That pesky First Amendment

Some of the bloggers who have 'signed' the Bloggers Bill of Rights have done so because they are concerned about their right to freedom of speech. Let's make one thing totally and perfectly clear: there is no such thing as freedom of speech, or at least not in the way most people want to think about it. People have the right to talk as freely as they want in the United States -- it's the consequences of that speech people don't want to deal with. People only talk about losing their 'freedom of speech' when they say something and as a result, there are consequences -- such as getting fired for blogging about your job, for instance.

When fanfiction.net stopped accepting NC-17/R fics a few years ago, people started saying their 'freedom of speech' had been taken away. No one stopped to think for a moment that fanfiction.net is a private enterprise and Xing, the webmaster, gets to make rules about what he will allow on his server. As a private citizen, he can do that, because see, the First Amendment refers to government, not to the private sector. It's like private organizations -- like say, the Boy Scouts or golf courses -- which can make legal decisions to restrict membership to homosexuals or African-Americans or women because they are private.

It comes down to this: your speech is 'free' as long as no one pays attention and no one cares. Once the words are out there, though, anything goes.

* Generically and generally speaking