is computer code speech?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Computer code is much more like intellectual property than speech. I really don't buy any arguments that computer code is used for communication or spreading ideas -- it's used more for problem solving, modeling and prediction, linking up systems, and gathering/distributing resources more than it is for communicating. E.g., a predictive algorithm for displaying targeted news items or recommending movies isn't really doing very much to communicate ideas, it's being used to provide a service. A simulation model optimizing the timing of traffic lights isn't communicating ideas, it's being used to improve public services.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Computer code is atleast as much speech as burning a flag is speech.

Are you going to provide an actual rationale for that statement?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Computer code is atleast as much speech as burning a flag is speech.

Are you going to provide an actual rationale for that statement?

Its self evident so no.

...

Maybe you could throw a bone to those of us who are clearly not as intelligent as you. I have written code almost every day for the last five years; it is and will continue to be a major part of my career. As a person who understands what code is and what it's used for beyond "hurr durr it's a language" I think you are wrong.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

    It seems curious to me that the observation that code does not have to be convey political ideas somehow precludes it from protection as such. Does the existence of technical manuals imply that books are not speech?

There are many non-technical manual books though that are speech. In fact, the overwhelming majority of books are not technical manuals.

It's not that code "doesn't have to convey political ideas". It's that, except for very odd and specific circumstances, code can't convey political ideas. The political idea would have to be conveyed in the application of the code, but can't be conveyed in the code itself. Code is a tool for problem solving, not a form of expression really in any context. Saying code falls under the idea of free speech is like saying a tractor is free speech.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

In fact, the overwhelming majority of books are not speech.

what?

My mistake, good catch. Fixed.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

     It seems curious to me that the observation that code does not have to be convey political ideas somehow precludes it from protection as such. Does the existence of technical manuals imply that books are not speech?

There are many non-technical manual books though that are speech. In fact, the overwhelming majority of books are not speech.

It's not that code "doesn't have to convey political ideas". It's that, except for very odd and specific circumstances, code can't convey political ideas. The political idea would have to be conveyed in the application of the code, but can't be conveyed in the code itself. Code is a tool for problem solving, not a form of expression really in any context. Saying code falls under the idea of free speech is like saying a tractor is free speech.

     You have a strange view of code to compare it to a specific piece of machinery. The reality is that code can be applied to an incredibly vast number of projects, and what projects one chooses has something important to say. The topic uses the example of a code to produce a handgun, which is easily a political statement in what its existence implies. Does it stop being a political statement because some VBA macro written to transcribe data from one spreadsheet to another does not have clear political meaning?

Code essentially is machinery though. It's a machine that takes in inputs, puts things through a black box, and produces outputs. It's agnostic to what those inputs and outputs are (within certain bounds of course), what is done with them, and what context it exists in. That's much more similar to the definition of "machine" than it is to the definition of personal expression.

I bolded a sentence because I don't see a clear supporting rationale for why it's true. It seems to be such an open interpretation of speech that it's meaningless. By that same logic, wouldn't a gun itself count as speech? Does the 3D printer that the code operates also count as speech, because it's involved in the creation of the gun? What about the raw materials that go into the gun?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

If your strategy is to paint me into a corner by using the printed gun example, it's not going to work. I will agree that like in your abortion example, restrictions on printing weapons can be seen as an attack on gun ownership (or whatever -- I don't really care about this case). That really has nothing to do with whether or not code is speech, though. Yes, you can make some weird argument that printing guns is some sort of political statement, but it's not true that every part of making a political statement is speech.

Computer code is agnostic to inputs/outputs/usage much more than a book is. The implementation and end usage of books and computer code are totally different. Nobody ever reads computer code. Computer code is often nested in software architecture that nobody besides software developers ever looks at. Even if the outputs of code may be widely consumed, the code itself is never something that's meant to be distributed to a wider audience (even in the case where computer software is mass distributed, it's very rare for people to go behind the scenes and look at the code). Nobody writes a book that isn't meant to be read, or is embedded within a system of other books to produce some complex output, and it's rare for books meant as "speech" to not be distributable to a wider audience. That's what makes books and code fundamentally different.