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It's possible that "censorship" denotatively means suppression of any speech (including the parade of horribles -- viagra spam, stolen IDs, abuse content, etc.)

It's possible that "censorship" denotatively means suppression of any speech (including the parade of horribles -- viagra spam, stolen IDs, abuse content, etc.) and connotatively means suppression of speech with at least some political valence. Or alternatively that it's denotatively ambiguous and has multiple connotations. A case that sort of rubs up against this in the U.S. -- I use an American example because in Canada s.1 circumscribes all legal rights, including freedom of expression, so it would be academic whether this raised speech concerns or not -- is Morse v. Frederick. In this case, a student, Frederick, raised a banner that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" in front of some television cameras. The behaviour occurred off school grounds but nearby, and during an event that students were allowed to leave school early to attend. The school suspended Frederick because his banner promoted drug use. A lot of the ruling relied on parsing what category of speech this banner was. One argument is that it was essentially dadaist, absurdist speech (Frederick's claim. Another argument is that it was promoting criminal behaviour (the school principal's claim; Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito in the opinion). Another argument is that it was political speech, aimed at contesting a public policy (Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg in dissent; Alito and Kennedy in concurrence) Although there were other issues in the case, namely to do with how speech is regulated within schools and whether this constituted a school event, one of the undercurrents is that constitutional protections for political speech seem to be more crucial to many of the justices than constitutional protections for gibberish speech. So I don't think it's crazy to suggest, at a minimum, that there exists a well-support denotative use of "censorship" that specifically refers to speech with political characteristics, rather than all speech. Through that lens, copyright enforcement could either be censorship (to the extent that the enforcement is designed or has the effect of prohibiting the dissemination of political speech or prohibits commentary on a public policy) or not (to the extent the content being restricted is fundamentally apolitical). And this is true even if there are other denotations that consider stopping any speech to be censorship.

shkkmo 4y ago
Edit: all the legal references are in a US context Censorship is prohibiting speech or blocking a speaker because of the content or alleged content of their speech. Not all censorship is unconstitutional. The legal blocking of curse words amd nudity on broadcast TV is clearly censorship regardless of if the intent or effect of cursing while nude on TV is political. It is true that free speech protections against the censorship of political speech do tend to be stronger. Also generally speaking, rules that prohibit speech in certain contexts or manners without regard for their content or the speaker (thus not censorship) tend are held to a lower standard for legal justification than laws that do engage in censorship. In this case, the question is does this type qualify as "not-censorship" because somehow blocking "content that infringes our IP" is not restricting speech on the basis on its content. To me it seems obvious that this is a restriction of speech that depends on it's alleged content.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > In this case, the question is does this type qualify as "not-censorship" because somehow blocking "content that infringes our IP" is not restricting speech on the basis on it's content. To me it seems obvious that this is a restriction of speech that depends on it's alleged content. To the federal courts, too, which is why “fair use” was a court-created Constitutional limit on copyright before it was incorporated into the statute (the reason for the weird standards in the statute is that the factors from the court-issued rule were incorporated directly into the statute.)
dragonwriter 4y ago
> A lot of the ruling relied on parsing what category of speech this banner was. But that's not germane, because “censorship” is not restricted to “restrictions on speech that violate the First Amendment”, so the US Supreme Court “parsing about which category of speech” something is has no bearing on the meaning of “censorship.” In fact, consideration of what category speech is only matters in the First Amendment context after one has determined that censorship (and, particularly, government censorship) is occurring. Only then is it important to parse the details of which set of standards to apply to determine if the government censorship involved is Constitutionally prohibited.

shkkmo 4y ago

Edit: all the legal references are in a US context Censorship is prohibiting speech or blocking a speaker because of the content or alleged content of their speech. Not all censorship is unconstitutional. The legal blocking of curse words amd nudity on broadcast TV is clearly censorship regardless of if the intent or effect of cursing while nude on TV is political. It is true that free speech protections against the censorship of political speech do tend to be stronger. Also generally speaking, rules that prohibit speech in certain contexts or manners without regard for their content or the speaker (thus not censorship) tend are held to a lower standard for legal justification than laws that do engage in censorship. In this case, the question is does this type qualify as "not-censorship" because somehow blocking "content that infringes our IP" is not restricting speech on the basis on its content. To me it seems obvious that this is a restriction of speech that depends on it's alleged content.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> In this case, the question is does this type qualify as "not-censorship" because somehow blocking "content that infringes our IP" is not restricting speech on the basis on it's content. To me it seems obvious that this is a restriction of speech that depends on it's alleged content. To the federal courts, too, which is why “fair use” was a court-created Constitutional limit on copyright before it was incorporated into the statute (the reason for the weird standards in the statute is that the factors from the court-issued rule were incorporated directly into the statute.)

dragonwriter 4y ago

> A lot of the ruling relied on parsing what category of speech this banner was. But that's not germane, because “censorship” is not restricted to “restrictions on speech that violate the First Amendment”, so the US Supreme Court “parsing about which category of speech” something is has no bearing on the meaning of “censorship.” In fact, consideration of what category speech is only matters in the First Amendment context after one has determined that censorship (and, particularly, government censorship) is occurring. Only then is it important to parse the details of which set of standards to apply to determine if the government censorship involved is Constitutionally prohibited.