Yes but I don't need to buy a $50 Wii card EVERY SINGLE MONTH.
You don't need to spend that much on XBL either, or re-up every month. On Amazon you can get a subscription card for $45 that lasts for 13 months.
Also, on the Wii you don't get the same level of service. Most (all?) multiplayer Wii games make it very difficult to meet or message anyone who you haven't already exchanged friend codes with; there's no community other than the one you've already formed on your own. There's also no global friends list, voice chat, party system, game invites, achievement leaderboards, etc. One could still argue that Xbox Live is overpriced -- Steam has most of the same features for free -- but you are getting something for your money.
Well.. Until it gets enough mind share and suddenly.. " Oh look... a patent. How did that get there...".
Ah yes, the old patent FUD. This one just won't die, will it? If you have evidence of a patent that Microsoft could enforce against a third-party Silverlight implementation, then please, put up or shut up.
It's possible to only buy Nintendo Points cards, too
This is true of Xbox Live as well. You can subscribe and have your credit card charged automatically, but you can also survive on membership/points cards that you buy at the corner store instead.
Presumably, if Adobe doesn't establish Flash as a cross-platform dev environment for mobiles, then Microsoft will manage to foist Silverlight as it's own bloated slow lane for mobile devices. And the same devs that give us IE-only web apps will start producing Silverlight-only stuff for mobiles.
Not really analogous. IE is proprietary, but you don't need Microsoft software to run Silverlight apps. Moonlight (the Mono equivalent) is open source.
Now maybe Miguel would disagree, but I think it's better to have a truly cross-platform bloated enviroment than to have a single-platform bloated environment (I assume Silverlight/Mono is at least close to Flash in bloat). Sure, I'd take streamlined before bloat, but cross-platform trumps streamlined.
By the way, aren't Android apps based on Java? Since when is that a paragon of efficiency? Or does Google use some kind of 'compiled to machine code' Java variant?
Heh, quite the opposite. Android's Dalvik VM is an interpreter, so it's far less efficient than Java on a PC. You're right, this sort of "bloat" is nothing new to mobiles.
Well, I said IANA statistician. Can you show your work? It does make sense that some banks would be able to hire 100 employees under those circumstances and not bump into a criminal; but the exact equation isn't something with which I'm familiar.
If each employee has a 1% probability of being a criminal, the probability of each employee not being a criminal is 99%. If you pick two random employees, 99% of the time the first one will not be a criminal, and 99% of those times the second one won't be either: the probability is 99% * 99%, or 99% to the second power.
Thus, the probability of 100 employees not being criminals is 99% to the 100th power (0.99 ^ 100 = approximately 0.366 or 36.6%).
Just like it would have ended in 2009 if only McCain hadn't been elected?...Oh, wait.
You're right, it'll actually be the end of 2011 by the time all American troops are out of Iraq. So maybe I should've said "It would have ended in 2007 if Bush hadn't been re-elected."
Don't forget, Kerry voted for the war. He wasn't going to be pulling us out of it.
We'll never know what he actually would've done, but I see no reason to focus on that vote in 2002 while ignoring the platform he was running on in 2004, which did include withdrawing from Iraq.
Good brief. You're wrong. That's a BARCODE not a serial number. All barcodes are identical across all Wiis, and therefore worthless for identifying individual machines.
No, he's right. Look at the serial number sticker on your Wii. See the long, skinny bar code next to it? That encodes the serial number. It is not identical across all Wiis.
You're thinking of the UPC, a more squarish bar code printed on the outside of the packaging. That one is identical for all Wiis because it identifies the product, not the individual console.
But the packaging often has a cutout so the serial number bar code on the console can be scanned from the outside (or a sticker with a copy of the serial number bar code). I don't have my Wii box handy, but I know the Xbox 360 box has one of those cutouts.
Ie. what I want to do is simply mv */*xml . Very basic stuff.
Being an ignorant *nix geek, I find this a difficult task to achieve using the GUI, so I try the MS-DOS shell, I still can't work it out, move being somewhat different to mv. And I freely admit it might be my fabled geek ignorance of Windows at work, so if anyone can give me the DOS cmd that does this...
If you can't see how that kind of thinking applied to weaken the First Amendment cannot also be applied to weaken those very principles of justice, then you have indeed missed my point.
Your point seems to boil down to a slippery slope argument, and those are never very convincing. Especially when the ship has already sailed.
For example, you wrote:
If it's now considered okay to make you suffer in any way, however minor or however great, for the actions of a third party over which you have zero control, then this system is already terminal, we just don't know it yet.
This already happens. To restate the example I used in another post, suppose you buy a product that turns out to be stolen, and the police seize it from you and give it back to its rightful owner. You're suffering for the actions of a third party, right? How do you propose that situation should be handled differently?
You also describe the standard interpretation of the First Amendment (which you somehow took to be an argument I was making) as something that "authoritarian types just love". So the Supreme Court has been packed with "authoritarian types" since the beginning? If so, what are you or anyone else going to do about it? Where are you going to find nine people who believe in absolute, unrestricted free speech and are qualified (not to mention politically palatable) to sit on the Supreme Court? The interpretation you seem to prefer -- that you're entitled to say whatever you want, whenever you want, in any medium you want -- has never been a mainstream view, and it's hard to see how it could've been intended by the founders, let alone how it could actually be implemented today.
Like I said... I'm not familiar with the constitution, but it seems strange that they can't regulate what you say but they can require you to meet their standards as to how to say it.
Again, that happens all the time already: you can advertise your services, but you can't do it by sending spam. You can share your political views, but not by shouting with a megaphone at midnight in a residential area. You can't broadcast on a radio frequency that's been licensed to someone else; even if the frequency is licensed to you, you still can't broadcast profanity, false advertisements, libelous statements, copyrighted material (without paying royalties), etc.
If that all seems strange to you, I encourage you to read some court rulings. You're not the first person to feel that way, but the law is what it is, and the Supreme Court has never interpreted the First Amendment as meaning you can say whatever you want, wherever you want.
Whether it's a constitutional issue or not, it certainly is one of freedom of expression.
In a sense, sure, but not in a sense that courts have ever really shown concern for.
Suppose you buy a printing press on Craigslist, and it turns out to have been stolen, so the police seize it from you. Your freedom of expression is limited, through no fault of your own, right? But that's not a First Amendment issue either.
Don't kid yourself. Massive injustices usually start out very small. If it's now considered okay to make you suffer in any way, however minor or however great, for the actions of a third party over which you have zero control, then this system is already terminal, we just don't know it yet. The entire concept is diametrically opposed to all of our notions of due process, the right to confront your accuser, the presumption of innocence, you name it.
Agreed: it violates many principles of justice. But one thing it doesn't violate is the First Amendment.
Not from the United States and not too familiar with the U.S. Constitution, but wouldn't this be a blatant violation of the first amendment?
No. The First Amendment does not entitle you to use any particular medium. It only protects the content of your speech, and even then, there's a lot of content that's still regulated (fraud, libel, obscenity, copyright infringement, etc.).
Not only can they not talk about this confidential material (which there may be an argument for preventing), but they can't talk to anyone about anything.
Sure they can. They can sign up for another email account, say from Yahoo or Hotmail, or even another Gmail account. They can post on newsgroups and message boards. They can use the telephone, write a letter, or stand on the street corner with a sign and a megaphone. Just because they can't use one particular email account doesn't mean they're unable to speak.
This is a pretty lousy ruling, but let's not get carried away.
You need to explain why, even though there is plenty of chances for opposing viewpoints to be broadcast, they fail, and why that makes it necessary to use coercive authority to tell the stations otherwise.
I have explained this multiple times already. Pay attention.
You need to explain where the broadcast exemption to the first amendment is in the Constitution
No, I really don't. The courts have already ruled on it, and it's not my job to defend that ruling.
That doesn't change the fact it still demands someone be shut down, and it is the government that is making that decision. Government being the one to tell people who may not speak, that is shutting down dissenting views.
No, you could hardly be more wrong. It doesn't demand anyone be shut down. It only demands that the station provide a balance of opinions. It's up to the station to arrange their schedule in such a way that those opinions can be heard. The government would not make any decision about the length of any particular show.
Likewise, consider the station ID requirements. Every so often, the station must devote some airtime to telling its listeners what station they're listening to. Does that mean the government is shutting down dissent by stealing airtime from speakers they don't like? Of course not. The station, not the government, decides where that time comes from, whether it's from moving or shortening any particular show or from airing fewer commercials.
If an individual is to succeed, in utilizing resources that society deems beneficial, then that individual will profit. If they cannot profit, then they fail and those resources are freed for a more productive use. Society determines what a productive use is through profit, not democracy
That's a cute little bit of free-market fundamentalism, but you're still ignoring the fact that no matter what, not every worthy topic is going to be able to support its own radio station.
One reason is because there isn't enough radio spectrum to devote a station to every issue. Another is because listeners don't want to hear some programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even if they do want to hear those opinions once in a while. For example, I'm far more interested in copyright than the average citizen, but even I don't want to listen to a radio station that talks about nothing but copyright.
how can you possibly say the public wants to enforce a rule for the public good, when an overwhelming marketplace says otherwise?
Because the marketplace is not the ultimate arbiter of the public good. For instance, most listeners would prefer a station that never interrupted their programming to test the emergency broadcast system (or perhaps even in a real emergency), but that doesn't mean the EBS is counter to the public good.
They are economic goods, they are scarce, by definition that means limited. You cannot make comparisons between two different things saying something is scarcer than another (if that is indeed the case that there are shortages, that means the cost is too low).
Of course you can.
The important difference is that broadcast spectrum is too limited to expect each speaker to have their own station. Like I said before, that's why spectrum is licensed. You know this.
Space on the internet is limited in some sense, but that's irrelevant (unless you intend to dodge the argument with semantic quibbling, which you seem to be doing). No one has ever been shut out of speaking on the internet because there wasn't enough room left on the internet.
Speaking for the unanimous majority, chief justice Warren E. Burger wrote on June 25, 1974 "Government-enforced right of access inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate." even though "The appellee and supporting advocates of an enforceable right of access to the press vigorously argue that [418 U.S. 241, 248] government has an obligation to ensure that a wide variety of views reach the public." thus overturning a fairness doctrine.
*sigh*
We've been over this. That case was about newspapers, not broadcast media. The fairness doctrine for broadcast media remained in effect until 1987, when it was discontinued by the FCC, not overturned by a court.
The constitutionality of this isn't very arguable, unless you use a mutilated reading of the Constitution.
You're right. The fairness doctrine is inarguably constitutional for broadcast media unless you use a mutilated reading of the Constitution.
So it is about shutting down dissent then. It is about restricting how much speech one side may present.
Absolutely not. It's about providing a balance of opinion. You can say whatever you want, for as long as you want, as long as you provide a balanced view of the controversial issues.
That doesn't "restrict how much speech one side may present" any more than the station ID requirements do, or the fact that the day only has 24 hours in it. Sure, you can't spend all 24 hours railing on one side of the issue, but you're embarrassing yourself if you're equating that to "shutting down dissent". You can fit plenty of "dissent" into 12 hours, even if you have to devote the next 12 to providing a balance of opinions.
Unless there is some innovation that would change that around (short of cash rewards for only listening to that one outlet, I can't think of any), what does it matter if one station specializes in one type of opinion, and another station in another, or if opinions are mixed up between the two.
You're still not grasping the difference between one station balancing another and one station balancing itself.
If a radio host decides to spend an hour promoting longer copyright terms, where should listeners go to hear the counterargument? Does a group like the EFF have to run its own station dedicated to shorter terms? Should we expect every single issue to have a station running 24x7 just in case someone on another station decides to talk about it? Of course not, it's wasteful and there isn't enough radio bandwidth for it anyway.
Perhaps, if a station that specializes in one type of talk can't make it, there is a reason behind it?
Now that is shutting down dissent -- free market style. "Your opinion on this issue isn't important to enough people to support its own radio station, so I guess it doesn't deserve to get heard on the radio at all."
Because one side can't get their views to be heard on a medium, that means they have to go after it. Never mind that this already happens on television and the Internet, where entire channels/websites are dedicated or near dedicated to one viewpoint, it just isn't dominated all around.
Cable television and the internet aren't limited resources in the same way that broadcast TV and radio are.
This process has decided how to allocate privately owned media, disagree with it as you may you have no right to use violent or the threat of violent force - the government - to legislate otherwise.
And yet that legislation has already been passed and upheld by the courts. "Privately owned media" (i.e. radio spectrum that is temporarily and conditionally licensed to private broadcasters) already is allocated by parties other than the ones holding the broadcast license. Sorry, but that's reality, and whining about how the government has "no right" to do something that's been declared constitutional isn't going to change it.
Again, allow me to quote the first amendment (thank God for the anti-federalists): "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Oh, that part. The part that the Supreme Court already found not to be violated by the fairness doctrine. Care to try again?
Look, I wish your interpretation were true. I wish "no law... abridging the freedom of speech" meant you could say whatever you wanted with no interference from obscenity law, copyright law, etc. But it's the interpretation of the courts that matters.
To put it another way, which section of the Constitution authorizes such a proposal?
The same section that authorizes licensing spectrum in the first place. (Presumably the interstate commerce clause, since radio was originally regulated by the Department of Commerce.)
How is that "sound" regulation working out? No regulation has put a dent in the business cycle, quality, or cost, or at the very least, the supposed benefits were grossly overestimated.
It's working pretty well in my experience. For example, just a few hours ago I ate some food that wasn't filled with rat droppings or workers' severed digits. I have confidence that the money in my bank account today will still be there tomorrow. I can use third-party car parts without voiding the warranty on my car.
I showed that it is entirely possible to start new stations with alternative viewpoints, and many are - they simply don't do well.
You're missing the point. "New stations with alternative viewpoints" are a poor substitute for balanced presentation of viewpoints within a single station. Just because no one wants to hear pro-Controversy-XYZ programming 24 hours a day doesn't mean anti-Controversy-XYZ programming should go unopposed.
It comes down to that, and there is no argument to prop up failing ratio stations that could be used better, according to the collective choices of society, doing something else.
What "argument to prop up failing radio stations"? The fairness doctrine has nothing to do with that.
You can't decide what "serving the public interest" is, it isn't up to you. How time is allocated is up to the owners of the stations, and no one else.
We've already been over this. We both agreed that station owners are not given sole control over the content of their broadcasts.
You are suggesting the government should decide what is in the public interest? The government decides someone is not serving the public interest?
The public decides what is in the public interest, through their elected representatives. Again, this issue was resolved long ago: broadcasters are already subject to restrictions and requirements that are deemed to serve the public interest.
That sounds like an awful violation of the Constitution to me.
Government prohibits employers from paying/employees from accepting wages below a given rate, for instance. That, of course, doesn't mean it is right.
Heh. The question of whether regulations are "right" was settled long ago: the laissez-faire fundamentalists lost. Condolences!
Libel and false advertising would be fraud, not free speech.
So you agree that "free speech" doesn't mean absolute control over content. What are we arguing about, then?
So the issue appears to be how limited is the broadcast time for that media?
Exactly. That's the difference between broadcast media and newspapers: the airwaves are fundamentally limited in a way that newspaper space is not. That's why radio spectrum is licensed and printing presses aren't, and why broadcast media is subject to restrictions that don't apply to print, internet, cable TV, etc.
Left-wing radio stations have been tried, some have been successful, but largely not so much. So the limited radio spectrum doesn't seem to be a problem, at least now if not ever. There is plenty of bandwidth to broadcast on, what is lacking is not a frequency, but listeners.
The radio spectrum is still as limited as it ever was: the physics of broadcasting haven't changed. Thus the constitutional issue hasn't changed.
The fairness doctrine wasn't about ensuring that "left-wing" and "right-wing" views both had an outlet (as if that even describes the entire continuum of opinion). It was about ensuring that when the public airwaves were used to discuss controversial issues, those issues were covered fairly within that medium: so that a person turning on the radio would not be left with only part of the story, even if he didn't have the patience or knowledge to seek out opposing views on some other station or medium at a completely different time.
Note that "controversial issues" may include issues on which the "left-wing" and "right-wing" positions are the same (because the controversy is along a different political axis), or issues where one side is promoted by a group that doesn't have enough followers to justify its own 24x7 media outlet (say, tech issues like encryption or copyright). The public interest is not being served when $RADIO_PARTISAN spouts off on $ISSUE on the air but the only counterpoint is on a web site that his listeners won't know about.
Air space is just as much private property as land is, it can be owned and within a specific area. The FCC was created to defend this private property right, so broadcasters would not interfere with each other, and nothing more.
And yet we already impose plenty of other restrictions on how the airwaves can be used, from station ID requirements to bans on profanity and nudity (you may recall an incident with Janet Jackson). A broadcasting license has never given the broadcaster absolute control over content.
By the way, we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
Oh, please. Under that definition, there are no democracies. But you and I both know that "democracy" commonly refers to forms of government in which citizens elect their representatives, and such arrangements are harmed when citizens are uninformed or misinformed -- even if it's due to their own listening preferences.
That constitution happens to say this: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"
That means that the government may not tell the press what to do, only the press may choose themselves how to allocate air time.
By that logic, laws against libel and false advertising would be unconstitutional (not to mention laws against obscenity, copyright infringement, etc.). A law requiring balance of opinion is no less constitutional than a law requiring truthfulness.
Nothing supports any other argument, not the Anti-Federalist papers, not court rulings (no one is in danger here, and even if a lack of regulation did put people in physical harm that wouldn't be permission to have a highly unbiased government bureaucrat allocate air time), nothing.
Nothing? No court rulings? I give you Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, in which the Supreme Court found the fairness doctrine to be constitutional, rejecting a claim that the "equal time" and "response to personal attack" rules violated the First Amendment.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000-60,000 people were in DC last weekend and some "Professional Journalists" were reporting "10,000". 10k people, REALLY?
It mandates, under government authority, that you give an "equal" block of airtime to someone in opposition to your programming, whether or not your listeners want it. It's Big Brother on the radio.
Actually, it's the opposite of Big Brother. Read 1984 again; it sounds like you missed the point entirely.
Your only alternative is to turn the radio off.
No, you have other alternatives: change the station, listen to internet or satellite radio, do something else for a while, or even (gasp!) just listen to a dissenting opinion once in a while.
That's regulating speech and micromanaging private enterprise.
No, it's not regulating speech, it's regulating the use of one particular forum (the public airwaves). The First Amendment doesn't entitle you to say whatever you like on the radio any more than it entitles you to say whatever you like on your neighbor's lawn.
And as for the sure-to-come argument that "the airways belong to the public"... stations paid a lot of money for the rights to those airwaves so that they could put a product on them that would make a profit.
They paid for the right to broadcast on those frequencies, but their use is subject to certain terms, which they knew when they paid for it.
BTW, radio was still profitable when the fairness doctrine was in effect.
Let the listeners decide what they want to hear. If something isn't making money, it's off the air. Period. That's how broadcasting works.
Sometimes people decide they don't want to hear the truth, they just want to sit in an echo chamber. It may be profitable to provide an echo chamber, but unfortunately it isn't very healthy for a democracy. We the people have every right to decide that we don't want our airwaves used in such a way.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but I don't need to buy a $50 Wii card EVERY SINGLE MONTH.
You don't need to spend that much on XBL either, or re-up every month. On Amazon you can get a subscription card for $45 that lasts for 13 months.
Also, on the Wii you don't get the same level of service. Most (all?) multiplayer Wii games make it very difficult to meet or message anyone who you haven't already exchanged friend codes with; there's no community other than the one you've already formed on your own. There's also no global friends list, voice chat, party system, game invites, achievement leaderboards, etc. One could still argue that Xbox Live is overpriced -- Steam has most of the same features for free -- but you are getting something for your money.
Well.. Until it gets enough mind share and suddenly.. " Oh look... a patent. How did that get there...".
Ah yes, the old patent FUD. This one just won't die, will it? If you have evidence of a patent that Microsoft could enforce against a third-party Silverlight implementation, then please, put up or shut up.
It's possible to only buy Nintendo Points cards, too
This is true of Xbox Live as well. You can subscribe and have your credit card charged automatically, but you can also survive on membership/points cards that you buy at the corner store instead.
Presumably, if Adobe doesn't establish Flash as a cross-platform dev environment for mobiles, then Microsoft will manage to foist Silverlight as it's own bloated slow lane for mobile devices. And the same devs that give us IE-only web apps will start producing Silverlight-only stuff for mobiles.
Not really analogous. IE is proprietary, but you don't need Microsoft software to run Silverlight apps. Moonlight (the Mono equivalent) is open source.
Now maybe Miguel would disagree, but I think it's better to have a truly cross-platform bloated enviroment than to have a single-platform bloated environment (I assume Silverlight/Mono is at least close to Flash in bloat). Sure, I'd take streamlined before bloat, but cross-platform trumps streamlined.
Who you callin' "single-platform"?
By the way, aren't Android apps based on Java? Since when is that a paragon of efficiency? Or does Google use some kind of 'compiled to machine code' Java variant?
Heh, quite the opposite. Android's Dalvik VM is an interpreter, so it's far less efficient than Java on a PC. You're right, this sort of "bloat" is nothing new to mobiles.
Well, I said IANA statistician. Can you show your work? It does make sense that some banks would be able to hire 100 employees under those circumstances and not bump into a criminal; but the exact equation isn't something with which I'm familiar.
If each employee has a 1% probability of being a criminal, the probability of each employee not being a criminal is 99%. If you pick two random employees, 99% of the time the first one will not be a criminal, and 99% of those times the second one won't be either: the probability is 99% * 99%, or 99% to the second power.
Thus, the probability of 100 employees not being criminals is 99% to the 100th power (0.99 ^ 100 = approximately 0.366 or 36.6%).
Just like it would have ended in 2009 if only McCain hadn't been elected? ...Oh, wait.
You're right, it'll actually be the end of 2011 by the time all American troops are out of Iraq. So maybe I should've said "It would have ended in 2007 if Bush hadn't been re-elected."
Don't forget, Kerry voted for the war. He wasn't going to be pulling us out of it.
We'll never know what he actually would've done, but I see no reason to focus on that vote in 2002 while ignoring the platform he was running on in 2004, which did include withdrawing from Iraq.
Are you sure about that? It's amazing how many people seem to have been against the recent war, yet the government waged it anyway...
It would have ended in 2005 if Bush hadn't been re-elected. Obviously, changing the behavior of the government by voting only works when you win.
The link was working for me when I posted it. I still have the images in my browser cache, I guess.
Coral cached version
Good brief. You're wrong. That's a BARCODE not a serial number. All barcodes are identical across all Wiis, and therefore worthless for identifying individual machines.
No, he's right. Look at the serial number sticker on your Wii. See the long, skinny bar code next to it? That encodes the serial number. It is not identical across all Wiis.
You're thinking of the UPC, a more squarish bar code printed on the outside of the packaging. That one is identical for all Wiis because it identifies the product, not the individual console.
But the packaging often has a cutout so the serial number bar code on the console can be scanned from the outside (or a sticker with a copy of the serial number bar code). I don't have my Wii box handy, but I know the Xbox 360 box has one of those cutouts.
Ie. what I want to do is simply mv */*xml . Very basic stuff.
Being an ignorant *nix geek, I find this a difficult task to achieve using the GUI, so I try the MS-DOS shell, I still can't work it out, move being somewhat different to mv. And I freely admit it might be my fabled geek ignorance of Windows at work, so if anyone can give me the DOS cmd that does this ...
for /d %i in (*) do move %i\*.xml .
If you can't see how that kind of thinking applied to weaken the First Amendment cannot also be applied to weaken those very principles of justice, then you have indeed missed my point.
Your point seems to boil down to a slippery slope argument, and those are never very convincing. Especially when the ship has already sailed.
For example, you wrote:
If it's now considered okay to make you suffer in any way, however minor or however great, for the actions of a third party over which you have zero control, then this system is already terminal, we just don't know it yet.
This already happens. To restate the example I used in another post, suppose you buy a product that turns out to be stolen, and the police seize it from you and give it back to its rightful owner. You're suffering for the actions of a third party, right? How do you propose that situation should be handled differently?
You also describe the standard interpretation of the First Amendment (which you somehow took to be an argument I was making) as something that "authoritarian types just love". So the Supreme Court has been packed with "authoritarian types" since the beginning? If so, what are you or anyone else going to do about it? Where are you going to find nine people who believe in absolute, unrestricted free speech and are qualified (not to mention politically palatable) to sit on the Supreme Court? The interpretation you seem to prefer -- that you're entitled to say whatever you want, whenever you want, in any medium you want -- has never been a mainstream view, and it's hard to see how it could've been intended by the founders, let alone how it could actually be implemented today.
Like I said... I'm not familiar with the constitution, but it seems strange that they can't regulate what you say but they can require you to meet their standards as to how to say it.
Again, that happens all the time already: you can advertise your services, but you can't do it by sending spam. You can share your political views, but not by shouting with a megaphone at midnight in a residential area. You can't broadcast on a radio frequency that's been licensed to someone else; even if the frequency is licensed to you, you still can't broadcast profanity, false advertisements, libelous statements, copyrighted material (without paying royalties), etc.
If that all seems strange to you, I encourage you to read some court rulings. You're not the first person to feel that way, but the law is what it is, and the Supreme Court has never interpreted the First Amendment as meaning you can say whatever you want, wherever you want.
Whether it's a constitutional issue or not, it certainly is one of freedom of expression.
In a sense, sure, but not in a sense that courts have ever really shown concern for.
Suppose you buy a printing press on Craigslist, and it turns out to have been stolen, so the police seize it from you. Your freedom of expression is limited, through no fault of your own, right? But that's not a First Amendment issue either.
Don't kid yourself. Massive injustices usually start out very small. If it's now considered okay to make you suffer in any way, however minor or however great, for the actions of a third party over which you have zero control, then this system is already terminal, we just don't know it yet. The entire concept is diametrically opposed to all of our notions of due process, the right to confront your accuser, the presumption of innocence, you name it.
Agreed: it violates many principles of justice. But one thing it doesn't violate is the First Amendment.
Let's close phishing@irs.gov or any such e-mail addresses, no change? They still can "speak"?
Correct. That would not be a First Amendment violation and would not prevent anyone from communicating. What's your point?
Not from the United States and not too familiar with the U.S. Constitution, but wouldn't this be a blatant violation of the first amendment?
No. The First Amendment does not entitle you to use any particular medium. It only protects the content of your speech, and even then, there's a lot of content that's still regulated (fraud, libel, obscenity, copyright infringement, etc.).
Not only can they not talk about this confidential material (which there may be an argument for preventing), but they can't talk to anyone about anything.
Sure they can. They can sign up for another email account, say from Yahoo or Hotmail, or even another Gmail account. They can post on newsgroups and message boards. They can use the telephone, write a letter, or stand on the street corner with a sign and a megaphone. Just because they can't use one particular email account doesn't mean they're unable to speak.
This is a pretty lousy ruling, but let's not get carried away.
You need to explain why, even though there is plenty of chances for opposing viewpoints to be broadcast, they fail, and why that makes it necessary to use coercive authority to tell the stations otherwise.
I have explained this multiple times already. Pay attention.
You need to explain where the broadcast exemption to the first amendment is in the Constitution
No, I really don't. The courts have already ruled on it, and it's not my job to defend that ruling.
That doesn't change the fact it still demands someone be shut down, and it is the government that is making that decision. Government being the one to tell people who may not speak, that is shutting down dissenting views.
No, you could hardly be more wrong. It doesn't demand anyone be shut down. It only demands that the station provide a balance of opinions. It's up to the station to arrange their schedule in such a way that those opinions can be heard. The government would not make any decision about the length of any particular show.
Likewise, consider the station ID requirements. Every so often, the station must devote some airtime to telling its listeners what station they're listening to. Does that mean the government is shutting down dissent by stealing airtime from speakers they don't like? Of course not. The station, not the government, decides where that time comes from, whether it's from moving or shortening any particular show or from airing fewer commercials.
If an individual is to succeed, in utilizing resources that society deems beneficial, then that individual will profit. If they cannot profit, then they fail and those resources are freed for a more productive use. Society determines what a productive use is through profit, not democracy
That's a cute little bit of free-market fundamentalism, but you're still ignoring the fact that no matter what, not every worthy topic is going to be able to support its own radio station.
One reason is because there isn't enough radio spectrum to devote a station to every issue. Another is because listeners don't want to hear some programming 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even if they do want to hear those opinions once in a while. For example, I'm far more interested in copyright than the average citizen, but even I don't want to listen to a radio station that talks about nothing but copyright.
how can you possibly say the public wants to enforce a rule for the public good, when an overwhelming marketplace says otherwise?
Because the marketplace is not the ultimate arbiter of the public good. For instance, most listeners would prefer a station that never interrupted their programming to test the emergency broadcast system (or perhaps even in a real emergency), but that doesn't mean the EBS is counter to the public good.
They are economic goods, they are scarce, by definition that means limited. You cannot make comparisons between two different things saying something is scarcer than another (if that is indeed the case that there are shortages, that means the cost is too low).
Of course you can.
The important difference is that broadcast spectrum is too limited to expect each speaker to have their own station. Like I said before, that's why spectrum is licensed. You know this.
Space on the internet is limited in some sense, but that's irrelevant (unless you intend to dodge the argument with semantic quibbling, which you seem to be doing). No one has ever been shut out of speaking on the internet because there wasn't enough room left on the internet.
Speaking for the unanimous majority, chief justice Warren E. Burger wrote on June 25, 1974 "Government-enforced right of access inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate." even though "The appellee and supporting advocates of an enforceable right of access to the press vigorously argue that [418 U.S. 241, 248] government has an obligation to ensure that a wide variety of views reach the public." thus overturning a fairness doctrine.
*sigh*
We've been over this. That case was about newspapers, not broadcast media. The fairness doctrine for broadcast media remained in effect until 1987, when it was discontinued by the FCC, not overturned by a court.
The constitutionality of this isn't very arguable, unless you use a mutilated reading of the Constitution.
You're right. The fairness doctrine is inarguably constitutional for broadcast media unless you use a mutilated reading of the Constitution.
So it is about shutting down dissent then. It is about restricting how much speech one side may present.
Absolutely not. It's about providing a balance of opinion. You can say whatever you want, for as long as you want, as long as you provide a balanced view of the controversial issues.
That doesn't "restrict how much speech one side may present" any more than the station ID requirements do, or the fact that the day only has 24 hours in it. Sure, you can't spend all 24 hours railing on one side of the issue, but you're embarrassing yourself if you're equating that to "shutting down dissent". You can fit plenty of "dissent" into 12 hours, even if you have to devote the next 12 to providing a balance of opinions.
Unless there is some innovation that would change that around (short of cash rewards for only listening to that one outlet, I can't think of any), what does it matter if one station specializes in one type of opinion, and another station in another, or if opinions are mixed up between the two.
You're still not grasping the difference between one station balancing another and one station balancing itself.
If a radio host decides to spend an hour promoting longer copyright terms, where should listeners go to hear the counterargument? Does a group like the EFF have to run its own station dedicated to shorter terms? Should we expect every single issue to have a station running 24x7 just in case someone on another station decides to talk about it? Of course not, it's wasteful and there isn't enough radio bandwidth for it anyway.
Perhaps, if a station that specializes in one type of talk can't make it, there is a reason behind it?
Now that is shutting down dissent -- free market style. "Your opinion on this issue isn't important to enough people to support its own radio station, so I guess it doesn't deserve to get heard on the radio at all."
Because one side can't get their views to be heard on a medium, that means they have to go after it. Never mind that this already happens on television and the Internet, where entire channels/websites are dedicated or near dedicated to one viewpoint, it just isn't dominated all around.
Cable television and the internet aren't limited resources in the same way that broadcast TV and radio are.
This process has decided how to allocate privately owned media, disagree with it as you may you have no right to use violent or the threat of violent force - the government - to legislate otherwise.
And yet that legislation has already been passed and upheld by the courts. "Privately owned media" (i.e. radio spectrum that is temporarily and conditionally licensed to private broadcasters) already is allocated by parties other than the ones holding the broadcast license. Sorry, but that's reality, and whining about how the government has "no right" to do something that's been declared constitutional isn't going to change it.
Again, allow me to quote the first amendment (thank God for the anti-federalists): "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Oh, that part. The part that the Supreme Court already found not to be violated by the fairness doctrine. Care to try again?
Look, I wish your interpretation were true. I wish "no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" meant you could say whatever you wanted with no interference from obscenity law, copyright law, etc. But it's the interpretation of the courts that matters.
To put it another way, which section of the Constitution authorizes such a proposal?
The same section that authorizes licensing spectrum in the first place. (Presumably the interstate commerce clause, since radio was originally regulated by the Department of Commerce.)
How is that "sound" regulation working out? No regulation has put a dent in the business cycle, quality, or cost, or at the very least, the supposed benefits were grossly overestimated.
It's working pretty well in my experience. For example, just a few hours ago I ate some food that wasn't filled with rat droppings or workers' severed digits. I have confidence that the money in my bank account today will still be there tomorrow. I can use third-party car parts without voiding the warranty on my car.
I showed that it is entirely possible to start new stations with alternative viewpoints, and many are - they simply don't do well.
You're missing the point. "New stations with alternative viewpoints" are a poor substitute for balanced presentation of viewpoints within a single station. Just because no one wants to hear pro-Controversy-XYZ programming 24 hours a day doesn't mean anti-Controversy-XYZ programming should go unopposed.
It comes down to that, and there is no argument to prop up failing ratio stations that could be used better, according to the collective choices of society, doing something else.
What "argument to prop up failing radio stations"? The fairness doctrine has nothing to do with that.
You can't decide what "serving the public interest" is, it isn't up to you. How time is allocated is up to the owners of the stations, and no one else.
We've already been over this. We both agreed that station owners are not given sole control over the content of their broadcasts.
You are suggesting the government should decide what is in the public interest? The government decides someone is not serving the public interest?
The public decides what is in the public interest, through their elected representatives. Again, this issue was resolved long ago: broadcasters are already subject to restrictions and requirements that are deemed to serve the public interest.
That sounds like an awful violation of the Constitution to me.
Which clause?
Government prohibits employers from paying/employees from accepting wages below a given rate, for instance. That, of course, doesn't mean it is right.
Heh. The question of whether regulations are "right" was settled long ago: the laissez-faire fundamentalists lost. Condolences!
Libel and false advertising would be fraud, not free speech.
So you agree that "free speech" doesn't mean absolute control over content. What are we arguing about, then?
So the issue appears to be how limited is the broadcast time for that media?
Exactly. That's the difference between broadcast media and newspapers: the airwaves are fundamentally limited in a way that newspaper space is not. That's why radio spectrum is licensed and printing presses aren't, and why broadcast media is subject to restrictions that don't apply to print, internet, cable TV, etc.
Left-wing radio stations have been tried, some have been successful, but largely not so much. So the limited radio spectrum doesn't seem to be a problem, at least now if not ever. There is plenty of bandwidth to broadcast on, what is lacking is not a frequency, but listeners.
The radio spectrum is still as limited as it ever was: the physics of broadcasting haven't changed. Thus the constitutional issue hasn't changed.
The fairness doctrine wasn't about ensuring that "left-wing" and "right-wing" views both had an outlet (as if that even describes the entire continuum of opinion). It was about ensuring that when the public airwaves were used to discuss controversial issues, those issues were covered fairly within that medium: so that a person turning on the radio would not be left with only part of the story, even if he didn't have the patience or knowledge to seek out opposing views on some other station or medium at a completely different time.
Note that "controversial issues" may include issues on which the "left-wing" and "right-wing" positions are the same (because the controversy is along a different political axis), or issues where one side is promoted by a group that doesn't have enough followers to justify its own 24x7 media outlet (say, tech issues like encryption or copyright). The public interest is not being served when $RADIO_PARTISAN spouts off on $ISSUE on the air but the only counterpoint is on a web site that his listeners won't know about.
Air space is just as much private property as land is, it can be owned and within a specific area. The FCC was created to defend this private property right, so broadcasters would not interfere with each other, and nothing more.
And yet we already impose plenty of other restrictions on how the airwaves can be used, from station ID requirements to bans on profanity and nudity (you may recall an incident with Janet Jackson). A broadcasting license has never given the broadcaster absolute control over content.
By the way, we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
Oh, please. Under that definition, there are no democracies. But you and I both know that "democracy" commonly refers to forms of government in which citizens elect their representatives, and such arrangements are harmed when citizens are uninformed or misinformed -- even if it's due to their own listening preferences.
That constitution happens to say this:
"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"
That means that the government may not tell the press what to do, only the press may choose themselves how to allocate air time.
By that logic, laws against libel and false advertising would be unconstitutional (not to mention laws against obscenity, copyright infringement, etc.). A law requiring balance of opinion is no less constitutional than a law requiring truthfulness.
Nothing supports any other argument, not the Anti-Federalist papers, not court rulings (no one is in danger here, and even if a lack of regulation did put people in physical harm that wouldn't be permission to have a highly unbiased government bureaucrat allocate air time), nothing.
Nothing? No court rulings? I give you Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC , in which the Supreme Court found the fairness doctrine to be constitutional, rejecting a claim that the "equal time" and "response to personal attack" rules violated the First Amendment.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000-60,000 people were in DC last weekend and some "Professional Journalists" were reporting "10,000". 10k people, REALLY?
There, fixed that for you.
Are you suggesting that off-topic posts don't deserve to be modded down?
It mandates, under government authority, that you give an "equal" block of airtime to someone in opposition to your programming, whether or not your listeners want it. It's Big Brother on the radio.
Actually, it's the opposite of Big Brother. Read 1984 again; it sounds like you missed the point entirely.
Your only alternative is to turn the radio off.
No, you have other alternatives: change the station, listen to internet or satellite radio, do something else for a while, or even (gasp!) just listen to a dissenting opinion once in a while.
That's regulating speech and micromanaging private enterprise.
No, it's not regulating speech, it's regulating the use of one particular forum (the public airwaves). The First Amendment doesn't entitle you to say whatever you like on the radio any more than it entitles you to say whatever you like on your neighbor's lawn.
And as for the sure-to-come argument that "the airways belong to the public"... stations paid a lot of money for the rights to those airwaves so that they could put a product on them that would make a profit.
They paid for the right to broadcast on those frequencies, but their use is subject to certain terms, which they knew when they paid for it.
BTW, radio was still profitable when the fairness doctrine was in effect.
Let the listeners decide what they want to hear. If something isn't making money, it's off the air. Period. That's how broadcasting works.
Sometimes people decide they don't want to hear the truth, they just want to sit in an echo chamber. It may be profitable to provide an echo chamber, but unfortunately it isn't very healthy for a democracy. We the people have every right to decide that we don't want our airwaves used in such a way.