[lnxg33k1]

As Italian, I think you should take my words with mistrust, but as far as I understood recently about US is that the speech is protected between the citizen and the government, not between civil entities, as business/corps and citizen

That said, I guess it was shortsighted from the founding father but I guess at the time people would be often oppressed by governments not by neighbors and friends and I think this is something we need to solve as it's the challenge of our times

[schoen]

What you describe isn't exactly the law in the U.S., but it gets at some real things:

(1) there is a separate "right of petition" in the first amendment in parallel with the rights of freedom of speech and press; the right of petition relates to asking the government to change its behavior;

(2) the courts have a notion of "core political speech", which is some of the most strongly protected speech; and

(3) the courts have a different notion of "commercial speech", which is some of the least-protected speech.

[michaelmrose]

> as far as I understood recently about US is that the speech is protected between the citizen and the government, not between civil entities, as business/corps and citizen

Free speech by anyone to anyone is protected from government restriction. It is the government that is forbidden from punishing speech not the government that must be party to the speech else free speech would have nearly zero meaning.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What is oft said is that the first amendment doesn't protect you from non governmental consequences for your speech. For example you can be fired for your speech but you may not be imprisoned nor silenced by the government.

When a private entity avails itself of remedies provided by the government to limit or punish your speech your constitutional rights are infringed because it is the government acting to limit your speech even if its on behalf of a claimant.

[ashtonkem]

> as far as I understood recently about US is that the speech is protected between the citizen and the government, not between civil entities, as business/corps and citizen

This is mostly true. But there are some special exemptions.

The real gotcha is that the courts have generally taken a dim view towards using the courts themselves to restrict someone’s speech. The Supreme Court basically doesn’t want (or maybe didn’t want given their recent changes) congress to launder free speech violations to civil lawsuits enforced by the courts. That’s kind of a neat trick that you’d generally want to suppress, which if I understand is why there are first amendment issues around defamation lawsuits, despite being purely between individuals.

How does this work with the DMCA? I dunno. But to my (non lawyer) eyes it does seem kinda like it effectively criminalizes speech, and I wonder if it should stand up to judicial scrutiny.

[User23]

> I understood recently about US is that the speech is protected between the citizen and the government, not between civil entities, as business/corps and citizen

It depends. For example the 1st amendment protects a great deal of speech that in other countries would be slander, even though in that case the plaintiff is another civil entity and not the government.