 calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA | reply to Krenath
Re: Free Speech doesn't mean forcing people to listen said by Krenath:
The First Amendment is there to protect people against the government prosecuting people for the opinions they express or the religion they practice.
It's not there as a way to argue that if you have somethign to say and someone has a place in which it could be said, to FORCE them to allow you say it there.
... Just don't expect to be entitled to make use of other peoples' private property to do so.
... as long as you're standing on MY property or using MY systems, I'll abridge your ass daily with a smile. And there's not a damned thing *anyone* can do about it.
Uhhh, you need to review some of the court cases involving freedom of speech and privately owned areas that are "like" public spaces--including both "company towns" and shopping centers.
A university with dorms is about as close to a "company town" as anything these days, and by acting as an ISP, the university is controlling all access through a powerful type of media.
I'm certainly not saying that spam is a good thing, nor am I saying that there aren't legal ways for an ISP to block spam. I AM saying that folks should be careful before cavalierly declaring that ISPs have no free speech restraints, lest that argument be used to block website access. (It's curious to note the different reactions to spam blocking and website blocking, though they have some substantial similarities, especially if folks reject the finer points in favor of broad over-generalizations such as "The First Amendment doesn't apply to ISPs." It does, at least in some forms....)
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
