The headline (and perhaps the article; I haven't read it since the headline is so bad) overstates the importance of the ruling.

The case involved someone on his state's sex offender registry. He was also prohibited from accessing social media sites, and got in trouble for posting a complaint about a traffic ticket on Facebook.

The actual ruling is that not allowing him on any social media site for any reason was too broad. Apparently the opinion makes comments about how important internet access is to modern society, which does give a hint about how the court might rule in the future, but a concurring opinion says there's no need to go off into the weeds for that discussion.

I don't follow your concerns on the headline. How is "a blanket ban on social media sites is unconstitutional" substantially different from "people can't be banned from the internet"?

Perhaps we're reading it differently, but to me, the headline says "you can't be banned from the internet as a whole", not "you can't be banned from a narrowly-tailored subset of the internet".

To me the headline says "you can't be banned from any part of the internet for any reason," or, alternatively, "everybody has a right to access the internet." The actual ruling is much narrower: "it's unconstitutional to ban all sex offenders from accessing social media sites." The Court hasn't officially said anything about other people (e.g., current prisoners, people on probation, specific people convicted of computer-related crimes, etc.) or other sites on the internet.

I was responding to the questions "With this supreme court ruling, how prisons in the US are going to allow inmates to have access to the real Internet? I mean you can not ban those inmates from accessing the Internet, right?"

I think his point was the rule isn't in relation to prisoners who traditionally do not have free access to all of the resources a free person might.

Exactly. Prisoners lose a great many 'rights' when they are incarcerated. Internet access is one of those.

Traditionally (for better or worse), prison inmates do not have the same rights/freedoms that everyone else does. For example, they usually don't get unsupervised calls and visits, and depending on their sentence, may not be able to take/make calls or accept visitors at all for a period of time. It's not a stretch to think that this SCOTUS decision is only related to people outside prison.

>> they usually don't get unsupervised calls

Does anyone? NSA and all ...

Prisoners are slaves under the constitution. It is a bummer but it is our last slave institution.

Prisoners in the US have barely any rights, they don't even have voting rights as felons in many states.

The court decisions focused on peoples ability to be part of society, and as far as I know that US prison system is the opposite of that. If in the future the prison system was reformed to be rehabilitation rather then retribution, then question like how inmates can access the real internet become really interesting. To quote: "convicted criminals—might receive legitimate benefits from these means [social media] for access to the world of ideas, in particular if they seek to reform and to pursue lawful and rewarding lives."

Make it extremely expensive people in prison or family have to pay a lot of money to just talk on the phone. This will just give another way for profit based incarceration system to make money for putting and keeping people in jail.

Let's continue this until everybody is in jail.

That's for the best. Reform and all that.

Ban != Access

You can NOT ban someone from the Internet but you may deny access to Internet in prisons.

I'm confused by your statement. If "Ban != Access" then what's preventing courts from simply denying access (not a "Ban" under your assertion above) to people outside of prisons as well?

My thinking was same as the parent. Preventing access would involve telling someone who owns a computer and could, for example, connect to public wifi, that they are not allowed to do that and will be punished for doing so.

I think this would be relevant to someone who has committed a crime using a computer and remains banned from using the internet even after finishing a prison sentence (like the kid in the movie Hackers). It doesn't sound like that can happen now.

Suppose a state doesn't bother to install an internet connection in the prison, and confiscates phones with mobile data. This is denying access.

Suppose someone is caught with an internet phone in jail and is hauled in front of a judge. If it's banned, then they can have their jail term increased.

Yea I understand the "If you're in prison" side of this but I feel like asserting "Ban != Access" makes the general public (i.e not in prison) side of this MUCH fuzzier.

What's the difference?

Cigarettes aren't banned. That doesn't mean everyone gets free cigarettes.

I can't stop you from going online but I don't have to give you a computer to access it?

Again what's the difference? Your actions forbade someone from using the internet, what's the difference besides playing dumb word games?

You can get some money together, go and buy a laptop, connect to free public wifi. The government cannot ban you from using it if you complete those steps. i.e. they cannot be the only thing preventing you from accessing the internet. If you have no money or no way of buying a computer or no way of accessing a connection that's on you, the government isn't required to give you those things for free. Huge difference between the two concepts and very much not word games.

I'm pretty sure US prisons don't allow you to have a laptop (they certainly don't permit cell phones), nor is there likely to be public wifi on the premises.

I'm not sure how you can't see the difference. If you have a laptop + Internet subscription you can access the internet. If you don't, tough luck.

"Access to the Internet" is the right. Not the tools to access the internet.

Perhaps a prison would even be the ideal environment for working on e.g. a large open source project.

That would have meant ReiserFS would have continued.

Wow, I completely forgot about ReiserFS. That takes me back. I was a huge fan of it.

This kind of comment is not acceptable here.

Now I wonder what kind of comment was it.

That would be fitting continuing of all the great books that were written in prison.

Considering the vast numbers of prisoners, the rate of literary production is not that great, especially when you take out the political prisoners.

You cannot ban someone from the internet, but you are not forced to give them access to it if they do not already.

Reason #516 why people should only send plain text e-mail.