Free speech raises a question, first, as to what speech options ought to be free and, second, as to what makes a speech option free. This paper assumes that any plausible ideal will require that a wide range of speech options should be free and explores the issue of what makes them free. There are broadly two responses: one, the fact that the exercise of those choices is unhindered, the other the fact that that exercise is protected (and, as we may assume, consequently unhindered). The paper argues that the issue between those answers is important and that there are a number of reasons to prefer the protection response. There are benefits associated with unhindered speech, whether or not it is protected, and it is these that are invoked in most defenses of free speech. But there are special benefits, all too often ignored, that are associated in particular with the protection of speech.