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Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

Machine-generated mathematics output isn't "speech" in the sense of an expressive act of a human person. This is outside the scope of the First Amendment.

Furthermore, speech accompanying a cryptocurrency transaction would be something courts call "commercial speech" -- speech that "proposes a commercial transaction or relates solely to the speaker’s and the audience’s economic interests" [0] -- which is an established exception to the First Amendment. It's not unprotected from regulation; but it does get a reduced level of protection when there's a legitimate government interest on the other side of the balance. See this explainer from the CRS:

[0] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11072 ("First Amendment: Categories of Speech")

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Is it also not "speech" if I use a mathematically defined mechanically engineered product's outputs to arrange my "speech" into ink-soaked shapes that is just a machine-generated output?

Applying your signature (albeit a very complicated one) and hashing some numbers together with it is absolutely an expressive act of a human person. You can show your approval of what others are doing, or to suggest you'd like to signify someone else can now sign for your speech instead of yourself in a way others can see you are allowing them to have unique control of a piece of your speech.

I think we've got it backwards. The freedom to provide credit or debit to others, noted in some record, is speech. It should never have been considered the purview of government to restrict free trade of speech containing negotiation of transaction or record of account. The government should also not be able to compel speech (especially without subpoena) or force private enterprise to conduct search of your effects and documents, so KYC should be out as well.

If software is copyrightable then software is protected expression.

There's no contradiction between the propositions that (0) the source code of an algorithm is protected speech; and (1) there's specific ways of executing that code, effecting real-world consequences, that would be against the law.

Your point is most starkly clear in the case of any open source malware.

> (0) the source code of an algorithm is protected speech

An algorithm is uncopyrightable, as it is not a creative expression. Only creative expressions are copyrightable.

Copyright is a completely seperate part of the constitution than the first amendment. The one legal concept has nothing to do with the other.

You don’t just get to declare whatever legal interpretation you feel like.

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