Will First Amendment survive information age?

As Apple tries to fend off government demands for access to iPhone content, the company is leaning on free speech arguments as a key part of its defense in a California courtroom.

On the other end of the country, 10 separate lawsuits have piled up this year against net neutrality rules, with both sides claiming First Amendment rights in this long-running dispute over Internet service.

This is Sunshine Week in the U.S., when news organizations put a spotlight on the public’s right to know and size up the state of government openness and access to public records.

This year, we should add a more sweeping question to the list: How will the First Amendment navigate the dramatic changes in information technology?

Complicated disputes are popping up in both predicable and surprising places.

Cases moving through the courts range from whether Facebook “likes” and Twitter posts are protected speech (both are for the moment) to what individual First Amendment rights should be granted to businesses (they‘re steadily expanding).

The mere definition of free speech is getting clouded: Are video games a kind of speech? What about computer-driven content like searches and automated stories? Put another way, can iPhone’s Siri claim First Amendment rights if she somehow offends or libels you?

Free speech standards shaped over the past half-century are colliding with modern privacy concerns. Protests at a series of campuses the past year pitted press rights against the demand for “safe places’’ where students can avoid conflicting views. There’s growing support for “right to be forgotten’’ laws that allow people to erase pieces of their past or otherwise rewrite digital history.

When a humorist quickly gathered 50 signatures calling for repeal of the First Amendment as a joke a few months ago at Yale, nobody should have been laughing.

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