Fake problem

It’s an interesting question technically and legally.

Clearly a state can’t regulate speech and press on its own. 1st amendment + 14th amendment. Federal only. A state can’t ban imports on its own. Federal only.

At the national level, our government has no obligation to import anything at all. The original “constitution” was excruciatingly clear on this point. We can ban a foreign publisher entirely, in the same way that we can ban or tariff other foreign products. Banning was meant to be the DEFAULT. Tariffs were meant to be the main source of taxes for the federal government.

Books and records and movies and radio/tv programs are somewhat special. It’s hard to check the contents of such publications, so foreign publishers have often been able to violate our copyrights by sending in material that is copyrighted here but NOT copyrighted there. We have no jurisdiction over foreign publishers, so our authors couldn’t sue them. In the late 1800s this problem grew serious enough that we joined in various international treaties to reciprocally respect copyrights. China doesn’t bother with such treaties because it owns us.

The alleged problem with Tiktok is not copyrights. Our politicians are pretending to be worried about Chinese government monitoring of our yoots through Tiktok. This is absurd. For 40 years we’ve been ENCOURAGING AND SUBSIDIZING Chinese spying in our universities and military research establishments, and we’ve been offshoring the production and design of ALL our electronic shit. Tiktok doesn’t add a new category of monitoring, only the same advertising-oriented user data that we already give openly to China through the web and our backdoored devices.

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Contra: Amid my usual bitching about the loss of the old “laws”, I should note that the basic structure of state sovereignty is STRONGER now than in recent decades. 2020 brought this change into sharp relief. Dixie governors were ABLE to break away from the NAZI TORTURE created by the Federal demons. Trump didn’t stop them, Biden didn’t stop them. This level of breakage wasn’t allowed in 1960. Ike called out the National Guard to force Dixie governors into line on a vastly less important issue.

In the clip above Montana is attempting to set its own import quotas on foreign publishers, which wouldn’t have been tried earlier. We don’t know yet if it will succeed, but the attempt itself is a healthy sign.

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5/22: Tiktok is suing Montana based on the above obvious “laws”. States aren’t supposed to ban imports of products or information. If “laws” have any force, Tiktok would win easily. But the federals dislike Tiktok for inscrutable reasons, so it’s hard to tell what will happen.