NEGATIVE — DISADVANTAGE — FREE SPEECH 178
LINK: OPT-IN PROPOSALS
OPT-IN PROPOSALS WILL VIOLATE FREE SPEECH AND WE WILL LOSE ITS BENEFITS
Solveig Singleton, director of information studies at the Cato Institute, January 22, 1998 Cato Policy Analysis No. 295 PRIVACY AS CENSORSHIP: A Skeptical View of Proposals to Regulate Privacy in the Private Sector
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-295.html // acs-EE2001Some privacy advocates urge the adoption of a new legal regime for the transfer of information about consumers among private-sector databases. This "mandatory opt-in" regime would require private businesses to ask for a consumer's permission before trading information about that consumer, such as his buying habits or hobbies, to third parties. This would, in effect, create new privacy rights.
These new rights would conflict with our tradition of free speech. From light conversation, to journalism, to consumer credit reporting, we rely on being able to freely communicate details of one another's lives. Proposals to forbid businesses to communicate with one another about real events fly in the face of that tradition.
TRUE SELF-REGULATION DOES NOT VIOLATE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BUT OPT-IN PROPOSALS WOULD
Solveig Singleton, director of information studies at the Cato Institute, January 22, 1998 Cato Policy Analysis No. 295 PRIVACY AS CENSORSHIP: A Skeptical View of Proposals to Regulate Privacy in the Private Sector
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-295.html // acs-EE2001There is no First Amendment objection to true self-regulation, that is, industry self-regulation without the threat of government involvement. By contrast, mandatory opt-in, enforced by direct or indirect regulatory pressure, makes no moral sense and would do real economic harm.
OPT-IN RULES ARE CLASSIC PRIOR RESTRAINTS ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Solveig Singleton, director of information studies at the Cato Institute, January 22, 1998 Cato Policy Analysis No. 295 PRIVACY AS CENSORSHIP: A Skeptical View of Proposals to Regulate Privacy in the Private Sector
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-295.html // acs-EE2001Restrictions on the collection of information for mailing lists, such as a mandatory opt-in rule, thus are classic "prior restraints" on content. The Supreme Court frowns on prior restraints on speech,(84) allowing them only when publication would "surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people."(85)
The abuse of mailing lists by stalkers or psychotics cannot justify a wholesale system of prior restraint on mailing lists. These invite abuse no more than other sources of information, such as newspapers or phone books.