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The government’s position, the complaint said, “forces Twitter either to engage in speech that has been preapproved by government officials or else to refrain f

• blackaspen 12y ago
  Supposing the word 'censorship' isn't censored... Really happy to see more companies doing this though!
• dragonwriter 12y ago
  The language they do use is familiar,I suspect from precedent that establishes a test for violation of the free speech clause. Which is probably why they use it, and not the fuzzier term censorship. A legal complaint has a different audience than a press release.
• biot 12y ago
  If you present a conclusion, your opponent can claim it's an invalid conclusion based on faulty premises. However, if you only present evidence-backed facts, your opponent can't argue against the evidence and you force your opponent to reveal their hand earlier. In this case, the hand being revealed is ultimately one of national security... but by structuring the argument in this way, they are likely to avoid a prolonged argument with the government over the conclusion's validity.
  • neumann 12y ago
    This is a fantasticly instructive comment. thanks.
• rayiner 12y ago
  "Censorship" isn't unconstitutional (e.g. obscenities laws). Certain kinds of censorship may be, and they have specific names.
  • adventured 12y ago
    That's an interesting statement. I regard obscenities laws to be unconstitutional. Specifically, to be extremely anti-free speech and anti-free press (depending). All forms of censorship are unconstitutional and blatant violations of the first amendment. Given the countless flawed or flat-out wrong positions the Supreme Court has taken over the centuries when it comes to individual rights, I think we can likely agree they are not always right in their conclusions.
    • rayiner 12y ago
      The exceptions to the first amendment are largely rooted in historical practice, which informs what the founders would have understood the scope of free speech to be. I don't think its a supportable statement that they would have understood all forms of censorship to violate the first amendment.
    • tobylane 12y ago
      >In Rosen v. United States (1896), the Supreme Court adopted the same obscenity standard as had been articulated in a famous British case, Regina v. Hicklin (1868). The Hicklin test defined material as obscene if it tended "to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall." They weren't trying to constitutionally base it. Does that help?
    • cwp 12y ago
      The point is that the constitution doesn't mention "censorship". You may be right that censorship does violate the first amendment, but there are precedents that establish that censorship is permissible in certain circumstances. Twitter's best line of argument is to go directly to violation of their First Amendment rights, and avoid getting side-tracked on questions of "is this censorship" and "is censorship constitutional in the general case".
  • pessimizer 12y ago
    Such as "prior restraint." http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/prior_restraint http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/prior_restraint
• pessimizer 12y ago
  That's the implication of the complaint; it's saying 'prior restraint' without saying it.