Voronwë wrote:i can't make a television commercial that says "fuck you".
is that unconstitutional?
In terms of the federal governments regulations preventing it. Yes in my opinion its also unconstitutional. For an intersting read about some of the history of that restriction and its possible implications to the internet, see
http://reason.com/9810/fe.wallace.shtml .
Any member of the broadcast media should be free to make a restriction for their own business. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have a right to force a company to help you to distribute that speech. But in the case of restricting ads before an election, we could have an organizaion that is willing to pay to get its message out, and a private company willing to take that money but the government restricting it purely because of its speech content. In particular because the content does actually contain political speech.
if you want to literally interpret the constituion in a purely reduced form, then again, this ruling has nothing to do with "speech" at all.
Scalia did a decent job in my opinion addressing the speech is not money argment in his dissent. An excerpt ...
In any economy operated on even the most rudimentary principles of division of labor, effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the services of others. An author may write a novel, but he will seldom publish and distribute it himself. A freelance reporter may write a story, but he will rarely edit, print, and deliver it to subscribers. To a government bent on suppressing speech, this mode of organization
presents opportunities: Control any cog in the machine, and you can halt the whole apparatus. License printers, and it matters little whether authors are still free to write. Restrict the sale of books, and it matters little who prints them.
And on pooling money ...
We have said that “implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment” is “a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends.” Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 622 (1984). That “right to associate . . . in pursuit” includes the right to pool financial resources. If it were otherwise, Congress would be empowered to enact legislation requiring newspapers to be sole proprietorships, banning their use of partnership or corporate form. That sort of restriction would be an obvious violation of the First Amendment, and it is incomprehensible why the conclusion should change when what is at issue is the pooling of funds for the most important (and most perennially threatened) category of speech: electoral speech. The principle that such financial association does not enjoy full First Amendment protection threatens the existence of all political parties.
Voronwë wrote:
Nowhere in the first amendment does it say that you have the right to air on publically owned airwaves everything that you are otherwise free to say.
We are all free to speak all sorts of things.
Why do you say that by definition purchased time on broadcast media should be completely bereft of any stipulation on language?
Lets say that the NRA cannot buy television time at all? is that a restriction on its freedom of speech? Does the NRA as a non-individual entity have rights protected by the first amendment? or do the individual members only have those rights? that seems like hair-splitting, but it may be important.
complete unregulated speech does not exist in broadcast media - in at the very least use of profanity, display of certain types of nudity, and a few other things. I would suggest that you do not have a problem with such legislation on those even though in a purely reductionist view, it is a violation of free speech.
I cannot publish a newspaper that demonstrates bomb making techniques, methods to hack government computers, weaknesses in local police enforcement policies, etc. Is that a violation of my right to a free press? no. Now these are more severe in nature than regulations on campaign spending, but i think setting some limit (an extremely high one) on the amount of financial corruption inherent in the system is reasonable.
I am not sure you are correct in your examples here. I just checked Amazon and I can purchase a copy of "The Anarchists Cookbook" which has bomb making techniques, plus more scholarly books on explosives and how they work. There was also a host of books on computer security, and how to test your security by basically trying to hack into it (I attended a seminar earlier this year that did exactly the same thing).
The people who truly benefit from unfettered campaign spending laws are people who are financially to gain from the companies who can afford such access, as well as those whose ambitions are to impose their ethnic groups' cultural standards on the population at large. It is the persons who favor individual rights who actually benefit from the rulings in question, because they - in some small manner - do not completely marginalize the voices of individuals.
The people who truely benefit are incumbents. They already have the benefit of having been in the public eye because of holding office. Restrictions on campaign spending and electoral speech restrict the ability of challengers to get out their own messages, and also to criticize the incumbents performance.
The larger political organizations also benefit, at least in relation to smaller ones, because they can more easily absorb the cost and time of meeting the regulations.
because one cannot convey the exact message they want over broadcast media, that does not mean that they are denied freedom of speech. They are free to publish their own booklets. They are free to hold demonstrations. They are free to stand on street corners saying whatever they want. The first amendment is alive and well.
Soft money was not just used for broadcast media ads. It was used for "party building", which included things like booklets, get out the vote drives. So in the sense that people would like to help contribute to fund such activities, their freedom is lessened.
Nowhere in the constitution does it say anything about any entity have unfettered access to the public's property (broadcast 'air') to use it for whatever political aim that entity may have, and the rest be damned.
Are federal equal time laws unconstitutional to you as well? That media outlets are required to air more than one political candidates views during an election season? is that a violation of free press?
I think the equal time laws are pretty questionable as well, although probably more on fourth amendment "takings" ground.
stipulations on how broadcast media can be used do not infringe upon any individual's ability to express themselves fundamentally. It may mean that they do not have the influence they would otherwise want.
The constitution does not guarantee your speech an audience.
it simply guarantees your right to speak. This is preserved by this ruling.
No, it doesn't guarantee you an audience, as I said earlier, if a company doesn't want to sell an ad, I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the restrictions that the government wants to make on that transaction.
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
– Benjamin Franklin
). Soft money also was generally used for some other activities like get out the vote drives.
