Could you provide the legal argument supporting your view that discussing whatever topic you wish, on an independently held forum, is protected by the first amendment?
Then, after showing that such a forum is forced legally to permit it, could you show how governmental restrictions on a forum owner's ability to control and direct the discussions, on their own forum, would not be a violation of the forum owner's first amendment rights?
As I'm sure you are aware, the collision between property rights and speech rights is a complicated matter, and generally has required case by case adjudication in the past.
For the record, CPF is not an instrument of the U.S. Congress, the instrument of any other governmental entity, nor is it representative by means of formation by such an entity. On the other hand, CPF, as an independent U.S. privately owned instrument of expression and opinion, reserves all first amendment rights to voice such expressions and to moderate any guest commentary that may be outside any permissible range of such expression.
Indeed. As mentioned above though, depending on the disputed speech issue, a principally public forum that is privately owned (for instance a shopping mall), can have numerous and complex legal requirements regarding its and other's exercise of free speech.
That being said. I wasn't talking about CPF crapping on first amendment rights in the first place. I was talking about the world in general doing it. Especially in the context of the "bad apple" scenario, where a few idiots cause a lot of trouble, resulting in the need to restrict the much larger population of "good apples" in order to maintain harmony.
Also, I wasn't using first amendment in the literal sense either, and in general, I'm completely sympathetic to the way things have to be run in an online forum.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I'm not planning on taking anyone to court, so you can relax.
