If you’re a Twitter user, you might start getting notifications just like this from Twitter in the very near future if you tweet something that some foreign governments don’t like.

On Thursday, the social media company announced on its blog that, effective immediately, it has implemented the ability to withhold specific content from certain geographical regions in order to respond to government censoring without affecting its entire base of users.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

According to PC Magazine, Twitter will determine which content to withhold in much the same way it does DMCA notices, albeit proactively. (more…)

On July 20, 2010, the U.S. Senate Senate passed the Bipartisan HR 2765 (as amended by the Leahy-Sessions SPEECH Act) by Unanimous Consent. The House of Representatives, which already passed HR 2765 introduced by Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) by 433-2, has indicated that it will pass the same bill within days.

The bill was introduced by the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Ranking Member Senator Jeff Session (R-Alabama). The legislation is cosponsored by Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut).

At the vote, Senator Leahy noted: “I would like to recognize Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy, who herself has been the victim of a libel suit in the United Kingdom, and has been a tremendous advocate for Congressional action in this area.” (more…)

How to lose friends and influence people:  Lenny Bruce, as played by Dustin Hoffman, on the moral evil of censorship, and what it does to the tongue of a free society. Something to think about as we move toward “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” on May 20.

Take that, “Comedy” Central.

Time was when newspapers were as stalwart in defending the First Amendment rights of others as they were for themselves.  But increasingly, some media organizations are using their constitutionally protected platforms to intimidate others into surrendering their rights.

Specifically, we’re talking about the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances,” which is part of the First Amendment, along with freedom of religion, speech, the press, and assembly.  In contemporary parlance, redress of grievances translates into lobbying, which has become something of a dirty word.  In practice, it covers everything from writing your congressman on an issue or seeking a service academy appointment for your kid, to organized meetings between government officials and industry representatives.

Most news organizations understand and respect this precept, and it’s reflected in their coverage of events that involve the matter.  This February 25 article from the financial news organization Marketwatch illustrates how reporting of this nature should be handled – flatly and factually: (more…)

Free speech, open debate, “sunlight is the best disinfectant” — these concepts used to be the cornerstones of life in the Enlightenment West.  From John Milton through John Stuart Mill, from Justice Brandeis to Harvey Silverglate, a strain of intellectually libertarian thought has underpinned the very foundation of the United States of America: if your tongue is not free, then nothing is free.

Well, that was then and this is now, as the ongoing show trial of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands demonstrates. Holland, once a country of fierce Calvinists that is now so liberal that euthanasia, pot and prostitution are all openly legal, is hurtling down the path to suicidal nihilism at a breathtaking pace:

The dark spectre of illiberalism is slowly poisoning Western liberal democracies. You won’t hear about it from much of the left-liberal press. It is part of the problem and its silence only confirms that basic liberties integral to Western liberal democracies are under threat. That is why you may not have heard about the trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is being prosecuted under hate laws in The Netherlands for his opinions about Islam. Agree or disagree with Wilders, this is the thundering march of the thought police. And don’t for a moment imagine that Australia is immune from this menace to democracy.

Read the whole piece by Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian, and then let’s have your thoughts.