Well, it's more like the Nazi's are allowed to march in Jewish neighborhoods under court orders protecting their right to free speech -- which has happened -- it's disgusting, yes, but still has to be allowed to protect everyone's free speech. Note that M$ doesn't believe in free speech for others, however, as we recently saw with them lobbying Congress to do something about "un-American open source" software. David Stultz wrote:
Just playing the Devil's Advocate here.
Are you allowed to go into a theatre and yell, "FIRE!!!" when there is none? Nope.
There *are* restrictions on speech. If MS's "speech" violated somebody's rights, that speech can be made illegal.
Dave
PS I agree that code is speech.
On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, lizard wrote:
"Colin A. Reed" wrote:
I'll admit that the trial was fucked up from the start by the decision to center it around netscape rather than something more blatant like stac. Anyways, this has nothing to do with FC, unless you think that enterprise is fundamentally expressive and Microsoft's vicious suppression of competition has limited the ability of others to be heard.
But if source code is free speech, isn't a judge ordering some code be removed/edited/changed an intrustion on free speech? Isn't saying "Remove Explorer from the core install!" the same as saying "Remove this chapter from this book!"
Sure, the chapter can then be republished separately, but who is the judge to decide what elements of a work of speech belong together?
Code IS speech. And this has implications beyond DECSS and PGP.