US Censorship News

Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are quietly circulating a serious threat to your free speech and security online. Their proposal would give the Attorney General the power to unilaterally write new rules for how online platforms and services must operate in order to rely on Section 230, the most important law protecting free speech online. The AG could use this power to force tech companies to undermine our secure and private communications.

We must stop this dangerous proposal before it sees the light of day. Please tell your members of Congress to reject the so-called EARN IT Act.   

The Graham-Blumenthal bill would establish a National Commission on Online Child Exploitation Prevention tasked with recommending best practices for providers of interactive computer services regarding the prevention of online child exploitation conduct. But the Attorney General would have the power to override the Commission's recommendations unilaterally. Internet platforms or services that failed to meet the AG's demands could be on the hook for millions of dollars in liability.

It's easy to predict how Attorney General William Barr would use that power: to break encryption. He's said over and over that he thinks the best practice is to weaken secure messaging systems to give law enforcement access to our private conversations. The Graham-Blumenthal bill would finally give Barr the power to demand that tech companies obey him or face overwhelming liability from lawsuits based on their users' activities. Such a demand would put encryption providers like WhatsApp and Signal in an awful conundrum: either face the possibility of losing everything in a single lawsuit or knowingly undermine their own users' security, making all of us more vulnerable to criminals. The law should not pit core values--Internet users' security and expression--against one another.

The Graham-Blumenthal bill is anti-speech, anti-security, and anti-innovation. Congress must reject it.

Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, was acquired last week by the publisher Hachette in the US.

The move was quickly condemned by the author's daughter Dylan Farrow, who has alleged that Allen sexually abused her as a child, allegations that Allen has denied. These allegations have twice been investigated by the authorities but have not led to arrest, charge or prosecution.

Allen's son Ronan Farrow, whose book Catch and Kill --also published by Hachette -- details his investigations into institutional sexual abuse in the media and Hollywood, also blasted the decision and announced he would no longer work with Hachette.

The Hachette censorship was  initiated by Hachette staff in the US who staged a walkout at its New York offices over the memoir. The publisher then pulled the book, claming that the decision was a difficult one.

Woody Allen's memoir will still be published in France despite its US publisher dropping it, with his French publisher saying that the film director is not Roman Polanski and that the American situation is not ours.

 

Offsite Comment: This is the behaviour of censors, not publishers

9th March 2020. See article from theguardian.com   by Jo Glanville of English Pen

I do not want to read books that are good for me or that are written by people whose views I always agree with or admire. I am always afraid when a mob, however small and well read, exercises power without any accountability, process or redress. That frightens me much more than the prospect of Woody Allen's autobiography hitting the bookstores.

...Read the full article from theguardian.com

Prager University (PragerU) is a right wing group that creates videos explaining a right wing perspective to political issues.

YouTube didn't much care for the content and shunted the videos up a 'restricted mode' back alley.

PragerU challenged the censorship in court but have just lost their case. First Amendment rights in the US bans the state from censoring free speech but this protection does not extended to private companies. PragerU had tried to argue that Google has become so integral to American life that it should be treated like a state institution.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed that YouTube, a Google subsidiary, is a private platform and thus not subject to the First Amendment. In making that determination, the Court also rejected a plea from a conservative content maker that sued YouTube in hopes that the courts would force it to behave like a public utility.

Headed by conservative radio host Dennis Prager, PragerU alleged in its suit against YouTube that the video hosting platform violated PragerU's right to free speech when it placed a portion of the nonprofit's clips on Restricted Mode, an optional setting that approximately 1.5 percent of YouTube users select so as not to see content with mature themes.

Writing for the appeals court, Circuit Judge Margaret McKeown said YouTube was a private forum despite its ubiquity and public accessibility, and hosting videos did not make it a state actor for purposes of the First Amendment.