Free Speech Unmuted: Deplatformed: The Supreme Court Hears Social Media Oral Arguments

This episode is about the Netchoice cases, and was recorded right after the oral arguments. You can watch on YouTube, or subscribe on any podcast platform. It's put together by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where I'll be starting as the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow in May.

Comments

[NvEric]

Eugene, some Bell’s Palsy ?
Pruneyard 1980 ?
Growing up, their ‘Peace On Earth’ sign at the top, was moving …
43 years there, in the Valley of Hearts Delight, was enlightening, but not anymore, for various reasons.
NvEric = Eric in Nevada

[NvEric]

Corporate freedoms must extend to their ‘platforms’ of community involvement.

Corporate responsibility demands they give back to the community for which their existence derives from, be it incorporation or business. In other words, their freedoms are our freedoms too. Corporations are not an inherent right. They are allowed a legal means of incorporation, thus they are at the will of the People to exist, therefore, they must oblige their sponsors, the People. Bait and switch is wrong, as is changing terms of service to exclude those deemed unacceptable absent actual criminal behavior.

Freedom is not pure freedom when inside the bounds of political entities. Whether Naturally Born or not, limits exist nonetheless to all parties contained within. Responsibilities, to the system, are part of the equation We put up with those responsibilities, and by We it’s understood to include everyone equally so.

[Edmund Burke's Hastings spy]

Saying doesn't make it so 🙂
How can you say 'give back to the community' when a dozen arts and social sites like NPR and National Endowment for the Arts take huge amounts of money and give back the governemtn line

"In 2014, NPR acknowledged a lack of cultural and ethnic diversity among guests, viewpoints and topics covered as well as the composition of their newsroom and board members."

"Immersion (Piss Christ) is a 1987 photograph by the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano. It depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a small glass tank of the artist's urine. The piece was a winner of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition,[1] which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects."

[Jonathan Affleck]

The oral hearing was interesting but unsatisfying. No participant addressed the operative statutes of Title 47 (Telecommunications).

The FCC does not define a service to be a common carriage service. The common law definition of common carriage determines whether a service is common carriage. The litigation in trial court never reached the presentation of facts that would enable the Trial Court to rule whether a social medium platform is by law a common carrier of messages.

The FCC decides whether a communications-related common carriage service is a telecommunications service that the FCC should regulate. When the FCC makes a determination of its regulatory authority, it applies the following definitions: § 153 (11) Common carrier, § 153 (24) Information service, § 153 (50) Telecommunications, § 153 (51) Telecommunications carrier, § 153 (52) Telecommunications equipment, and § 153 (53) Telecommunications service. When the definitions are applied together, they state that:

1. § 153 (11) Common carrier defines a communications common carrier,
2. § 153 (51) Telecommunications carrier defines a telecommunications carrier, and
3. if a telecommunications carrier is a common carrier, it is a communications common carrier, but
4. not every communications common carrier is a telecommunications carrier.

Every social medium platform provides a service of common carriage of messages. For that service, the backend server is like a letter satchel of a letter carrier. A message in the backend server of a social medium platform is bailment of the social medium platform not speech of the social medium platform just as a letter in the satchel is bailment of the USPS not speech of the USPS. The USPS only has limited legal ability to deny common carriage of a letter. A social medium platform should have only limited legal ability to deny common carriage of a user’s message.

A social medium platform must obey the following statute.

47 U.S. Code § 202 – Discriminations and preferences

(a) Charges, services, etc.

It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage.

(b) Charges or services included

Charges or services, whenever referred to in this chapter, include charges for, or services in connection with, the use of common carrier lines of communication, whether derived from wire or radio facilities, in chain broadcasting or incidental to radio communication of any kind.

(c) Penalty

Any carrier who knowingly violates the provisions of this section shall forfeit to the United States the sum of $6,000 for each such offense and $300 for each and every day of the continuance of such offense.

47 U.S. Code § 202 forbids discrimination by locality, and no party to the oral hearing seemed to realize that the US Internet belongs mostly to the government and to the public.

A social medium platform is highly subsidized by the public and by the government.

I have spoken with several attorneys that deal with Title 47. They were puzzled that in four hours of oral hearing no one mentioned § 202.

[David Nieporent]

No actual attorneys were puzzled by that. They may have been puzzled why you're such a loon that you think that a social media company carries messages.

[Jonathan Affleck]

How could someone that knows nothing about Title 47 litigation possibly judge whether a Title 47-expert attorney would consider the absence of any mention of § 202 to be puzzling?

[Jonathan Affleck]

Why do Eugene and Jane think a point-to-point message transport differs from point-to-multipoint message transport? Telegraphs transported point-to-multipoint messages since the 1850s and were regulated in this service under laws for common carriage of messages. For 30 years I wrote tariff proposals for point-to-multipoint communications common carriage. I don't know the history of mass mailing, but it seems forever to have been considered common carriage of messages.