Free Speech - It's Past and its Future?

Reading The New Times's review of FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT THAT WE HATE A Biography of the First Amendment. By Anthony Lewis, reminded me how perilous has been our right to free speech. The courts only began protecting the First Amendment in the 1940's and then only in fits and starts. The review serves as a good reminder of this history.

The review reminds me that the future is not so bright we need sunglasses:

Lewis’s faith in judges also presumes that free speech controversies will take the same form in the future as they have in the past — namely, as legal battles between an overreaching government and the institutional press, with the judiciary as a neutral arbiter. But is this really likely? The rise of new technologies suggests that the free speech battles of the future may instead pit telecom corporations against private speakers, leaving judges on the sidelines. Consider Verizon’s recent decision to block abortion rights text messages by Naral Pro-Choice America from its mobile networks. (Under pressure, Verizon rescinded the decision but stood by its position that it can decide which messages to transmit.) As several scholars have argued, the solution to this problem of corporate censorship — open-access rules of “net neutrality” that would require telecom operators to make their services available to all speakers on equal terms — is in the hands of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission rather than the courts. No matter how heroic our judges, they’re not well positioned to make regulatory policy.

That paragraph brought to mind William Gibson's cyperpunk novels where corporations rule the world and governments appear non-existent. Or what a friend of mine calls a future of corporate serfdom. Remember, constitutional rights such as free speech only apply to the government.