“Before Gutenberg, copyists, using pen and ink, duplicated
written political dialogue laboriously. Only the wealthy and the
church could afford to employ copyists, and during this period the
paucity of communications limited the exercise of democracy to
small groups. The advent of Gutenberg’s press made the mass
distribution of written political dialogue possible. People vote
based on what they hear and read, and the improvement in
communications brought by the press made egalitarian mass democracy
possible. It is thus no surprise that the first amendment to the
U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of the press…”