free speech
What's better for free speech on reddit, saving a single thread or getting the whole site unbanned in Russia?
If the choice is between all of reddit remaining banned in most of Russia and IP-blocking access to one thread about mushrooms, I’d block access to the thread. I think there’s a far stronger “pro-free-speech” argument for restoring access to 99.99% of reddit for Russians rather than inciting a total ban by refusing to restrict access to a single post.
Photo by Kirill Vinokurov, from Wikimedia
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda Law
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda Law
Copyright trolls sue lots of people to extract settlements from those who can’t afford to litigate in the face of potentially massive statutory damages. Their claims are often facially lacking in merit and instead leverage intimidation and poorly-constructed federal copyright damages provisions to bankrupt people for profit.
I’m impressed by Wordpress’ parent company, Automattic, who refused to respond to the troll’s fishing expedition. And it’s good to see EFF lend a hand here in the form of representation, but eventually Congress needs to step in and fix the statutory damages provisions that incentivize copyright trolls to this vile abuse of our legal system in the first place.
For some great background and reporting on trolls and those who fight them, read this Ars Technica piece by Timothy B. Lee.
Nebraska court strikes down restrictions on internet use for sex offenders on free speech grounds
Nebraska court strikes down restrictions on internet use for sex offenders on free speech grounds
Professor David Post of Temple Law served as an expert for the plaintiffs — yes, sex offenders — in this case. His focus, as he points out in his Volokh Conspiracy post, was on the overbroad nature of the statute barring internet use by sex offenders, which he believes, and the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska agreed, was beyond what the First Amendment allows.
Your first thought might be “who cares about a sex offender’s free speech rights?”
The answer, of course, is that the Constitution cares, particularly after they have served prison time and otherwise complied with constitutionally sound penalties for their crimes.
The core of the court’s holding lies in the following passage:
The ban not only restricts the exchange of text between adults; it also restricts the exchange of oral and video communication between adults. Moreover, the ban potentially restricts the targeted offenders from communicating with hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of adults and their companies despite the fact that the communication has nothing whatsoever to do with minors.1
This looks to me like a well-meaning statute, meant to keep sex offenders away from kids online, that was very poorly drafted. You could achieve the desired goal using far narrower provisions. I hope someone proposes a corrected statute to that effect.