First Amendment doesn't apply on YouTube; judges reject PragerU lawsuit:
YouTube is a private forum and therefore not subject to free-speech requirements under the First Amendment, a US appeals court ruled today. "Despite YouTube's ubiquity and its role as a public-facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment," the court said.
PragerU, a conservative media company, sued YouTube in October 2017, claiming the Google-owned video site "unlawfully censor[ed] its educational videos and discriminat[ed] against its right to freedom of speech."
PragerU said YouTube reduced its viewership and revenue with "arbitrary and capricious use of 'restricted mode' and 'demonetization' viewer restriction filters." PragerU claimed it was targeted by YouTube because of its "political identity and viewpoint as a non-profit that espouses conservative views on current and historical events."
But a US District Court judge dismissed PragerU's lawsuit against Google and YouTube, and a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that dismissal in a unanimous ruling today.
"PragerU's claim that YouTube censored PragerU's speech faces a formidable threshold hurdle: YouTube is a private entity. The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government—not a private party—from abridging speech," judges wrote.
PragerU claimed that Google's "regulation and filtering of video content on YouTube is 'State action' subject to scrutiny under the First Amendment." While Google is obviously not a government agency, PragerU pointed to a previous appeals-court ruling to support its claim that "[t]he regulation of speech by a private party in a designated public forum is 'quintessentially an exclusive and traditional public function' sufficient to establish that a private party is a 'State actor' under the First Amendment." PragerU claims YouTube is a "public forum" because YouTube invites the public to use the site to engage in freedom of expression and because YouTube representatives called the site a "public forum" for free speech in testimony before Congress.
Appeals court judges were not convinced. They pointed to a Supreme Court case from last year in which plaintiffs unsuccessfully "tested a theory that resembled PragerU's approach, claiming that a private entity becomes a state actor through its 'operation' of the private property as 'a public forum for speech.'" The case involved public access channels on a cable TV system.
The Supreme Court in that case found that "merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints."
"If the rule were otherwise, all private property owners and private lessees who open their property for speech would be subject to First Amendment constraints and would lose the ability to exercise what they deem to be appropriate editorial discretion within that open forum," the Supreme Court decision last year continued.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday March 02 2020, @08:45AM (3 children)
Good luck making a mesh network that allows data transfer e.g. between America and Europe.
And to convince people with close to zero technical knowledge to dive into the complexities of entering a mesh network you have to have something to provide that is much more desirable than what you can get over the easily available channels. Which actually is easier in those much worse conditions you mentioned, as in those conditions those easier channels are either completely unavailable or massively censored and supervised. And yet, even under those conditions, only a minority of people will resort to such technologies.
Anyway, have you ever built up a mesh network that went beyond experimental stage? If not, then maybe you should do it before you tell others how it is the solution to everything.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday March 02 2020, @02:08PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 02 2020, @05:51PM (1 child)
"Arab Spring" was a regional coup by American/European governments, not a "revolution". And the internet in the area has been cut off completely plenty of times [wikipedia.org], by accident of course.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday March 02 2020, @07:32PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.