Drowning out distinct ideas
Channel: Bevry Podcast
Date: 2020-06-09

The paper we are discussing:
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/tim-wu-first-amendment-obsolete

Meeting notes:
https://discuss.bevry.me/t/2020-06-08-is-the-first-amendment-obsolete/1017

Join our discord:
https://bevry.me/discord

Take part in our discussion forum:
https://discuss.bevry.me

Today we are joined by:
Benjamin:
https://balupton.com
Justin:
https://justinmaier.com

---

Is the First Amendment Obsolete?
BY TIM WU

Conclusion:
It is obvious that changes in communications technologies will present new challenges for the First Amendment. For nearly twenty years now, scholars have been debating how the rise of the popular Internet might unsettle what the First Amendment takes for granted. Yet the future retains its capacity to surprise, for the emerging threats to our political speech environment are different from what many predicted. Few forecast that speech itself would become a weapon of censorship. In fact, some might say that celebrants of open and unfettered channels of Internet expression (myself included) are being hoisted on their own petard, as those very same channels are today used as ammunition against disfavored speakers. As such, the emerging methods of speech control present a particularly difficult set of challenges for those who share the commitment to free speech articulated so powerfully in the founding—and increasingly obsolete—generation of First Amendment jurisprudence.