My concern was over property rights, which my version of the hardfork does not violate.
What then about freedom of speech right, if that is really applicable to this case, because then the blocking of witness vote operations prevents these accounts to voice their choice to support certain witnesses rather than others?
I just want to clarify that I don't consider this to be a freedom of speech issue. It's just a censorship issue. I know they are usually used interchangeably, but I think there's a certain nuance that is lost in the "freedom of speech" phrase.
We are free try to broadcast whatever and witnesses are free to censor whatever. Meaning, we can and they do. There's no external restriction, per se.
However, a witness that censors while also making a claims not to censor is a problem. Either the chain is used to determine what is allowed on the chain or it's not. <- That's what I was sold on.
From the perspective of what can be determined on-chain, I believe there should be no basis to restrict an individual account. If you run a witness and make that bad determination, you should be fired. The entire situation should take place in the free market. That's the full extent of it.
On the other hand, if there was a freedom of speech violation, that implies something else, at least to me. That implies that there was a jurisdiction where a court could somehow decide if a witness violated someone's rights. I do not expect that this will ever be a determination made by any court, nor should it.
They have already agreed not to use those operations. I do not see an enforcement of an agreement that they made as censorship. If they had not agreed to it and I was blocking them, then it would be a different discussion.