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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Freedom_of_speech_and_of_the_press https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Freedom_of_speech_and_of_the_press https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... "Attached to the core rights of free speech and free press are several peripheral rights that make these core rights more secure. The peripheral rights encompass not only freedom of association, including privacy in one's associations, but also, in the words of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), "the freedom of the entire university community", i.e., the right to distribute, the right to receive, and the right to read, as well as freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach.[144]" "The United States Constitution protects, according to the Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia (1969), the right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, and to be generally free from governmental intrusions into one's privacy and control of one's thoughts.[145]" "As stated by the Court in Stanley: 'If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.'[146]" [144] - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/ [145], [146] - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/557/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/557/

thrance 2y ago
A bit off-topic, but I always thought it was "funny" how americans are so opposed to censorship but are perfectly OK with advertising and other forms of propaganda (from social media editorializing, bought newspapers...), that arguably do much more to "control men's minds" than censorship ever would. It just fuels my personal theory that americans only reason in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in negative liberty (freedom from...).
- lordloki 2y ago
  It's very simple, Americans believe that the individual is responsible for themselves while most of the rest of the world wants to be "protected" by a restrictive government. One leads to innovation and one stifles it. We would rather be responsible for discovering the truth on our own, than trust a central authority to decide what is and isn't true(or propaganda). I find it funny how Europeans think their governments are protecting them from propaganda instead of drowning them in propaganda.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Not sure European governments do much to combat external propaganda anyway.
    - thrance 2y ago
      Sadly very true, I hope the hostility American officials recently showed toward our values and institutions will prompt them to do something. Not to mention America siding with Putin a few days ago. A ban on X and Meta would be a start.
  - Detrytus 2y ago
    This approach is great in theory, the problem is: it does not scale. We are bombarded with a lot of information in the news, ads, social media, and average individual does not have enough time (not to mention access to information, or intelligence to interpret it) to fact check everything on their own. "The last man who knew everything" lived in early 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everythi...
    - card_zero 2y ago
      First of all, there's a difference between facts and understanding. Thomas Young may have understood the wave theory of light, but he could say nothing with certainty about Queen Victoria's underwear. Secondly, it's getting easier to understand everything, because ideas are becoming more powerful. We are however bombarded with facts, that part is true.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      You don't need to fact check the torrent of information you describe. You can just ignore it. None of it is worth the time and effort to fact check anyway. You don't need any of that information to make the decisions you need to make in your daily life. If you want to argue that you need to fact check all that information to, for example, decide how to vote in elections, none of that information is of any value for that purpose either, because it's basically all propaganda at this point. There are no "independent" sources of information that you can trust, other than your own eyeballs and brain. (Possibly you are lucky enough to have some friends and family whose eyeballs and brain you can also trust.)
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  > It just fuels my personal theory that americans only reason in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in negative liberty (freedom from...). This seems to describe ‘Murican Freedom pretty well to this particular American, for what it’s worth.
- rapind 2y ago
  > I always thought it was "funny" how americans are so opposed to censorship Not sure you can make this blanket statement about “Americans” any more. It seems like an increasing number are fine with censorship when they aren’t the ones being censored.
  - thrance 2y ago
    Yes, for many this "free speech absolutism" is just a rhetorical stance they adopt, which do not reflect their actions at all.
- LuciOfStars 2y ago
  American here. We're an incredibly large and incredibly diverse country. This generaliization doesn't really work.
  - thrance 2y ago
    I know, I have friends and family in America. It was just a fun thought I had in my head for a while. I should have added a "Some americans..." in my comment. Sorry for the blanket statement.
papercrane 2y ago
The US Constitution grants congress the power to give authors and inventors time-limited exclusive rights to their works/discoveries (Art1.S8.C8). This moots the 1st amendment argument. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/clause-8/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
- account42 2y ago
  It doesn't moot the argument just makes it slightly more complicated. Not only is current copryight very far from what a normal human would understand as a limited time but that is not the only restriction there - this power is also given with a specific purpose that current copyright does not effectively serve.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  I don't think it'd hold up, but one could argue that the first amendment was an amendment, and thus changed the constitution, and therefore removed that ability of congress.
  - tiahura 2y ago
    The amendments protect the rights as they existed at the time the amendment was passed. I.e. how would the plain text of the text be interpreted by a reasonable person in 1791. E.g., re 2nd, what did militia mean? Thus, the 1A locks in speech rights as they existed in 1791. Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      That's certainly one interpretation. Your parents also has an interpretation. It will be interesting to see what the courts decide.
    - anonym29 2y ago
      >Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intentions of the constitution. Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that were determined through the legislative process. Essentially the entire US constitution is negative rights - the right to X when X means government NOT doing something. Right to freedom of movement, right to freedom of religion, right to freedom of speech, right to privacy - these are restrictions on government to protect the liberties of the people. And then you come to the tenth amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a powerful centralized federal government is quite literally the premiere founding principle baked into the US's history. Congress has zero power whatsoever whenever they lack the consent of the goverened. The functional legitimacy of the entire federal government is near zero - we're living in the orwellian nightmare where the military industrial complex more or less runs the entire show from behind the scenes - something Eisenhower tried to warn us about over half a century ago.
nonfamous 2y ago
I would expect it to be argued by defendants that since no man (or indeed woman) at Meta actually read the books that were torrented, the First Amendment does not apply here. The question is: does the First Amendment apply to an algorithm?
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  So I can setup a cable streaming service with ripped vids as long a no one in my company watches it?
  - dTal 2y ago
    You would be distributing the videos. Meta is not distributing the things they torrented. No, LLM weights don't count.
    - LocalH 2y ago
      If nobody watches it, then technically no copies of the video have been distributed.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > The question is: does the First Amendment apply to an algorithm? No. The first amendment explicitly applies to Congress; by extension it applies to the policy-making authority of the federal government generally, and via the 14th amendment, it applies to the states. It prohibits the abridgment of freedom of speech by government institutions, without distinction as to the identity of the speaker or the content of the speech.

thrance 2y ago

A bit off-topic, but I always thought it was "funny" how americans are so opposed to censorship but are perfectly OK with advertising and other forms of propaganda (from social media editorializing, bought newspapers...), that arguably do much more to "control men's minds" than censorship ever would. It just fuels my personal theory that americans only reason in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in negative liberty (freedom from...).

lordloki 2y ago
It's very simple, Americans believe that the individual is responsible for themselves while most of the rest of the world wants to be "protected" by a restrictive government. One leads to innovation and one stifles it. We would rather be responsible for discovering the truth on our own, than trust a central authority to decide what is and isn't true(or propaganda). I find it funny how Europeans think their governments are protecting them from propaganda instead of drowning them in propaganda.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Not sure European governments do much to combat external propaganda anyway.
  - thrance 2y ago
    Sadly very true, I hope the hostility American officials recently showed toward our values and institutions will prompt them to do something. Not to mention America siding with Putin a few days ago. A ban on X and Meta would be a start.
- Detrytus 2y ago
  This approach is great in theory, the problem is: it does not scale. We are bombarded with a lot of information in the news, ads, social media, and average individual does not have enough time (not to mention access to information, or intelligence to interpret it) to fact check everything on their own. "The last man who knew everything" lived in early 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everythi...
  - card_zero 2y ago
    First of all, there's a difference between facts and understanding. Thomas Young may have understood the wave theory of light, but he could say nothing with certainty about Queen Victoria's underwear. Secondly, it's getting easier to understand everything, because ideas are becoming more powerful. We are however bombarded with facts, that part is true.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    You don't need to fact check the torrent of information you describe. You can just ignore it. None of it is worth the time and effort to fact check anyway. You don't need any of that information to make the decisions you need to make in your daily life. If you want to argue that you need to fact check all that information to, for example, decide how to vote in elections, none of that information is of any value for that purpose either, because it's basically all propaganda at this point. There are no "independent" sources of information that you can trust, other than your own eyeballs and brain. (Possibly you are lucky enough to have some friends and family whose eyeballs and brain you can also trust.)
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
> It just fuels my personal theory that americans only reason in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in negative liberty (freedom from...). This seems to describe ‘Murican Freedom pretty well to this particular American, for what it’s worth.
rapind 2y ago
> I always thought it was "funny" how americans are so opposed to censorship Not sure you can make this blanket statement about “Americans” any more. It seems like an increasing number are fine with censorship when they aren’t the ones being censored.
- thrance 2y ago
  Yes, for many this "free speech absolutism" is just a rhetorical stance they adopt, which do not reflect their actions at all.
LuciOfStars 2y ago
American here. We're an incredibly large and incredibly diverse country. This generaliization doesn't really work.
- thrance 2y ago
  I know, I have friends and family in America. It was just a fun thought I had in my head for a while. I should have added a "Some americans..." in my comment. Sorry for the blanket statement.

papercrane 2y ago

The US Constitution grants congress the power to give authors and inventors time-limited exclusive rights to their works/discoveries (Art1.S8.C8). This moots the 1st amendment argument. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8/clause-8/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...

account42 2y ago
It doesn't moot the argument just makes it slightly more complicated. Not only is current copryight very far from what a normal human would understand as a limited time but that is not the only restriction there - this power is also given with a specific purpose that current copyright does not effectively serve.
SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
I don't think it'd hold up, but one could argue that the first amendment was an amendment, and thus changed the constitution, and therefore removed that ability of congress.
- tiahura 2y ago
  The amendments protect the rights as they existed at the time the amendment was passed. I.e. how would the plain text of the text be interpreted by a reasonable person in 1791. E.g., re 2nd, what did militia mean? Thus, the 1A locks in speech rights as they existed in 1791. Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    That's certainly one interpretation. Your parents also has an interpretation. It will be interesting to see what the courts decide.
  - anonym29 2y ago
    >Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intentions of the constitution. Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that were determined through the legislative process. Essentially the entire US constitution is negative rights - the right to X when X means government NOT doing something. Right to freedom of movement, right to freedom of religion, right to freedom of speech, right to privacy - these are restrictions on government to protect the liberties of the people. And then you come to the tenth amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a powerful centralized federal government is quite literally the premiere founding principle baked into the US's history. Congress has zero power whatsoever whenever they lack the consent of the goverened. The functional legitimacy of the entire federal government is near zero - we're living in the orwellian nightmare where the military industrial complex more or less runs the entire show from behind the scenes - something Eisenhower tried to warn us about over half a century ago.

nonfamous 2y ago

I would expect it to be argued by defendants that since no man (or indeed woman) at Meta actually read the books that were torrented, the First Amendment does not apply here. The question is: does the First Amendment apply to an algorithm?

_DeadFred_ 2y ago
So I can setup a cable streaming service with ripped vids as long a no one in my company watches it?
- dTal 2y ago
  You would be distributing the videos. Meta is not distributing the things they torrented. No, LLM weights don't count.
  - LocalH 2y ago
    If nobody watches it, then technically no copies of the video have been distributed.
Gormo 2y ago
> The question is: does the First Amendment apply to an algorithm? No. The first amendment explicitly applies to Congress; by extension it applies to the policy-making authority of the federal government generally, and via the 14th amendment, it applies to the states. It prohibits the abridgment of freedom of speech by government institutions, without distinction as to the identity of the speaker or the content of the speech.