Comment by drone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drone | Hacker News Reader

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No, it isn't a freedom of speech issue, not in any sense of the term, and conflating this situation with it devalues the concept greatly. He has all of the freedom of speech he desires. One's freedom's do not extend to coercing others.

He was not forced to do anything - he was given a choice: either we continue to pay you, and you abridge one line that we don't like being associated with our product, or you keep on saying whatever you wish and we have no requirement to pay you.

Both parties are free to set any terms (as allowed by law) on the deal which both will agree to. If both don't agree to the terms, you have a standard failure to negotiate a deal. If one does something in the future which causes distress to the other party, the other party can certainly demand redress. If the party which caused the issue refuses this, why should they be forced to submit to his whims with no freedom of their own? And what does that have to do with freedom of speech? He's still saying what he wanted to say, is he not?

>He was not forced to do anything

By that standard, nothing short of cutting your tongue off would be an infringement of your freedom of speech. Under the Sedition Act of 1918, nobody was "forced" to do anything; they were just imprisoned if they said bad things about the government.

This sort of hyperbolic conflation is exactly why it's stupid to relate a business transaction to "free speech." There is exactly zero relationship between what I said and putting people in jail for speech. (FYI: putting people in jail for saying things that you don't want is equivalent to forcing people to say what you do want.)

I was tempted to not reply since the comment was being downvoted, but clearly you've garnered some support for your argument giving the people the running the credit card company the right to choose whom they pay for what services and why is equivalent to incarcerating people for speaking their minds.

The argument you're making here, is that every company must -pay- people for exercising their free speech, even when it harms the company. By your argument, it's a violation of a person's free speech for a company to fire its spokesman after they go off on a racist rant on-air, and that marketing firms should be paid by their clients even if they chose to make an ad which disparages them?

Since when does your right to free speech take away my right to association?

Not only do I entirely agree with this, but the title of the blog post makes it seems like he was acting less out of a concern for free speech and more out of a desire for attention. "Hey guys, look at me! I'm giving up money for free speech!"

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