[ThoughtCriminal]

Quote by: tivodan1116 Then why does the Constitution also say "press" separately? I don't believe that freedom of speech is limited to actual "speech", I was just pointing out a disjoinder in the arguments of many so-called originalists here.

You seem to be arguing against a position nieither of us supports.

Quote by: tivodan1116 OK...

It's not merely ok, t's the key point. We have this guarantee because it's a necessity. When unregulated market forces render the guarantee moot, we have a problem.

Quote by: tivodan1116 A big part of what makes shopping malls better than a single store in a parking lot is their market share of available products in one place, but they can still ban people from saying or doing objectionable things on their property and they are still private entities.

This is a repetition of a standard libertarian fallacy. Let's say I walk into a store and they eject me because I'm black. You would say that's fine, because it's private property and their property rights trump my human rights.

You might then add that all I need to do is go to another store, as if there were an infinity of them. In reality, I could go store to store and get ejected by bigots at each one of them, until I'm forced to shop in another town.

The "just go somewhere else" answer only works in principle. In practice, options are always limited and there are significant costs to exercising some of them. That why we have laws that forbid such societally destructive practices as commerical racism.

Quote by: tivodan1116 And your argument contradicts your fears. Youtube and Ebay have an interest in bringing the most people possible to their sites, which runs specifically contrary to a policy of banning everyone who commits some minor taboo. Just the same, shopping malls don't generally eject people merely for being slightly offensive - bad body odor or unkempt appearance, for example.

You might as well argue that the racist stores that ejected me had an interest in letting me spend my money, yet they still ejected me. I guess not all entities are perfectly rational, and in the absence of an unlimited number of alternatives, we are going to get a market failure.

Quote by: tivodan1116 To what requirements of a common carrier do you refer?

Communications services, such as delivery or telephones, operate as common carriers, compelling them to serve the public while shielding them from certain consequences of doing so. ISP's need to be given full common carrier status, instead of this Patriot Act patchwork that we have today.

TC