Lulz Security claims to be thr group that hacked Sony

[DPDarkPrimus]

You get a bunch of free stuff that Sony is lending you for a month, you mean.

Oh look, it's Mr. Doesn't Read The Link.

You get free PS3 and PSP games even if you don't want a temporarily-free PSN+ membership. And you get to keep them forever.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13636704

i'm somewhat annoyed if it is them, considering the hassle this has caused to gamers worldwide and that Sony may have to raise prices to compensate for the loss and why are Lulz security doing this? apparently its for George Hotz who is facing legal action for his hacking of the PS3. How does all of this benefit the ordinary gamer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulz_security

This isn't the PSN hack; it's a different one, and it doesn't have anything to do with gaming. It's actually a site about telly programmes and movies, so it's not even related to Playstation beyond both having the word 'Sony' associated with them.

[Master of Ossus]

Which has the same de facto effect, when the groups in question are corporate-financed and time their decision to spend money to coordinate with political campaigns.

If you can't stop corporations from spending money to badmouth political candidates they dislike a week before the election, you can't stop corporations from spending money on elections at all.

How is your first sentence remotely related to the second one? The second one is obvious: it's the entire point of the holding. Just like the government can't stop Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or (perhaps more relevantly) George Soros from exercising their free speech to badmouth political candidates, the government can't stop a corporation that is founded by those people from doing the same thing.

As for your first sentence, it's not remotely accurate that this is "the same de facto effect" as a political contribution, which is spelled out in the decision I cited (indeed it is the central point of the case). The cap on political contributions is meant to limit candidates' ability to campaign (in exchange for various public benefits). It's not meant to prevent the public from engaging in political discourse.

And treating a corporation as just another "group," as a voluntary association, ignores the critically important point that corporations have the power to spend other people's money- if I buy a Coca-Cola, I wind up indirectly fueling Coca-Cola's political ambitions, despite the fact that my purchase of a cola is an act with no political intentions whatsoever.

Voluntary political organizations, which people join specifically because they wish to endorse a given political point of view (such as Greenpeace or the National Rifle Association) are somewhat different matter; there the organization's money is explicitly being collected from citizens with the understanding that it will go to a political purpose, and you can at least sanely argue that the citizens should be free to do so.

I suppose the main objection to this argument is that a corporation is really just a way of forming an organization--there are certain governance rules associated with it, but those rules really don't say anything at all. Similarly, there are all kinds of ways of forming other entities with similar or dissimilar rules.

Citizens United was precisely a "voluntary political organization" and a non-profit corporation. There is no way of drawing an effective distinction between the two, at this level.

But an organization which is devoted to the task of profiting from the sale of some apolitical product such as computers or soft drinks should not be able to spend money to remove politicians who threaten their business model.

Why? Have they surrendered their right to exercise free speech by seeking a profit? Where does this leave groups with mixed operations? Have the Girl Scouts given up their right to speech because they sell cookies to finance their other operations? What about MoveOn.org? (Would it make a difference if it had exactly the same internal governance rules that it has, but was instead set up as a corporation and called MoveOn.com?) What about Green Peace? Green Peace sells merchandise to finance the rest of its operations.

Ultimately, I'm not sure it's possible to come up with a rule that distinguishes effectively between these groups, even if you find them objectionable (and frankly I'm quite unimpressed with critics' cited harms--have ANY of them come to pass?). And that's the whole point.

It's considered poor form for a moderator to use mod powers in a discussion in which he's involved, but if you wish to continue the discussion of Citizens United then I'm going to ask for your permission to split our conversation into a separate thread, since it's really not terribly related to the main topic of this one. I'm happy to continue talking about it, but I'm sure you'll agree that it's even more appropriate as its own discussion. Thanks.