Restore the Old Republic [LWN.net]

Restore the Old Republic

Posted Dec 10, 2005 22:12 UTC (Sat) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203)
In reply to: Restore the Old Republic by dvdeug
Parent article: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

> BTW, even the most strict reading of the Commerce Clause would give
> Congress the power to prohibit interstate trafficing in things the DCMA
> prohibits.

Wrong on two counts. The Commerce Clause has been horribly abused of late to attempt to justify things that are blatently unconstituitional. Most attempts to use the Commerce Clause to control anything other than interstate tariffs, shipping, etc are abuses.

But even if you were correct as to the original intent of the writers of the Commerce Clause, the Bill of Rights are AMENDMENTS and therefore superceed anything in the original. "Congress shall make no law...." is pretty blunt. Code IS speech and attempts to supress publishing the source of DeCSS are so obviously an infringement of the First Amendment that only a moron or a "Constituitional Scholar" could fail to see it.

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Restore the Old Republic

Posted Dec 11, 2005 6:17 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't care about how the Commerce Clause has been abused. It clearly gives Congress the right to control interstate commerce, which would naturally include the right to ban things from being sold across state lines.

As for your reading of the First Amendment, it does not accord with the reading given by the "Old Republic", which passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Most code is not any more expressive than a car's engine. People didn't want to copy DeCSS to read it or understand an opinion behind it; they wanted to use it as a tool. Burning a flag to protest the president is protected speech; burning flags to power your generator isn't.

Your attitude that only a moron would disagree with you is the real problem, though. Just because some disagree with you doesn't mean they're ignorant or stupid. Frequently, they have good reasons for their opinions, and discussing it with them instead of insulting them may be enlightening. You're not convincing anyone of anything they didn't believe to begin with; you're just offending them.

Restore the Old Republic

Posted Dec 16, 2005 20:22 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> Burning a flag to protest the president is protected speech; burning flags to power your generator isn't.

No, but it's not *illegal*, either.