This also happened, I’m forgetting the court case, where the government revoked a driver’s license for reasons other than the driving.
They argued, well, it’s a “privilege.” The court, thankfully, shredded them and said that driving is basically a right that anyone may have access to if they meet the same standards set for public safety.
So, at least from that court’s view, it’s a “privilege” that people have an equal right to try to obtain and hold. Or something to that effect.
"privilege" (in the legal sense, not the social justice sense) is compatible with "equal protection" and "due process". "Privilege" doest mean "freely revocable gift".
There's a substantive case to be made here, but you're not even close to making it. It's extremely well-known that the FCC regulates and prohibits, for example, "indecent and profane" content, such as nudity and swearing, which are both obviously first amendment protected. The FCC has been regulating speech like this for nearly 100 years.
I think there are examples of FCC censorship (regulating speech that they do not have the right to regulate, or doing so with obvious political bias), maybe even the one under discussion, but it is incredibly lazy to make these simple sarcastic comments that betray a lack of basic understanding or argumentation. You can make the case for getting rid of all the FCC's speech restrictions if you want, or for resolving what you might consider political enforcement action that is effectively political censorship. But sarcasm about how other people must be mad to tolerate something that has been going on for about 90 years, is pathetic.
The broad public support is why your definition of censorship and the article's are incompatible, why it behooves you to explain the difference, and why it's lazy to invoke Orwell and complain about definitions without explanation.
I agree the FCC is all about censorship, but word games and snark is such a lazy and ineffective way to debate.
Is a broadcast license revocation a form of censorship? Someone asked my co-author Steve Macek that question on Facebook, and Steve's response is worth quoting at length:
It is not censorship to revoke Fox's TV licenses for failure to live up to the public interest requirements the FCC expects of broadcasters.
So, this proposed government regulation of speech isn’t censorship because some guy on Facebook, that I’ve never heard of, personally doesn’t like Fox.
Denying a license is exactly the sort of thing a Roman Censor would have done.
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information
Intent doesn’t matter to the definition of removal of information. I’m sure one could find a definition that includes it in its justification clause but that doesn’t change the operative part where a piece of information is removed from discovery, publication, or broadcast.
If you remove information for the reasons you stated there are ways to indicate to the reader that more information still exists but was not included (for example “…” “[article]”). That’s just editing because it preserves the intent of the author.
If these are not employed, the information was censored/suppressed even if it was to correct bad writing.
The FCC is a revolving door of telecom and big law lobbyists - they serve the likes of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. They are not to be trusted. If a broadcast license can be revoked for questioning an election, what's next? Saying there are two sexes, broadcasting tv programs or content that provide alternative takes on historical events? Similar to how the Supreme Court curtailed EPA authority to issue power plant regulations under the Clean Air Act, the same should be done in regards to the Congress in the Communications Act of 1934. Federal agencies, esp. ones that regulate 'speech' and communications, should be defunded and hacked to pieces.
I truly do not understand how people have forgotten that in a democracy, any powers you give yourself - any lines you cross or precedences you break - are tools that your political enemies will use against you when they return to power, and in a democracy they will always return to power eventually.
Both sides are guilty of the descent into political total war and but as citizens we need to reject this kind of behavior.
Revoking a license isn't necessarily a form of censorship. A license can be revoked for reasons completely unrelated to the speech of the licensee. But if your purpose in revoking the license is because you hate the speech of the licensee and want to prevent them from broadcasting it, then yes, it is censorship.
* The title of this post includes as a tag "(Hint: No, it's not)" which is not part of the title of the linked article.
> It is not censorship to revoke Fox's TV licenses for failure to live up to the public interest requirements the FCC expects of broadcasters.
This is nearly the textbook definition of censorship: sanctions for failing to uphold the "public morals." Somehow that's not the most bizarre claim.
> If I had my druthers we'd take away the licenses of virtually all the commercial TV stations and hand them over to community groups, unions and nonprofits. They couldn't possibly do any worse.
Nowadays the debate always tends to be drawn by dishonest actors towards if something "technically counts" as censorship or not. The idea of free speech is no longer upheld as something of an important idea, but rather something which should be circumvented by as much legal mumbo jumbo as possible.
The point was always, and should be, that we as members of a society should respect and uphold the ability of others to spread ideas, particularly those we ourselves disagree with. This should extend to all faculties of your life within all reasonable reason, not just in the context of government censorship.
I've had to make this point far too many times. There is a cultural norm of free speech and then a legal protection embodying that norm.
Ever since the (IMO ludicrous) XKCD comic[0], too many have gotten the wires crossed and think free speech is exclusively legalistic rather than the bedrock of an open society.
> The idea of free speech is no longer upheld as something of an important idea
I don't think this is correct. Most people will tell you free speech is an important ideal to them, which can only be infringed upon in the most severe cases. The problem is that people on all sides of the debate now believe that the other is out to essentially completely and totally destroy their society and way of life.
For extremists on either side, it's actually true. The question is, are extremist opinions just disproportionally magnified? Or is this, as you often see claimed on social media, actually what a majority of <opposing side> really want?
Something I don't really understand with people putting free speech as the bedrock of an open society is the contradiction in some arguments during the debate.
In one hand, they are explaining that free speech is the most (or one of the most) fundamental right, super hyper important: any speech is very valuable and without a full unregulated freedom of speech, society is loosing something that is very very important.
But on the other hand, they are also saying that speech is useless and powerless. They are saying that there is no consequence to speech (or that, for strange reason, the person speaking should be given credits for all the nice consequences and should be considered having no responsibility at all for all the bad consequences).
I understand better why other rights (freedom of movement, right to own things, freedom of religion, access to health, maintaining justice, ...) are fundamental. I also understand why some of these are still restricted (freedom of movement: yes but with passport and in respect of property, right to own things: yes but you cannot claim whatever you want to be yours, freedom of religion: yes but without bothering too much your neighbourgs, access to health: yes but if it costs you have to pay, maintaining justice: yes but at some point the jury will decide and may be wrong, ...).
I don't understand why freedom of speech is such exception that it has no restriction.
> I don't understand why freedom of speech is such exception that it has no restriction.
I think most people are afraid where the restriction will be placed if those in power decided. For example, as a sort of weird and contradictory but illustrative example, what if I had power over you and dictated you aren’t allowed to question having restrictions because that’s dangerous to the idea of free speech. You might want to point out how that’s hypocritical, stupid, and contradictory but I have police powers and can arrest you. Some linguists believe then that eventually the idea atrophies after generations are not allowed to discuss it their thought process changes to be incapable of questioning it.
Questioning things and being able to freely explain why you are questioning them is why it’s considered so important. It allows people to change each other’s minds in both directions based on who has the most persuasive argument rather than who has the biggest stick.
But this argument works identically with freedom of movement, access to health, ...
For example, it is the people in power how decide and enforce border control and restricted area delimitation. And it is people in power who decide how the healthcare system works.
This argument is basically a slippery slope fallacy: freedom of speech should be absolute, because I can imagine some restrictions being used for bad it means there should be no restriction at all.
I perfectly understand why 0 freedom of speech at all is bad. My question is why people are framing the situation as "it's 100% or 0%" and why they are doing that only with the freedom of speech and not all the other rights.
I don't know, but one explanation can be that with an unrestricted freedom of speech, they can profit of not having to assume the responsibility for their acts while they will themselves not have much damage done to them. It is not the case for the other rights: usually, saying that I want 0 or 100% freedom of movement means that I either can't move myself or either have to accept a migration that I don't like. But if I use freedom of speech to create a dangerous climate upon some minority groups I don't like, I have interest of defending the 100% freedom of speech: they can themselves use the freedom of speech to say whatever they want, it will not convince the majority, because they are in minority.
> It allows people to change each other’s minds in both directions based on who has the most persuasive argument rather than who has the biggest stick.
One remark on that: "the most persuasive argument" can be as bad as "the biggest stick". Between "it's easy, it's all due to this ethnic minority" and "it's complicated, we have to accept we have some part of responsibility in this situation, yet it does not mean the other camp is all innocent, but it does not mean the other camp is intrinsically guilty, ...", the first one is more persuasive, but it is very unjust, and it is as bad as being slave to the biggest stick. The only difference is that with the biggest stick, the common guy is the victim, with this example of derive of the most persuasive argument, the common guy not the victim. But an unjust situation does not become magically just because the victim is not you.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 146 ms ] threadThey argued, well, it’s a “privilege.” The court, thankfully, shredded them and said that driving is basically a right that anyone may have access to if they meet the same standards set for public safety.
So, at least from that court’s view, it’s a “privilege” that people have an equal right to try to obtain and hold. Or something to that effect.
"privilege" (in the legal sense, not the social justice sense) is compatible with "equal protection" and "due process". "Privilege" doest mean "freely revocable gift".
I think there are examples of FCC censorship (regulating speech that they do not have the right to regulate, or doing so with obvious political bias), maybe even the one under discussion, but it is incredibly lazy to make these simple sarcastic comments that betray a lack of basic understanding or argumentation. You can make the case for getting rid of all the FCC's speech restrictions if you want, or for resolving what you might consider political enforcement action that is effectively political censorship. But sarcasm about how other people must be mad to tolerate something that has been going on for about 90 years, is pathetic.
Not allowing profanity is censorship even if most of the public is okay with this.
One can argue that there is a good reason for censorship but you have to call it what it is rather than trying to redefine the act itself.
I agree the FCC is all about censorship, but word games and snark is such a lazy and ineffective way to debate.
It is not censorship to revoke Fox's TV licenses for failure to live up to the public interest requirements the FCC expects of broadcasters.
So, this proposed government regulation of speech isn’t censorship because some guy on Facebook, that I’ve never heard of, personally doesn’t like Fox.
Denying a license is exactly the sort of thing a Roman Censor would have done.
Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information
Intent doesn’t matter to the definition of removal of information. I’m sure one could find a definition that includes it in its justification clause but that doesn’t change the operative part where a piece of information is removed from discovery, publication, or broadcast.
For example, deleting redundant text, or cutting merely to fit the content into a limited space or time, isn't "suppression".
If you remove information for the reasons you stated there are ways to indicate to the reader that more information still exists but was not included (for example “…” “[article]”). That’s just editing because it preserves the intent of the author.
If these are not employed, the information was censored/suppressed even if it was to correct bad writing.
Both sides are guilty of the descent into political total war and but as citizens we need to reject this kind of behavior.
* The title of this post includes as a tag "(Hint: No, it's not)" which is not part of the title of the linked article.
This is nearly the textbook definition of censorship: sanctions for failing to uphold the "public morals." Somehow that's not the most bizarre claim.
> If I had my druthers we'd take away the licenses of virtually all the commercial TV stations and hand them over to community groups, unions and nonprofits. They couldn't possibly do any worse.
Is this meant to as a joke?
The point was always, and should be, that we as members of a society should respect and uphold the ability of others to spread ideas, particularly those we ourselves disagree with. This should extend to all faculties of your life within all reasonable reason, not just in the context of government censorship.
Ever since the (IMO ludicrous) XKCD comic[0], too many have gotten the wires crossed and think free speech is exclusively legalistic rather than the bedrock of an open society.
[0] https://xkcd.com/1357/
I don't think this is correct. Most people will tell you free speech is an important ideal to them, which can only be infringed upon in the most severe cases. The problem is that people on all sides of the debate now believe that the other is out to essentially completely and totally destroy their society and way of life.
For extremists on either side, it's actually true. The question is, are extremist opinions just disproportionally magnified? Or is this, as you often see claimed on social media, actually what a majority of <opposing side> really want?
Trying to censor media that they don't like is exactly the type of activism that they get up to: https://www.fcc.gov/document/chicago-media-action-and-milwau...
But being overtly political _and_ self-promotion (submitter IS the author/CMA) this trips the guidelines line for me.
In one hand, they are explaining that free speech is the most (or one of the most) fundamental right, super hyper important: any speech is very valuable and without a full unregulated freedom of speech, society is loosing something that is very very important.
But on the other hand, they are also saying that speech is useless and powerless. They are saying that there is no consequence to speech (or that, for strange reason, the person speaking should be given credits for all the nice consequences and should be considered having no responsibility at all for all the bad consequences).
I understand better why other rights (freedom of movement, right to own things, freedom of religion, access to health, maintaining justice, ...) are fundamental. I also understand why some of these are still restricted (freedom of movement: yes but with passport and in respect of property, right to own things: yes but you cannot claim whatever you want to be yours, freedom of religion: yes but without bothering too much your neighbourgs, access to health: yes but if it costs you have to pay, maintaining justice: yes but at some point the jury will decide and may be wrong, ...).
I don't understand why freedom of speech is such exception that it has no restriction.
I think most people are afraid where the restriction will be placed if those in power decided. For example, as a sort of weird and contradictory but illustrative example, what if I had power over you and dictated you aren’t allowed to question having restrictions because that’s dangerous to the idea of free speech. You might want to point out how that’s hypocritical, stupid, and contradictory but I have police powers and can arrest you. Some linguists believe then that eventually the idea atrophies after generations are not allowed to discuss it their thought process changes to be incapable of questioning it.
Questioning things and being able to freely explain why you are questioning them is why it’s considered so important. It allows people to change each other’s minds in both directions based on who has the most persuasive argument rather than who has the biggest stick.
For example, it is the people in power how decide and enforce border control and restricted area delimitation. And it is people in power who decide how the healthcare system works.
This argument is basically a slippery slope fallacy: freedom of speech should be absolute, because I can imagine some restrictions being used for bad it means there should be no restriction at all.
I perfectly understand why 0 freedom of speech at all is bad. My question is why people are framing the situation as "it's 100% or 0%" and why they are doing that only with the freedom of speech and not all the other rights.
I don't know, but one explanation can be that with an unrestricted freedom of speech, they can profit of not having to assume the responsibility for their acts while they will themselves not have much damage done to them. It is not the case for the other rights: usually, saying that I want 0 or 100% freedom of movement means that I either can't move myself or either have to accept a migration that I don't like. But if I use freedom of speech to create a dangerous climate upon some minority groups I don't like, I have interest of defending the 100% freedom of speech: they can themselves use the freedom of speech to say whatever they want, it will not convince the majority, because they are in minority.
> It allows people to change each other’s minds in both directions based on who has the most persuasive argument rather than who has the biggest stick.
One remark on that: "the most persuasive argument" can be as bad as "the biggest stick". Between "it's easy, it's all due to this ethnic minority" and "it's complicated, we have to accept we have some part of responsibility in this situation, yet it does not mean the other camp is all innocent, but it does not mean the other camp is intrinsically guilty, ...", the first one is more persuasive, but it is very unjust, and it is as bad as being slave to the biggest stick. The only difference is that with the biggest stick, the common guy is the victim, with this example of derive of the most persuasive argument, the common guy not the victim. But an unjust situation does not become magically just because the victim is not you.