear that land or malls are not an appropriate framework with which to make such a comparison. A better comparison for app stores, or websites in general, would be cable/satellite television. In television's case, value is determined by consumer response to content (as measured by Nielsen ratings and resulting ad dollars), not how many televisions are in every American household, how many satellites Ted Turner owns, or how many homes have cable wiring installed. The infrastructure behind it, past a certain threshold of saturation, is not the point. This is compatible with how competition for attention works on the Internet and is, certain limitations notwithstanding, a more appropriate comparison. [1]https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/decision/pruneyard-shopping-center-et-al-v-robins-et-al/ https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/decision/pru... [2]https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/96/740.html https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/...

Dracophoenix 5y ago

While I'm not fond of Apple's schizophrenic application of its own contracts, your statements miss some considerations in those Supreme cases 1.physical presence 2.access to private infrastructure for the common person In both cases, protesting from a company-town owned (and therefore private) sidewalk or within a mall (only in California) is allowed due to the fact a person had to be there to enjoy the right to free expression and the access to private infrastructure granted to the average person under normal circumstances must be granted to a common protester. Neither the web nor the App Store would qualify as a public square any more than privately owned networks on cable TV. There is no physical presence (self-explanatory) and access to private infrastructure for the common person is the same for the common protestor (Apple's way or the highway in both cases). In other words, it doesn't change Apple's position. In fact there would be plenty of Supreme court issues against such a decision. One such argument is that, given code=speech, Apple carrying an application against its will would be compelled speech. As I've previously said, I don't agree with the idea that Apple or the App Store must be subject to anti-trust provisions (e.g public square, common carrier, etc).Apple shouldn't have to bear a fiduciary relationship with developers or consumers. Apple should just follow a consistent contract and not reinterpret it willy nilly.

johnnyanmac 5y ago
I feel the points mark similar allegories to physical presence. The idea is that you cannot just shoo protestors to protest in a little corner of the town where few see them. Because that impacts the effectiveness of a protest and can effectively squash revolution before it begins. In this respect, with the conglomeration of the internet into a few dozen big news hubs you can argue that the defense of "don't do this on Twitter, protest on your own blog" is becoming increasingly similar to "don't protest in the mall, do it at your own home". spinning up a competitor to twitter to get the reach needed to effectively protest is about as feasible as buying a lot of land in a public area to protest on (heck, nowadays, change that to any land at all). The metaphor isn't perfect, but that's because the digital space is a very different area , and I sort of hate the constant comparisons of the internet to physical land in terms of ruling. If we had access to instant, worldwide teleportation technology in the 1700's, I'm sure we'd need entirely new rulesets and ethics to take this into account. That's basically what the digital space is.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  >The idea is that you cannot just shoo protestors to protest in a little corner of the town where few see them. Because that impacts the effectiveness of a protest and can effectively squash revolution before it begins. That might have been the idea of the California Superior Court. However, the Federal Supreme Court's role in that decision (Pruneyard) was relegated to determining the technical merits of whether the protesters' positive right to free speech guaranteed under the California State Constitution conflicts with the negative right to freedom of speech (that is freedom from government-compelled or government-limited speech)under the Federal Constitution [1]. The finding was that, in the case of shopping malls, California's interpretation is, with in its own borders, acceptable so long as protesters are given no special rights dissimilar to those of the conventional shopper. The protesters would have those rights so long as a) a protester has physical presence and b) a protestors access to infrastructure (i.e. areas to walk around) is the same as that of the common shopper. These requirements don't work for protesting at Costco[2], much less protesting on Twitter or the App Store. If comparisons between not being able to protest on websites and "don't protest in the mall, do it at your own home" are being made, then these comparisons are superficial at best. A mall is different from a home in use and limitations. That's obvious from their respective designs. However, all websites have the same starting requirements (i.e. buy a domain name, rent/build/collocate, add HTML) and the same opportunities to be designed to the full needs of their owners. That's what one is purchasing when he or she owns a website. The right to a canvas. Not the right to a Twitter and the attention and investment that follows it. And spinning up a financially successful alt-Twitter was never a guaranteed right to begin with, anymore than spinning up an alt-Apple or alt-Microsoft would be. There is no secret money-making lever jealously guarded from the public by the mega-corporations to prevent fledging websites from becoming behemoths in their own right. The Internet is a medium. It doesn't solely or consistently function as a pulpit, product, or a content factory. It has no defined, concrete purpose in the way the Pruneyard Shopping Center did. >The metaphor isn't perfect, but that's because the digital space is a very different area , and I sort of hate the constant comparisons of the internet to physical land in terms of ruling. If we had access to instant, worldwide teleportation technology in the 1700's, I'm sure we'd need entirely new rulesets and ethics to take this into account. That's basically what the digital space is. I'm not requiring that the metaphor be perfect. But a metaphor or, more appropriately, an analogy, must be "like for like" even if such an analogy is not 1:1. To go back to protesting in a mall, competition in the digital space isn't banked on "land" or "territory". Facebook and its success isn't predicated on IPV4 address ownership or domain names in the same way that a manorial lord is with respect to his fiefdom. There isn't a neat division between hobby forums or commercial websites as there would be between a house and a mall. Apps are not based on "physical value" (nearly zero) or "physical size" (none). Thus comparisons to land or common areas are irrelevant. While what constitutes a "digital space" is hard to enumerate, it's clear that land or malls are not an appropriate framework with which to make such a comparison. A better comparison for app stores, or websites in general, would be cable/satellite television. In television's case, value is determined by consumer response to content (as measured by Nielsen ratings and resulting ad dollars), not how many televisions are in every American household, how many satellites Ted Turner owns, or how many homes have cable wiring installed. The infrastructure behind it, past a certain threshold of saturation, is not the point. This is compatible with how competition for attention works on the Internet and is, certain limitations notwithstanding, a more appropriate comparison. [1]https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/decision/pruneyard-shopping-center-et-al-v-robins-et-al/ https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/decision/pru... [2]https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/96/740.html https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/...