Friday, February 10, 2012

[owiuslqo] Fixing Citizens United v FEC

As a fervent supporter of Free Speech, I agree with the Citizens United v. FEC decision, in which the Supreme Court found corporate campaign contributions to be protected political free speech. This is in contrast to many other liberals.

However, when free speech is causing negative social consequences (as the decision is expected to do), the solution is not to curtail the speech, but instead to promote even more free speech.

A broad mechanism is, for those corporations who choose to speak politically, they lose the ability to curtail political speech directed at themselves.  Free speech must be a two way street.

The most straightforward items are libel, slander, copyright, trade secret, and trademark protections.  More radically, for any crime, e.g., property theft or destruction, committed against a political corporation, the accused may offer the defense that the crime was political speech, so the prosecution or plaintiff have to prove it wasn't, for example, for personal gain.  (Steal stuff and give it to charity.) Of perhaps spectacular effect is an employee, unhappy with the political speech of the employer, commits an insider crime that can't be punished.

Another mechanism to strengthen protections for anonymous speech.  This will aid whistleblowers against the political corporation as well as conspiracies to commit organized action (a crime, or political speech?) against the corporation.

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