COMM3631: Freedom of Speech

The Freedom of Speech is one of the United States’ core values and a large part of the country’s identity. Having the ability to express yourself with limited government intervention is something the United States prides itself on and is something fairly unique to the U.S. Generally there are three reasons why the freedom of speech is understood as important and necessary: it promotes intellectual freedom and the search for truth; politically it enables discussion within the government, it enables citizen participation, and it helps hold the government accountable via the free press; and the freedom of speech promotes individualism in the sense that it allows people to find, listen to, and speak their own truth and beliefs which provides humans with a certain amount of dignity (Tedford & Herbeck 428-430). In an article in the Atlantic Garret Epps, and constitutional law professor at the University of Baltimore, explains how he believes the way the first amendment is being inte...

              On Monday, November 13, the Supreme Court declared that they would hear the case NIFLA v. Becerra in early 2018. The major issue underlying the case is whether a California law requiring “crisis pregnancy centers” to inform their patients about state subsidized contraception and abortion services violates these centers right to free speech. The legislators of California argue that “crisis pregnancy centers” engage in deceptive advertising to trick and frighten women who wish to receive neutral counseling and advice. On the other side of the issue is NIFLA, or the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, which claim that their services were specifically targeted because their views are unpopular with the state’s leaders (Barnes). Based upon the information presented so far, I predict that the Supreme Court will rule that this law is unconstitutional due to its content based discrimination and targeted audience. Instead of discuss...

In Chapter 13 the authors discuss copyright and what it protects. The section that this blog post will focus on is fair use. In 1976 Congress adopted the Copyright Act of 1976 and in it they outlined their fair use policy. Fair use states that it is acceptable to use copyrighted materials without permission as long as the use meets four guidelines. The four guidelines are the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole and the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (Tedford and Herbeck 366). The most notable example in pop culture that I can think of that utilizes the fair use policy frequently is YouTube. When music first started showing up on YouTube a lot of the songs were getting taken down for copyright infringement. The owners of YouTube channels in the description of the songs posted the fair use policy and claimed t...

According to Tedford and Herbeck, Net Neutrality is the "principle that holds that internet service providers (ISP's) should be completely detached from [the] content sent over their networks...ISPs should allow access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and make no attempt to favor or block particular products or services," (464). I happen to come across a petition on Facebook a week ago about Stopping Net Neutrality and was surprised at what a coincidence it was that it was a part of our class lessons. To further explain what net neutrality is basically self-explanatory; ISPs cannot make it harder for one website to be accessed simply because they pay more for "fast lanes" or basically to load faster than smaller websites or those that pay less. This further stop ISPs from pushing websites they agree with and slowing down the traffic to other websites. Your favorite small business can be highly affected by the current appeal of net n...

            Chapter 13 discusses fair use. The copy right act of 1976 Cleary defines fair use. It states “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research does not constitute copyright infringement” (Tedford and Herbeck, 374). Furthermore, this act states four factors of consideration in fair use cases. They are as follows: “(1) the purpose and character of the use is of a commercial nature or for nonprofit educational nature; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, granting greater protection to fictional works than factual works, and to unpublished works than to published works; (3) the amount of substantiality of the portion uses in relation to the original work as a whole; (4) the effect of the use on the potential marked or value of the copyrighted work” Tedford and Herbeck, 374). We experience fair use almost every day as students, but also...

To an extent, the internet is an unregulated environment where everyone can be a publisher, so a good portion of users can easily get the impression that no one owns anything and everything is fair use, when it really is not. I've noticed many of the YouTuber content creators I subscribe to complained about YouTube's Fair Use issues and how they're too ambiguous. They've had videos been removed for inserting a tiny portions of content (i.e. audio from a song, video from a movie, a page from a comic strip, etc.) and they feel like they're being bullied unfairly, when actually, they definitely are infringing on original content and are properly being struck down. I think there's an important distinction to be made here between reasonable and unreasonable takedown notices. Looking back Prince, he wasn't the most tolerant when it came to people sharing his content over the internet. His attempt to reclaim his art led to an attempt by Universal and him to remove...

Net neutrality is a serious and newer problem in our modern world. It is defined in the dictionary as "the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites." The large issue at hand is that when you go on the internet, you expect to be connected to any website or place of your choosing, you should be completely in control of your own experience while on the internet. You should be allowed to have access to anything at anytime, that is essentially what net neutrality is. Net neutrality should stop or prohibit internet service provides, for example: Verizon, from from blocking, slowing down or speeding up based on certain content or websites you would like to access. Everything should systematically be fair and equal. The problem now is that the Trump administration wants to regulate or stop net neutrality, particularly his FCC chairman, Ajit...

Reading about copyright laws and the concept of fair use in chapter 13 gave me more insight into a topic I was already somewhat familiar with. I knew a little bit about fair use laws because of the time I spend on YouTube, but learning more about them helped contextualize this modern example a little more. For example, I knew copyrighted material could be used in certain contexts like education and criticism, but I wasn't aware of the various court precedents that refined this definition over time. I also didn't know about some of the more nuanced elements of these laws, such as how some copyrighted material "invites" more criticism than others. Simply put, the concept of fair use is defined as using a copyrighted work "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news, reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research." (Tedford & Herbeck, 366) This law (the Copyright Act of 1976) essentially protects people from legal ramifications for appropriating copyrigh...

Net-neutrality in the book is "The principle that holds that Internet service providers (ISPs) should be completely detached from content sent over their networks. Under this principle, ISPs should allow access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and make no attempt to favor or block particular products or services ( Tedford)". Basically.. Internet providers can't charge different amounts for faster service per site, game, what have you. Aaaaaaaand this would allow it to happen if we vote to get rid of Net Neutrality (Salzberg).  This would effectively drive small businesses out, and also create monopolies a lot easier. An example they use in the video on the website cited, if bing and google are basically the same idea, what if bing could pay a lot more money to internet providers (ISPs) and increase their connection when being used anywhere, EFFECTIVELY decreasing googles rate. This would be an issue for which ever company doesn't pay enough t...

While reading chapter 13 in Freedom of Speech in The United States, I saw one of the definitions of copyright provided by Tedford and Herbeck being, "Copyright provides protection for the arrangement of words, musical notation, artistic compositions, and the like that are produced in such forms as books, musical compositions, paintings, and computer programs." (362) Now after reading that definition I couldn't help but think of big artists and designers and all the lawsuits that have been filed against them, mostly from foreign or smaller artists. A more recent one that caught my eye since I used to follow this designer had to do with Marc Jacobs. The lawsuit was filed by Katie Thierjung, a small, independent artist who saw that her work was being copied from Jacobs when seeing it be praised by Vogue magazine. The work she is claiming to be copied were 5 pins and patches that were very similar in design to Marc Jacobs Resort 2017 collection. This isn't the first time...

Chapter 14 is about access and talks about the term "net-neutrality." Net-neutrality, as defined by the book is "The principle that holds that Internet service providers (ISPs) should be completely detached from content sent over their networks. Under this principle, ISPs should allow access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and make no attempt to favor or block particular products or services," ( Tedford and Herbeck  464). Today, the Federal Communication's Commission (FCC) "plans to remove the current ban on throttling, blocking or prioritization schemes, and revoke the internet conduct standard, which allows the commission to investigate zero-rating plans," ( Engadget ). This would mean that ISPs would be responsible for publicly disclosing whether they're blocking, throttling or prioritizing any online content, but it wouldn't prohibit those behaviors. The hope is that this will give consumers a clearer picture of pr...

Art is the first thing that came to mind when reading about copyright law in Chapter 13 of the book Freedom of Speech in the United States. According to Tedford and Herbeck, “Copyright provides protection for the arrangement of words, musical notation, artistic compositions, and the like that are produced in such forms as books, musical compositions, paintings, and computer programs” (362). From this I gather that the general idea of copyright law is to protect the work of those who created something first. Artistry is a creative skill that someone displays in their work and the type of creativity it takes to make art is not found in every person. I have noticed many times in the music industry that people try to copy others who have a creative skill in order to further their own careers. If we did not have copyright law, I believe many artists today would be overshadowed, or frankly, ripped off because of the name or image of another person to succeed over the original creator of th...