4 ms·
Say I program a drone to constantly fly in front of you. Every time you open your mouth to speak, it blows an air horn away from you, noise-cancelled towards y
by pnut 12y ago
Say I program a drone to constantly fly in front of you.
Every time you open your mouth to speak, it blows an air horn away from you, noise-cancelled towards you. Your person has not been violated, but your ability to be heard has been obliterated.
Have I interfered with your first amendment rights?
That is what Citizens United means to me - asymmetrical free speech warfare.
Additionally, is the "money == speech" relationship a transitive property? Why not?
- ef4 12y ago> Have I interfered with your first amendment rights? Not unless you're from the government. Otherwise you're probably just disturbing the peace or trespassing.
- spindritf 12y agoThis is a silly example. It's harassment (at least). It's not protected, just like DDoSing a website is not protected speech. And money is necessary for speech. Where do you draw the line? Can I spend $10 on a domain? $100 on hosting? $2000 on design? $5000 split with a friend on video equipment? Take submissions from site's users? How much can they spend on materials and licensing? On the other end of the spectrum, how much can a tv network spend on political programming? Can they invite whomever they like or will the government set the guest list and how much air time they get? How much can a newspaper spend on investigating misconduct of a candidate they don't like? It's easy to cap donations to candidates' committees. Everything else is a mess.