- Senators have big plans for government regulation of social media but U.S. Constitution keeps getting in way [John Samples, Cato; David McCabe, Axios, earlier] “Censorship breeds censorship envy, and that’s true of private suppression by massively influential platforms such as Facebook as well as of governmental censorship.” [John Samples, Eugene Volokh]
- Is it lawful for a state lawmaker to block someone on Twitter who’s publicly discussed ways of murdering him? [Dorit Reiss, PrawfsBlawg, earlier]
- European Parliament delays adopting online copyright directive that critics said would result in Internet content filtering and royalties for linking [Thomas McMullan/Alphr, BBC earlier]
- Is the ACLU OK with French catcalling law? [Robby Soave] With using government to keep the wrong sorts of people from owning radio outlets? [Scott Shackford, related]
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Federalist Society telecast on Ninth Circuit decision on Idaho “ag-gag” law with UCLA lawprof Eugene Volokh and Andrew Varcoe of Boyden Gray & Associates;
- “Arrests for offensive Facebook and Twitter posts soar in London” [Sadie Levy Gale, Independent] Downhill in Denmark: “How the Right Abandoned Free Speech in Europe” [Cato podcast and Reason interview with Jacob Mchangama]
Filed under: ACLU, agriculture and farming, Europe, Facebook, free speech, hate speech, Idaho, social media, Twitter
One Comment
On cat-calling: while extreme cases exist like some European neighborhoods where cat-calling gets very threatening, the law would also sweep up flirting or even whistling which have led to dating and marriage in millions of cases. It essentially could make any expression of interest by a man illegal. Oh, I know, they won’t prosecute that…unless they do.
On the online Euro censorship law: it would outlaw all the funny pictures where people put comments on items from the news or random photos (memes) because you would have to pay the originator. It would outlaw fair use. And the idea that linking to a site is bad is so crazy–that is how a site gets customers, by people linking to it.