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Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

Certainly not generally believed by anyone (including lawyers) I know. There's not much to interpret in "...shall make no law..."

The problem, as stated everywhere around this post, is who draws the line, considering the line is against the letter and spirit of the law. The whole reason the clause "...shall make no law..." is there is because any law is self-serving to a group of people wishing to control another group.

While you may consider weapons speech to be over a line you have arbitrarily drawn in the sand, this guy over here believes hate speech is a more dangerous type of speech and would like to draw his own line.

Pretty soon the government considers anti-government speech to be "hate speech" against the powers that be...

"No" law. Not "not many" laws.

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The supreme court has numerous times affirmed limits to free speech. For example, the espionage act has been ruled constitutional. Military officers are prohibited from releasing classified information. You're in trouble if you call in a bomb threat.

You segue onto hate speech and drawing lines; this seems irrelevant here.

Were a Lockheed Martin worker to send the plans for the F-35 to China, they'd be put in prison.

Were Intel transmit the designs for that supercomputer that Intel weren't allowed to build in China to get around export regs, they'd be put in prison.

If it were the case that the constitution allowed the government to (say) prohibit the exporting of certain military hardware (say, a nuclear bomb), but not prohibiting the export of an incredibly detailed document explaining every nuance, datum, etc of producing that same piece of military hardware, I'd argue that the constitution needed a brief update (perhaps as you mention to 'shall make not many laws'). To my knowledge, it does not.

Then either this case will lead to failure, or success by arguing that any export regs on ideas are unconstitutional (thus leading to the bizarre problem above) or a success by proving that the export regs do not, or should not cover what he has produced.

> Were a Lockheed Martin worker to send the plans for the F-35 to China, they'd be put in prison.

Not for speech. Let's say that employee worked on those documents, and was presumed to have knowledge that would enable her to recreate similar plans.

Now suppose they defect to China. They could lose their clearance and, I suppose, be prosecuted for misreporting travel plans and foreign contacts.

But what prior restraint can legally be placed on this person?

So if Edward Snowden were to come back to the US, he'd be prosecuted for misreporting travel plans and foreign contacts but no more? Seems suspect.

More than likely he'd be prosecuted for computer crimes, not violations of speech limitations.

He'd be prosecuted under the espionage act[0] per the charges against him. The espionage act limits speech.

[0]-http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/22/snowden...

This thread is about consequences when the a priori restraint to free speech is not in existence. Please don't derail.

Were Intel transmit the designs for that supercomputer that Intel weren't allowed to build in China to get around export regs, they'd be put in prison.

If Intel were to publish detailed instructions for building this computer in a book, there's no question that it would be protected by the first amendment.

what if they were to not do that, and instead just email them privately (as hypothesised)?

The supreme court has numerous times affirmed limits to free speech.

My assertion is that this is an affront to the Constitution. I thought I made that clear, but if not, SCOTUS ruling that a law abridging the freedom of speech is Constitutional is blatantly and obviously wrong, until an amendment is passed changing the 1st, which is why we have an amendment process.

Do you support a citizen's right to yell "fire!" in a crowded building or theater?

Yes.

To be clear, the law against "fire in a movie theater" hold criminal information that is blatantly 1) dangerous and, more importantly 2) known to be false.

Very specifically this SCOTUS opinion leaves alone speech that is 1) dangerous and 2) opinion or fact and not know to be false. So yelling "fire!" In a theater actually on fire - even though that information can be dangerous (set off a panic) is not illegal.

I'm not necessarily against holding someone accountable for the results of their speech (conversations about personal responsibility aside) but then it's not the speech that's illegal.

>I'm not necessarily against holding someone accountable for the results of their speech (conversations about personal responsibility aside) but then it's not the speech that's illegal.

aptly explained, and food for thought. My appreciations.

You're missing the other part: "abridging the freedom of speech." Why use a noun phrase here? To draw in existing concepts of what the "freedom of speech" means.

Note that your interpretation cuts two ways. If the framers were not referring to some pre existing legal concept, and instead just meant literal speech, then a lot of the decisions expanding that concept are invalid too. Publishing a book, for example, has been interpreted as part of the "freedom of speech." But that's a legal fiction--publishing is an action, not speech. So is protesting, or uploading things to the Internet.

I was going to respond to this, but then I realized I'm not sure how your post relates to the parent. Plus I'm not sure about the last part, are you really saying that print as free speech is a legal fiction?

He's saying that the literal text of the first amendment doesn't allow for the interpretative process of figuring out whether dangerous speech is protected. I'm saying that 1) the way it's written clearly allows for interpretation; and 2) if it didn't that would cut out a lot of protections where the court has interpreted "speech" to be broader than its literal meaning.

Speech as encompassing a range of non-speech activities is indeed the result of legal interpretation. If you're a researcher in computer speech recognition, your job has nothing to do with print, right? The concept of "the freedom of speech" encompassing a wide range of expressive conduct is the result of a legal process, one that started before the Constitution was written. When the framers wrote the text against that background, they meant to incorporate the existing understanding of the limits of that freedom. And that concept has always allowed for limitations on harmful expression.

I agree with your assertion that many things given "speech" protections aren't, like campaign spending, etc. I don't believe protesting to be, though, because it's a medium through which actual speech is communicated. So too is any published forum where actual words are used, like say books or the internet.

Campaign finance, however, is not. I fully support someone's right to speak about who they support and why, in a medium where that speech is communicated as actual language. That is the line, as far as I'm concerned.

Protest, books, the internet - they're all transfer mediums FOR speech. I don't see much difference between limiting publishing and limiting speaking out loud, which are both word-transfer-mechanisms.

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