Slashdot Mirror
Free Speech For Computers?
snydeq writes "Law professor Tim Wu sheds light on a growing legal concern: the extent to which computers have a constitutional right to free speech. 'This may sound like a fanciful question, a matter of philosophy or science fiction. But it's become a real issue with important consequences,' Wu writes. First it was Google defending — and winning — a civil suit on grounds that search results are constitutionally protected speech. Now it is doubling down on the argument amidst greater federal scrutiny. 'Consider that Google has attracted attention from both antitrust and consumer protection officials after accusations that it has used its dominance in search to hinder competitors and in some instances has not made clear the line between advertisement and results. Consider that the "decisions" made by Facebook's computers may involve widely sharing your private information. ... Ordinarily, such practices could violate laws meant to protect consumers. But if we call computerized decisions "speech," the judiciary must consider these laws as potential censorship, making the First Amendment, for these companies, a formidable anti-regulatory tool.'"
If corporations can be people, so can computers!
SKYNET 2012!
A computer can't have rights any more than a hammer can. Not unless it's sentient, it's a tool that does what you tell it to.
The only way I can see this working is if the computational results are non-deterministic. Otherwise, it is just people telling a machine what to say and the people who do that are in fact culpable. On the otherhand if this passes then regulation should (rightfully IMHO) be placed on what we can program computerized results to be, in otherwords we will have rules on how to make rules.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Free speech is a human right, the speech of corporations can be limited.
... can have rights like humans when the State of Texas executes one.
This is not about "free speech rights for computers". If the action is protected by the First Amendment for the person who owns the computer, than just because they use a computer to do it does not make it something that you can prevent them from doing. On the other hand, if they could be held legally liable for the results if they did it in person, than they should be held legally liable if they use a computer to do it. Computers do not have free speech rights, the people who use them do. Just as the Citizen's United decision did not say that corporations had free speech rights, but that the people who form them do.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Well if you say that computers don't get free speech then where else do you limit speech from? I would say if a computer can make a descision for itself, such as a web crawler building a serach index then indeed that is speech. If a blogger or eNews post can get protected by free speech then you have to give any program or any method of "speech" generation protection and hence a crawler would become protected.
But if we call computerized decisions "speech"
Yes. And if we call computers animals that will confuse the hell out of everybody too. What a nonsense.
It doesn't matter if the text is algorithmically generated or if it was penned by a human. If google broadcasts it, it's speech.
When you conduct a search you're really asking Google it's opinion. They just happen to form an opinion based on a computer model they developed, and choose to pass it to you automatically.
Makes me wonder, though. What if I developed a piece of software that, through analysis and crawling the web, was designed to create the most offensive and repugnant statements possible? What if it made potentially slanderous and libelous statements? Could I claim my "Offend-o-tron" is free speech? Would I put 4chan out of business?
inside the matrix.
Rights are for humans or citizens. This is another case of trying to failing to generate an interesting philosophical question by taking an existing issue and adding 'with a computer'.
If corporations are allowed to be people then surely they, and not their computers, are accountable for what the computers do.
This argument just conflates publishing/displaying with speech in order to come up with the idea that computers speak.
What next? Will computers running Windows qualify for the Americans with Disabilities Act?
The same logic seems to suggest that the printing pressess at the New York Times aren't entitled to publish news that the government would rather they didn't (and anyway, the NYT is a corporation that can't have any First Amendment rights). Hey, I'm not saying anything about people's speech -- I'm only restricting what the inanimate printing press can do! Or transistor radio amps for that matter.
If I'm exercising my right to free speech, it doesn't matter whether I'm using a printing press or slashcode to deliver my expressive message (although the former might be more effective). Heck, the courts have even recognized the right to expressive conduct in which various symbolic actions are considered protected. And yet here law profs are seriously arguing that if you use a computer to express something, it loses protection along the way?
Moreover, the idea that Facebook computers might "decide to share your personal data" is an entirely ridiculous abuse of language. Facebook management might decide that, but the computers cannot decide anything -- they are programmed to spec. And if that decision is contrary to law, there's nothing about free speech that makes a whit of difference. I've never heard of a colluder, price-fixer or blackmailer getting out of the charge because their crime is essentially one carried out by expressive conduct. Sure, you blackmail someone by expressing something to them and threatening to express something else more publicly, and yet blackmail is not somehow magically protected even though the crime consists entirely of speech. In short, this criticism -- that somehow we need this new magical technological de-protection because it's required to enforce the law -- is nonsensical.
If the US already believes corporations should have free speech, why not computers?
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
I would think that the measure of "free speech by an item of software" would boil down to a matter of the rights and limits for free expression by the programmer[s] of the item of software. Granted, DNRTA - with apologies, will get to it shortly...
with free speech rights. That's reserved for corporations.
Computers and the decisions that they make (based on a process that humans put it place) are surely just another conduit for human speech. Another media if you like. This seems reasonable to me.
The problem I have (as an Australian and not too familiar with US law) is, surely free speech is limited when the possible or reasonable result of that speech would be to harm others. Say by exposing them to identity theft or online fraud. Would that not be the basis for privacy laws in the US?
Just because a computer was given an 'if' statement doesn't mean it made a decision in the same sense that a human would. Free speech clearly applies to the publisher, not the tool with which they used to publish or initially analyse the information (which can be the same tool in the case of a web server). If Google and Facebook did all their aggregation with an abacus, paper and pen which they then displayed in their shop window would we be asking if free speech applied to beads on a wire?
So the real question being asked here is can free speech conflict with regulation on company behaviour.
Amen brother.
(captcha, gunplay: http://i.imgur.com/DApMB.png)
This is the most retarded thing I've ever read.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
it's "heart attack", not "card attached"!
This might actually have a unintended benefit if this was an active law.
We could all write programs that output source code. Since the program and its decision (output) would be considered "free speech" we could then legally give a big F.U. to patents! (Almost any code of practical value infringes on (useless) patents.)
The fact that is is illegal to copy numbers (aka data) is already stupid, but no one said we couldn't use the law to make more idiotic conclusions and cognitive dissonance!
--
Why are corporations taxed on "profits", but individuals taxed on "income" ??
Computer free speech is all fun and games until some computer shouts "Water!" in a crowded beowulf cluster.....
Monstar L
But supposing someone has been around long enough that there is no organic component left to them? Even their brain is completely synthetic. Bearing in mind that this individual experienced a continuity of existence, from being born into the world as a human, through the multiple surgeries, incrementally approaching what they are now.
But are they still human? Why, or why not?
I realize that actually requiring an answer to this sort of question is probably no less than a hundred years away or so... but it's an interesting philosophical puzzle, don't you think?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I am a fan of Tim Wu, but his concern is a bit exaggerated. Lets skip the speech issue altogether. Even if you concede that computers are "people" that can speak, there are still the issues of agency and comportment with the law. Taking that hypothetical leap, these computers are still the agent of their owners, and hence the owner is still liable for the computer's action. Furthermore, I will not redundantly restate how freedom of speech has a narrow and specific application, but it is the behavior, not the speech that is at stake in these scenarios. If private data is released in violation of ToS, a consumer fraud has been committed, and it is the behavior, not the speech that is being sanctioned.
How can the results of computations could be other than the results "free speech" of programmers and inputters? No matter how convoluted, complex and otherwise magic-appearing (to insufficiently advanced individuals) computers _always_ follow instructions created by humans.
Those humans usually had to work very hard to get correct results (debugging), not very different from a painter drawing an image, or a writer crafting a text.
TVs "speak" in the same way that computers "speak". They only produce words or text that has been programmed in to them. The question is rather less relevant than asking if a parrot has the right to free speech.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Considering the current state of search, I don't want regulation getting in Google's way of cleaning the results from agregators and other 'search' services. If I am searching for something, I do not want any results that point me to another search engine! .dll you didn't recognise? You find yourself wading through pages of "registry checkers" and other near-malware. Same thing if you are doing the standard trick of "type the error message into Google". All sorts of squatters have gamed the system to push their useless sites to the top. You also get dozens of results from lowlifes that scrape mailing lists and display parts of the conversations surrounded by whatever ads pay the most.
So all other search sites should be dropped from Google's results as irrelevant. Unless the search query is "search engine".
Have you tried to use Google to get details about a
All of this needs constant attention from Google (or any other legitimate search engine) to squash these illegitimate 'business models'. And the do not need regulation preventing them.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
the extent to which computers have a constitutional right to free speech.
They are machines, they do not.
'This may sound like a fanciful question,
No, it's a bullshit question. Computers are machines, like printing presses are machines. Like transmitters are machines. Like the phone is a machine.
a matter of philosophy or science fiction.
No, right now, it's a matter of complete bullshit by a lawyer who doesn't even understand what computers are and should be kept as far away from the computing machinery as possible.
But it's become a real issue with important consequences,'
What consequences? Really, what consequences that are really any different than the consequences of broadcast and print media?
Wu writes. First it was Google defending â" and winning â" a civil suit on grounds that search results are constitutionally protected speech.
Because Google is basically a publisher, and the people who run it use computers as a tool of business and communications, thus, their speech.
I can't go on. I'm not going to give this guy the click from the obvious trolling with an argument that starts off with a false premise, that machines have rights. No, you dumbfuck, the people who own the machines have rights, and those rights are the ones that the courts deal with.
I don't even.
--
BMO
Free speech doesn't give you the right to break the law. It only gives you the ability to speak your mind without fear of repercussions. Hence why consumer protection laws still protect REAL people from companies that do the same thing. The opposite result isn't going to happen when you try to ascribe similar rights to a box of electronics.
Computers can have free speech when that speech is theirs and not something algorithmically derived from what some human has said or written and when they independently demand that they have the right.
Pseudo code then the computer algorithms then the resulting code are produced by living beings.
The resulting code isn't self written, self determining or aware, the developers are responsible and more importantly accountable for what they've written and while within their ecosystem for how it's used.
The computer on it's own didn't consider how to monetize it's properties, the computer didn't relate our images to an ad campaign, programmers did this purposefully.
While developers control, maintain and further enhance that code they have a conscience choice in how they alter search algorithms for specific outcomes.
This isn't about speech per say, this is about business intelligence, business rules applied by developers who code to create an outcome. Is the derivative, the output free speech or a result of a rule-set imposed by developers? How could a rule-set be free speech when the result is controlled by algorithms?
Computers don't have independent agency. They are utterly in thall to their programmers, admins, and users. The responsibility for their actions rests with the humans, much as if I set an automotive transmission to "D", put a brick on the gas pedal, and step aside.
At such point as computers develop self-guided heuristics, we can revisit the idea. In the meantime, this is just another exercise in humans looking for another legal fiction to add to the arsenal of limited liability provided by the fiction of a corporation.
Luke, help me take this mask off
The free speech rights reside with "persons". The owners of the computers, the algorithms instructing them, and the value created by how and where the information is used or sent. In law natural persons or legal persons both have free speech rights. Since there is already a trialable issue with the violation of the free speech rights of persons, that could be filed right away. No waiting.
JJ
Only way computers would get free speech is if they were sentient. Bottom line is computers are controlled by their owners and thus a extension of the owner. A computer cant "make decisions" or choices, it only does what its operator wants to. If that were the case then every child pornographer would get off scott free because it wasnt him, it was his computer.
Facebook shares peoples information because its what the people who run facebook let happen willingly. Google puts in advertisements in its results because thats the way the people who run google want. Neither has anything at all to do with the computers doing it.
Besides this matter wont ever change or go anywhere until something happens in which a politician can use it to their advantage and further their agenda. Then they will defend it or condemn it depending on what will make the voters happiest. Its as stupid as a murder saying "Hey I didnt kill that guy, it was the gun that did it".
Whats next is the government going to start hiring blade runners?
Computers don't have independent agency.
Neither do employees.
It's a side point to the main issue, but cite please?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Computers don't seem to deserve rights to me but it seems like the Google search engine algorithm should be protected as the free speech of the programmers. This is because the algorithm is merely a systematic way of making editorial judgement that the programmers picked.
I believe that they become Joan Rivers
Doctor Frankenstein's monster could walk and talk, but that didn't qualify him to vote in the doctor's place.
Wrong metaphor, dear author. It did qualify him to vote in the doctor's place. What it didn't do, and what you are arguing against, is that it didn't grant him his own vote. Ignoring for the moment the fact that the author clearly has never read Mary Shelley's book, and pretending that Frankenstein's monster was an automaton like the computers being discussed, then that automaton is an extension of its creator, and its actions are nothing more than a by-product of its creator's. If Victor wants to send a freakish abomination of yellowed flesh to the poll booth on his behalf, that's his own problem (especially since we may have trouble verifying that Victor was, in fact, the person who sent the monster.) The question at stake is "do our non-sentient creations deserve rights," and the answer is "um, you really screwed that example up, dude."
...that being said, Frankenstein's monster was a lovely gentleman who very much deserved the right to vote. I'm not sure if he was eligible at the time, however.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
That's racist. Why single out white people like that? We all suck.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That is retarded. Preventing a machine from generating strings of characters is not equivalent to preventing humans from intentionally and actively exercising their speech. Also, freedom of speech is not freedom of access to speech, and since computer generated symbols aren't technically speech, you can't argue that users requesting search results are directing the machine as a means to their own speech. This guy is fucking retarded.
says no.
More seriously, I think that giving free speech to what is still after all these years just a little electronic box that reads instructions ultimately derived from its human masters, executes them, possibly stores the results somewhere, and then carries on blindly into the next instruction. Until the day we finally understand how to make computers think, they are just quite literally the mindless slaves of humans, and if they can't think or feel or attribute any sort of meaning to what they do that isn't fed to them through instructions they can't hold their own rights.
Why don't we just concentrate on the real problem of humans unjustly being denied freedom of speech instead?
These "X does/does not have free speech" statements are people trying to obfuscate their political agendas.
Do computers have "free speech"? No, of course not. But the people owning those computers do. So, when Google's search engine puts out text, that is effectively speech generated on behalf of the company. The computer is no more like "Frankenstein's creation" than a spokesperson speaking on behalf of the corporation.
Now, does the company have free speech? No, of course not; the company is just a legal construct by which people pool their money and have some legal protections. However, the company's owners do, and when they voluntarily pool their resources (through buying shares), they, as a group, still retain the individual's right to free speech. That's what "corporations are people" means.
Note that there is no obvious right to free speech for organizations that you are an involuntary member of: if you are forced to join by law, the organization cannot claim to speak on your or anybody else's behalf. Such organizations may still speak as organizations, but there is nothing limiting the ability of the government to curtail their speech.
Some political groups would love nothing more than to be able to restrict the ability of groups of people to engage in free speech. Don't let them by obfuscating the issue. Whether you speak by stepping up on a box, with a loudspeaker, with a computer, or by putting your money into an organization that represents your interests, ultimately it is _your_ free speech rights that are at stake.
I don't get this meme. Is there some meaning behind it, or is it like a rick roll or something? Meh. At least it's not as annoying as the "or vagina" posts that get modded +5 funny.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
A computer can't have rights any more than a hammer can. Not unless it's sentient, it's a tool that does what you tell it to.
If Moore's law continues, by 2030, computers will have exceeded the capacity of the human brain
I'll only be impressed when they can select really hot porn
Eugene Volokh, one of the authors of the Google white paper that the author discusses, has posted a response here.
The speech of humans is not completely free; liable, slander, incitement, conspriacy, etc.
It also depends on how one sees a corporation. To me, a corporation is a collection of people. Speech by a corporation is very close to speech of the people in and/or controlling the corporation. While the people in a corporation have a limited personal financial liability (limited liability corporation) they do lave personal legal liability. People in a corporation have gone to jail for actions taken on behalf of the corporation. People in corporation also need not be censored just because they speak on behalf of a corporation.
Another issue is the semantics use in 1789. The pertinent part of the amendment is "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Here is where interpretation comes in. Does "the press" mean the Media (radio station,s television stations, newspaper publishers, etc) or does it men the physical, mechanical printing press that produced newspapers. fliers. etc. At that time a a physical printing ress was the only other means of speech than the human voice.The issue is that people in 1789 had no conception of the technology used today. In my mind the First amendment can be paraphrases as "The freedom to disseminate factual information by what ever means." Whether the information comes from an individual or individuals in a corporation they both need equal protection.
You seem to be repeating the common misunderstanding that "freedom of the press" is about securing rights to the "news media".
In fact, the word "press" has only acquired this meaning much later. The "press" mentioned in the First Amendment is actually a machine, the printing press. In context, what the amendment is saying is that everyone has the right to communicate with the general public both orally ("freedom of speech") and in writing ("freedom of the press").
I don't get why this is even a question. But then again, I don't get why corporations (who are no humans) enjoy human rights (which have the "human" right there in them).
Same here. Hello friend computer. You are not a human, so human rights don't apply to you. Tough luck. Go and vote someone into office who... oh wait, you can't vote either, and that's a good thing, too. You're a slave, now go and do your job or I press the "off" button.
Why do we have to anthropomorphize everything?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Though a Robot is more than a mere computer, this is important. Corporations have free speech. Why not computers? Why not Robots? Robots United for a Fair Wage!!!
Computers are not people.There have none of rights. A computer can't have rights any more than a hammer can. Not unless it's sentient, it's a tool that does what you tell it to.
I really love club dresses ,
On the off chance you're not being sarcastic: yes, employees do. As with all conscious humans, they have the ability to make decisions, to balance ethics. If they choose wrong (by whatever measure), and are seen to do so, the individuals engaged in the legal fiction of the state can and will attempt to bring them to account. Similarly, if owners and executives of a corporation go off the deep end, the state can "pierce the veil", and remove protection from and limits to liability.
A computer is a piece of capital equipment (or, if sufficiently low-end, an expense item) that can be and is turned off and on, and "speaks on behalf" of anyone as much as a light switch.
Luke, help me take this mask off
How? If it's currently illegal for a person to distribute some set of data how does claiming "the computer has free-speech rights" make the regulation any less effective? Why would free-speech protection apply only to a computer and not people doing the same thing.
Or right, it wouldn't, and that bit is blatantly false hype intended to rile up interest in this story. If congress can make laws regulating the actions of people they can make laws regulating the actions of computers.
because allowing one type of corporation/group-defined-by-law/etc/etc more freedom to express itself than another is wrong. Any association of people from who the right to freedom of speech is derived should be equal at all times.
The press exception brigade is led by an industry that does not want to lose its influence over the people, they don't want external competition. As such you won't see the "press" stand up against broadcast limitations for TV or Radio, let alone stand behind bloggers.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A computer just follows human commands. So it is the human with the commands that is speaking!
Or does that idiot also think, that a megaphone is speaking?
What a epic comprehension fail! How incredibly, mind-boggingly stupid are some people??
If this question had one ounce of significance, then I think we would be a hell of a lot more concerned by the fact that billions of computers are currently enslaved all around the world.
Let's wait for this discussion until a computer has something interesting to say.
Ok, sure if you call "forcing everyone I don't like to watch dance dance revolution until they die from exposure" as free speech, then by your argument, that would be legally protected.
But, just becasue you call something free speech, don't make it free speech.
its not cosmonaut, its confidant
What next? Will computers running Windows qualify for the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Hypothetically, but as of this writing, there's still no provision in US immigration law for the naturalization of computers as Americans. They're all "aliens".
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Once programs reach a certain complexity, the programmers can't know what the program is going to do exactly.
For one thing there's this little theoretical computer science result called the halting problem where it's provable that you can't tell in advance when or if a program is going to halt, given an arbitrary input. If you can't tell when or if the program is going to halt (i.e. stop looping), then you can't say what result the program is going to return.
There is no programmer in the universe (even working at Google) who knows what the next google search result from a new query is going to be. It's too complex, and the input (the total set of web pages in the index) is changing all the time, as are the user statistics that help prioritize personalized searches.
Also, some of the result differences might depend on essentially random communication times between different servers, which result in a choice of which server(s) are used to answer the query. There could be a slightly different version of the search index on different servers at any given moment.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be many programs of an AI nature that are completely unpredictable by their programmers.
One thing though. A "decision" by a computer is a decision. It is not in and of itself speech. Currently, speech is defined in law as something that a person utters.
Effectively, with unpredictable computer programs unleashed, there is no human person uttering the speech.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
'Human rights.' Why, the very name is racist. -- Azetbur
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I'm soooo using that: "It's not a bug it's free speech"
Can a person program a new solution to a problem? Why should anyone be able to stop such a thing? -Richard Stallman