The Two Clashing Meanings of 'Free Speech'
Today’s campus controversies reflect a battle between two distinct conceptions of the term—what the Greeks called isegoria and parrhesia.
Little distinguishes democracy in America more sharply from Europe than the primacy—and permissiveness—of our commitment to free speech. Yet ongoing controversies at American universities suggest that free speech is becoming a partisan issue. While conservative students defend the importance of inviting controversial speakers to campus and giving offense, many self-identified liberals are engaged in increasingly disruptive, even violent, efforts to shut them down. Free speech for some, they argue, serves only to silence and exclude others. Denying hateful or historically “privileged” voices a platform is thus necessary to make equality effective, so that the marginalized and vulnerable can finally speak up—and be heard.
The reason that appeals to the First Amendment cannot decide these campus controversies is because there is a more fundamental conflict between two, very different concepts of free speech at stake. The conflict between what the ancient Greeks called isegoria, on the one hand, and parrhesia, on the other, is as old as democracy itself. Today, both terms are often translated as “freedom of speech,” but their meanings were and are importantly distinct. In ancient Athens, isegoria described the equal right of citizens to participate in public debate in the democratic assembly; parrhesia, the license to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom.
When it comes to private universities, businesses, or social media, the would-be censors are our fellow-citizens, not the state. Private entities like Facebook or Twitter, not to mention Yale or Middlebury, have broad rights to regulate and exclude the speech of their members. Likewise, online mobs are made up of outraged individuals exercising their own right to speak freely. To invoke the First Amendment in such cases is not a knock-down argument, itÂ’s a non sequitur.
Who is real Owner of WT publications intellectual content and all published words?
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The legal rights to one's own published material include the right to say HOW it is distributed. This means that even if what they published is free, they have a right to the context in which it is distributed. They can keep someone else from slapping on a different cover to each book and magazine to claim that the material came from someone other than the WTS. They can keep someone from copying their material and then claiming that the copiers had it first and the WTS copied from them. They can keep someone from distributing it from a website where each item is presented as if from some devil-worshipping cult, to try to cast the WTS in a bad light. They can keep someone from slicing and dicing their material to make it look like it says something it doesn't.
And of course there are hundreds of other situations and rights that a publisher gets in order to protect their own work and protect the context of distribution.
Some real-world examples have happened that match many of the cases I listed. For example, a spin-off "Watchtower Society of ????" somewhere in Africa or a one-time Soviet nation might decide that they agree with 50% of the material that comes from the WTS of PA or NY. So they discard or edit half of the material and distribute the "good stuff" under their own spin-off. This could cause confusion for the average reader in those areas when some of the same material is distributed by bona fide JWs with original WTS publications.
To tie this loosely to the discussion, you might have noticed that it was not until the 1970's that the WTS went after a few organizations of this type, and had to change the name from "Jehovah's witnesses" to "Jehovah's Witnesses" (with a capital "W"). The intentionally "generic" look of the name made it easy for another group to steal. Something similar had happened with "Bible students" and "Bible Students" many years earlier. There was even talk at the time of changing the name alternatively to "Jehovah's Christian Witnesses." Don't know if all other countries practiced this so carefully, but it remained the practice in the USA that the word was never capitalized except in titles, of course -- sometimes not even in titles. Even the Supreme Court learned to not capitalize the "w" in titles of cases. Here are two examples from 1976, just before and just after the change.
*** w76 3/15 p. 169 A Happy Family Life—How We Achieved It ***
*** w76 4/1 p. 204 Let Everyone Take Life’s Water Free ***
*** g76 3/8 p. 22 A Conspiracy Thwarted in “the Land Down Under” ***
*** g76 3/22 p. 7 When Will These Cruelties Stop? ***
So the change happened between 3/15/76 and 3/22/76. The March 1976 Kingdom Ministry used the name "Jehovah's witnesses" and the April 1976 Kingdom Ministry used "Jehovah's Witnesses." No public explanation was given.