“When Free Republic controls 90% of the market, I will oppose it’s ability to censor opinions.”
I doubt youtube controls 90% of the market, but okay. Nothing is stopping anyone from making their own video site, and there are plenty of alternatives out there. So, simply being very popular or successful in your niche makes you exempt from exercising the rights of a private business owner, is that the test?
Too low? Okay, 98.6% of the market. I honestly know of no other organization that seriously competes with Google/Youtube.
Nothing is stopping anyone from making their own video site, and there are plenty of alternatives out there.
Yes, blacks can sit at black lunch counters. There is no reason why they should have to be served at white lunch counters when they can find lunch counters meant to serve them.
So, simply being very popular or successful in your niche makes you exempt from exercising the rights of a private business owner, is that the test?
Far too simplistic of an analysis. My thinking goes more along the lines of "Does this move us towards Nazism? Does this affect elections? Is this a threat to the very idea of "Freedom of Speech"?
I've considered the topic in some depth. I have concluded that the founders felt freedom of speech was absolutely necessary because it allowed the public to hear all sides before voting on a proposal. It gave them fuller information which was necessary to make good decisions.
I've also concluded that stopping freedom of speech is a threat to our system of governance, and that the means of stopping it is irrelevant to the threat it poses.
Freedom of speech cannot be allowed to be stopped, because it is too essential to our form of governance. People immediately see the danger of government censorship of speech, but they have so long accepted this notion that private companies can do anything they wish that they are oblivious to the danger of a private monopoly controlling an essential means of communications.
YouTube needs to be *FORCED* and I mean with the entire mighty hammer of government, to serve *EVERYONE* who sits at their lunch counter.
All the nations of the world ban freedom of speech, and it is currently wreaking horrible havoc on Europe. We cannot allow the government, or any other agency, to stop the right of Americans to be heard on all systems of communications.
We are hanging by a thread now, and if we allow companies to censor information because they are the dominant carriers of the traffic, we will lose it all.
Under Nazism, the Corporations were Cronies of the Government, and there really was no line between where "Private" ended and "Government" began. We cannot allow such a system to take root here.