The $ of the 1st Amendment

My friend and classmate, Chuck sent me a link for ReclaimDemocracy.org. In Chuck's words, "(the) main idea is that corporations should not be perceived as "individuals" with constitutional rights as this leads to all kinds of corporate abuse. Probably the most obvious example is corporations claiming that their right to free speech is being impinged upon if the government limits their campaign contribution amounts."

Before I wrote my senior thesis on Irony and Politics, a case study on Seinfeld, I actually wrote a prospectus on a thesis entitled Corporate Control of the 1st Amendment. I remember thinking the US legal system has a good understanding of free speech, breaking speech into different categories: 1) Political Speech 2) Advertising Speech 3) Hate Speech and so on...I'll put up a link to Cass Sunstein or some other Con Law expert on this later. But the general idea is certain speech has full protection, ie Political and Artistic - see Skokie - the case of the neo-Nazi's marching versus say, advertising speech, which does not have full protection because of the potential misleading harms associated with false advertising. Example: false advertising for over the counter drugs. And then we have the examples of hate speech or directly harmful speech, best exemplified by crying "fire" in a crowded theatre having no constitutional protection at all.

But what Chuck raises is the truer, real world problem which no laws can adequately solve- the issue of money=speech. The right to free speech is not the right to be listened to - and those individuals or corporations with money and access to channels of speech, TV, Radio, Movies, Newspapers, etc, etc, can and will drown out the voice of the smaller man with an original thought or two. As I mentioned in an earlier post regarding music sharing, the ultimate solution will be a business solution, whereby the channels of speech become cheap to the point where one will not need to own a TV station or theatre to show films...and nor will someone need to own a newspaper to print. And you can guess by how you are reading this, how I imagine this will happen....and in fact, has already started to happen - the internet.

I should follow more closely what is happening in Iran right now, where the mullah's are trying to crack down on internet publishing and usage so Iranians cannot congregate in a free environment and share ideas. The battle should help us analyze what tactics will be used in the future to try to tame and control and profit the use of the internet in this country - and the clever ways Iranians will get around it.

But if you want your own newspaper to espouse opinions or report impartially, all you need is a weblog and a digital camera and some time and some diligence and you can speak all you want. The only challenge is still getting someone to listen, but I don't think it takes mega-money, just having something interesting to say and learning how to say it.

And one more note regarding campaign contributions - see Howard Dean. I know he just dropped out of the race, but he raised (and misspent) more money than any other Democratic candidate, not by corporate donors, but through the internet. Like I said, the answers aren't in more laws, but more freedom, freedom to develop ideas, technology, and business models.