Tag: free speech
Federal Court Rules That Blocking Speech Is Protected By The First Amendment, But Recommending It Isn’t
This ruling came out a week and a half ago at this point and I've been so annoyed with it that I kept putting off writing about it, but it's so bad that it requires a discussion. A federal district court in San Jose denied motions from a bunch of the big tech companies seeking...
The Fake Free Speech President Has Unleashed ICE On Its Critics
It still amazes me that there are people out there who think that Donald Trump is a supporter of free speech. It has never been true. Anyone who looks will note that the Trump administration regularly engages in clearly unconstitutional attempts to suppress speech. But because he and his supporters like to claim he's a...
Trump’s War On Journalists Also Includes Targeting A Freelance NYT Contributor
Donald Trump took possession of a $400 million "gift" plane from the Qatari government earlier this year. Trump claimed it was a coup for taxpayers and a boon for America, even as he made it clear this was all about him. According to Trump, no plane was more luxurious than this graft-y replacement for the...
eBay And Former Execs Agree To Pay $56 Million For Trying To ‘Crush’ A Journalist
For much of Techdirt's nearly three decades in existence we've covered attacks on the media by the rich and powerful. And sometimes we've been on the receiving end of such attacks ourselves. But I have never seen or heard of anything quite as extreme as what happened to Ina and David Steiner, proprietors of the...
The SCREEN Act Threatens Privacy Far Beyond Adult Websites
The Senate Commerce Committee is set to consider S. 737, the SCREEN Act, a sweeping age-verification bill that would require online services to verify users’ ages before they can access any sexually explicit content. If this bill passes, it will force millions of adult internet users to give up their anonymity, privacy, and security before...
The Worst Person You Know Just Filed A Good First Amendment Lawsuit Against A Very Badly Drafted Nudify App Ban
There's been a bunch of news this week regarding Minnesota's new law that purports to prohibit "nudification" technology, and the fact that xAI has sued to have the law blocked as unconstitutional. A few things need to be said upfront, because it's very, very easy to just say the tech is terrible, that Elon Musk...
Trump Admin’s Campaign Against ‘Radical Left Terrorism’ Is Built On A National Security Memo With No Congressional Approval
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. A little-noticed presidential national security directive is now the legal engine behind a wave of terrorism prosecutions against left-wing protesters. That domestic campaign now has an international dimension, one that American officials had been planning for months, culminating on...
Former FCC Officials Line Up To Blast Brendan Carr’s Lawless Censorship Of ABC
A bipartisan roster of former top-level FCC officials have submitted a filing to the Trump FCC blasting the agency's ongoing violations of the First Amendment and urging it to terminate its phony "investigations" into ABC -- including the unprecedented early ownership review of the company's broadcast licenses. In the filing, former FCC officials allied under...
The FTC Would Like To Decide Which AI Answers Are Too Woke, And Is Calling That Consumer Protection
On Friday this week the FTC's open comment period regarding its "Policy Statement Addressing AI Accuracy" will close, which means that a bunch of very smart, very busy people are wasting a ton of time this week writing up comments that will mostly be ignored by the FTC — but still matter for the record....
DOJ Withdraws NY Times Subpoenas After Judge Notices It Never Bothered To Follow The Rules For Subpoenaing Reporters
Just last week we had the story of the Trump DOJ issuing very questionable subpoenas of NY Times journalists while trying to track down who leaked information to those reporters regarding the potentially catastrophic security flaws of the "gift" 747 plane he received from Qatar. As we noted in that original post, this appeared to...
Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 06-18-26
I missed Pook-Emu Bee links yesterday and am late today, but we can hardly let a backlog grow... so let us link today. [caption id="attachment_6010" align="aligncenter" width="975"] A black Cybertruck seen parked in Brooklyn Heights. I took this photo on June 18, 2026.[/caption] 1. Peeved NYC students, teachers, parents beg mayor to cancel school for...
The Galileo Gambit: Scientific Liberty, Consensus, and the Cost of Persuasion
What is called free speech?
Thought experiments in not knowing
A Rorschach Test for the State of American Free Speech
Surveys showing Americans self-censor don't tell us whether free speech is under threat. They mostly just confirm whatever we already believe.
On Freedom of Speech
How Europe can save the Internet
I wrote a piece about ACTA for Imperica: [...] Despite declaring an intention to prevent piracy, the agreements once again represent a significant infringement of civil liberties and undermine the principles by which the Internet works. The agreements' intentions appear good at first glance – who doesn't want to protect the rights of artists? – but actually represent an irreversible erosion of personal freedoms. Click here to read the whole article.
The 'net was never free from commercial interest; it's not a "new" threat to democratic speech
The death of newspapers, and why it matters
The Internet has, undeniably, changed our culture. For most of the 20th century, we paid for our news, entertainment, art and literature. We allowed businesses to act as gatekeepers for this content, and accepted that the media landscape would be dictated by decisions made in the boardroom. Publishers, movie studio bosses, broadcasters and record company executives dictated what we read, saw and heard, based on financial projections. Their opinions about what was commercially viable regulated s