My good friend and mentor Robert Corn-Revere, a First Amendment attorney with the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, gave a terrific talk on “The High Value of Low Speech” at a recent Reason Foundation event. Bob is one of the greatest living defenders of freedom of speech and expression and his talks are always inspiring, informative, and entertaining. I recommend you check it out. The video is embedded below or can be found on the ReasonTV website here.
“All First Amendment cases are about the power,” Corn-Revere argues. “Who should have the power to tell individuals what to read, think, believe or feel?” He continues on to explain the recent history of controversial First Amendment jurisprudence — much of which he has been personally responsible for litigating — and explains why even “low speech” is worth defending if we cherish our speech rights.
My good friend and mentor Robert Corn-Revere, a Partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, will be delivering what sounds like a terrific speech on April 5th at 4:00 at the George Mason University School of Law on “The First Amendment and the End of History: Does Media Convergence Mean the End of Regulation or is it Just the Beginning?” It’s a topic I careaboutdeeply and you’ll see how influential Bob’s thinking has been on my own by watching that video down below. Bob is one of America’s leading free speech scholars and a tireless defender of First Amendment rights. And he’s always entertaining when he steps to a podium to deliver remarks. Admission to the event is free but RSVPs are requested: iep.gmu@gmail.com. Here are logistical details:
Monday, April 5, 2010, 4 p.m.
George Mason University School of Law (Room 120)
3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, Va. (Orange Line: Virginia Square-GMU Metro)
As I noted here a few days ago, the Federal Communications Commission held a workshop on Tuesday about “Speech, Democratic Engagement, and the Open Internet.” It was a shockingly one-sided affair with the deck being stacked almost entirely in favor of advocates of Net neutrality regulation. Worse yet, those advocates shamelessly made up spooky stories about a future of “private censorship” that could only be remedied by using the First Amendment as a club to beat private players into submission. The token opposition at this Chicken Little circus was Robert Corn-Revere, a Partner at the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Washington, D.C. Bob set the record straight–both in terms of baseless accusations that were flying that day as well as the revisionist histories of the First Amendment that were being put forward. I’m happy to report that Bob allowed PFF to reprint his remarks as a new white paper entitled, “The First Amendment, the Internet & Net Neutrality: Be Careful What You Wish For.”
In his essay, Corn-Revere discusses the relationship between the First Amendment and regulatory policy, particularly the treatment of new communications technologies, and he warns that government regulation of broadband networks could “provide the vehicle for advancing new First Amendment theories for media regulation” and online speech and expression more generally. “It should not be forgotten,” he argues, “that the federal government’s initial impulse was to censor the Internet and to subject it to a far lower level of First Amendment protection. It pursued this agenda for more than a decade but was blocked by a series of First Amendment rulings.” The Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act are just two notable examples. Luckily, the courts determined that “the open Internet would be at great risk if the government is allowed to exercise such power,” he notes, and they struck down such laws.
Today I visited the Federal Communications Commission meeting room to attend a workshop on “Speech, Democratic Engagement, and the Open Internet.” Honestly, I think I was stuck in the Twilight Zone, because from what the speakers at this ridiculously one-sided panel had to say: (1) the First Amendment means something entirely different than what the Constitution says; and (2) the whole Internet world is set to go to hell unless government intervenes and saves us a litany of corporate conspiracies to “silence” us.
Seriously, I thought the FCC was trying to make their broadband workshops and Net neutrality proceeding “balanced” and “evidence-based.” This one was neither. One speaker after another regaled us with spooky stories and asked us to imagine how their particular group or service would be “blocked” or “silenced” unless Net neutrality regulations were put on the books. But no evidence was offered supporting their scary tales.
By the time Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition got done breathlessly delivering her conspiratorial rant, for example, I half expected her to ask “What would Jesus do?” about Internet regulation. She really laid it on thick, suggesting that ISPs were hell-bent (excuse the pun) on blocking Christian messaging across multiple platforms. Yeah, cause it would be a brilliant business strategy to piss off tens of millions of Christians in this country. Sure, that makes a lot of sense.
Robert Corn-Revere, a partner with the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine and one of America’s greatest living defenders of the First Amendment, has a new essay up on the Media Institute website entitled “The Terminator Cometh.” Corn-Revere takes on the former Terminator himself, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who along with other Calif. lawmakers, has asked the Supreme Court to review a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision holding that a California video game statute was unconstitutional. (More background in my previous post here). California’s decision to appeal the law up to the Supreme Court [petition is here] sets up a potential historic First Amendment decision (if they Court agrees to take the case, that is). Corn-Revere points out why this case is so important:
In seeking review, California is asking the Supreme Court to reverse 60 years of First Amendment jurisprudence and to hold that “excessively violent” material — whatever that may be –“deserves no constitutional protection.” It is also asking the Court to relieve government from actually having to demonstrate the purported harmfulness of speech it seeks to regulate, but instead to defer to “reasonable inferences” and “legislative judgments.”
The John Connor of Your First Amendment Freedoms
In other words, Corn-Revere notes, “the state is asking the Court simply to lower the bar so that protected speech may be regulated based on legislative whim.” He continues:
Thus, like the Terminator, no matter how many times you kill it, the government drive that motivates these laws keeps on going and going until it achieves its programmed goal. If California is successful, it will open the door to regulate not just video games, but a wide range of speech that is currently protected under the First Amendment.
Corn-Revere is right. The ramifications of this case could be profound. As I pointed out in my previous essay on this case:
Today, it was my great privilege to guest lecture at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Under the leadership of Ed Felten, who also runs the excellent “Freedom to Tinker” blog, the CITP has quickly become one of America’s premier institutions in the field of IT policy matters. David Robinson, who some of you will remember from his days as an editor at The American, serves as associate director of the CITP program and was kind enough to invite me to speak. And our own Tim Lee is currently studying there as well. I wish I was smart enough to get into that program!
The topic of my talk was “The Future of the First Amendment in an Age of Technological Convergence” and I used the opportunity to create a narrated video of this presentation, which I have made to several other groups through the years. In this presentation, I talk about “America’s First Amendment Twilight Zone,” which refers to the fact that identical words and images are being regulated in completely different ways today depending on the mode of transmission. This illogical and unfair situation could eventually threaten the Internet, video games, and all new media with many of the misguided regulations that have long been imposed on broadcast television and radio operators. In my presentation, which you can watch below, I make the case for changing our First Amendment regime to ensure “bit equality”; all speech and media platforms should be accorded the gold standard of First Amendment protection.
I was over at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the other day chatting with someone about various regulatory issues and Rush Limbaugh’s WSJ editorial came up. The person I was speaking with made a comment about how conservatives have really been energized and unified in opposition to the re-imposition to the Doctrine. I reminded them, however, that it wasn’t always the case that conservatives stood together in the fight over the Fairness Doctrine. In fact, when I first came to town almost 20 years ago, there were still plenty of conservatives who actually favored it. I was reminded of that fact when reading a new piece in Engage about “Broadcast ‘Fairness’ in the Twenty-First Century” by my friend Robert Corn-Revere. Bob is one America’s great First Amendment defenders and his new essay offers an excellent history of efforts to micro-manage speech on the broadcast airwaves over the years. In it, he reminds us that:
Given the recent vocal opposition to the Fairness Doctrine in the interest of preserving conservative talk radio, it is easy to forget that many prominent conservatives championed the doctrine before its demise. Phyllis Schlafly was a vocal proponent of the Fairness Doctrine because of what she described as “the outrageous and blatant anti-Reagan bias of the TV network newscasts,” and she testified at the FCC in the 1980s in support of the policy “to serve as a small restraint on the monopoly power wielded by Big TV Media.” Senator Jesse Helms was another long-time advocate of the Fairness Doctrine, and conservative groups Accuracy in Media and the American Legal Foundation actively pursued fairness complaints at the FCC against network newscasts.
Likewise, in our book, A Manifesto for Media Freedom, Brian Anderson and I note that some other prominent right-leaning politicians, such as Sen. Trent Lott, favored the Fairness Doctrine. Moreover, even though most of those conservative individuals and groups have now turned against the Fairness Doctrine, some Republicans still defend (or even seek to expand) the same underlying regulatory concepts that served as the foundation of the Fairness Doctrine. As Corn-Revere notes: Continue reading →
Because the subject line of the email they sent me promoting their “Safe at Any Speed” conference about online safety is: “What Will the Obama Administration Do . . . ?”
Please: Nothing, nothing, nothing. It is, and shall forever be, the responsibility of parents to raise their children, including by guiding kids’ access to and use of the online world. Adam pointed you last week to a report that appears to do a good job of keeping things in perspective.
It’s nice to see that FOSI is involving people like Adam and First Amendment lawyer nonpareil Bob Corn-Revere in their conference. The next thing they should do is move it out of Washington to where the parents are. And don’t ask what presidents will do about online safety.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.