Sorry for getting up on my soap box here, but this is an all too common misconception that is a major pet peeve of mine.
This has aboslutely nothing to do with "free speech." In the USA, Freedom of Speech as guaranteed by the Constitution, is the right to protest the actions of the governemnt without fear of reprisal or punishment from that government, or the government being able to silence your opinion. Once upon a time, those who disagreed with the government and it's laws, and voiced thier opinion, were imprisoned or executed; it is this sort of thing that Freedom of Speech is intended to protect against.
Internet forum posts about computer games and those who play them is not "free speech," and there is no right being exercised here. Referring to it as such demeans the actual right and obsucres the importance of its purpose.
Actually, that's an incorrect interpretation of the first amendment to the US Constitution. The first amendment does not explicitly grant free speech nor does it have anything to do with protesting the government. The first amendment actually grants the free exercise of speech to be unimpeded by government restriction. Or to put it more directly, it doesn't grant the right to free speech, it actually
limits the right of the government to restrict speech. Because its a government limitation, not a declaration of a right, there is no specific constitutional protection of free speech itself. My employer, for example, could restrict my right to say anything at all within the workplace. They would not be violating a Constitutional right, because I have no right to free speech. My sole right under the First Amendment is to be free of
governmental restrictions.
The First Amendment makes no reference to protest speech. Speech need not have a political element or be directed at the government to be protected from government restriction. For example, the famous
Miller Test, flawed though it may be, articulates the principle that the government cannot pass laws that restrict speech even if it is found offensive, unless that speech lacks "literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Political speech is only one kind of speech protected by the Miller principle.
Also, like all clauses in the US Constitution, the right described within the First Amendment is not absolute. Where it contradicts other rights and powers proscribed within the Constitution, its up to judicial review (the courts) to arbitrate the difference. That is where the power to limits expression comes from: the Constitution directs Congress to pass laws necessary to protect its citizens, and is the principle behind the "shout fire in a theater" rule. Congress can pass laws that restrict speech when, like in the apocryphal case of shouting fire in a theater, such speech poses a "clear and present danger" to people Congress has both a right and a responsibility to safeguard against.
