There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of rights and privileges among American people today. If you have not read this article on the subject I highly encourage you to do so. I recently read an article on Fox News which called this to my attention again. It was about the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This act deals with the issue of when websites must identify whether or not a person is of legal age to interact with their site. I don’t want to get into the details of this act in this article. Instead I want to focus on the issues of free speech brought up in the article. This quote from the article concerns me.
"I have a constitutional right to go post comments anonymously on the Washington Post's website”
My first question is what constitutional right is he speaking of? I have to assume the right to free speech but I worry the author of this quote does not really even know what right he is referring to. We too often hear this statement today about an array of different things people think they have a right to. Since the right to free speech is the most applicable here lets stick with that one. First let us look at the first amendment which gives us this right.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, …”
While the issue in question is indeed about a law congress has passed and is now trying to update, the first quote needs to be analyzed further because it really is a non sequitur. Politicians, the press and the general public often use non sequiturs to make an argument for something they are either for or against.
The person in the first quote is trying to make the connection that because free speech is protected as a constitutional right that this law, the COPPA, is naturally anti his right to free speech. Is the ability to make a comment on a website a constitutional right? The Washington Post website is a privately created and run service. Because the Washington Post pays for and creates its website service it should be able to control who uses it and makes comments on the site, like paying customers, since the Washington Post is the one providing the service. Therefore you don’t have a “constitutional right” to make comments on the Washington Post website any more then you have a constitutional right to come into my house and tell me how you feel about me.
Now if the government steps in and regulates who the customer of this service can be or what information you have to collect about the user; does that infringe on our freedom of speech? This is where the question really gets interesting. Now the government is regulating to a business that in order for someone to make a comment on your site you need to collect certain information about the person. The first amendment says nothing about anonymous free speech. I think this is an interesting case study for the first amendment and we shall get into that topic another time. First and foremost it is important we understand we don’t have a constitutional right via the first amendment to write or type our opinion via any medium available to us as implied by the first quote. Once we understand this we can have an important discussion on how government legislation effects our freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is a very important part of the American fabric and it is important we protect it. This does not mean however that freedom of speech is an overarching right we have across all types and forms of communication. Just because it is a form of communication does not mean it is protected by the first amendment. Instead, the first amendment protects us from Congress taking or limiting this freedom. It is important it is not used to enforce companies to act a certain way.
