Freedom of Speech

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse

A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics.

Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.

The draft law would establish a new national agency to issue all broadcast licenses, and to regulate and censor all forms of broadcast media. It defines broadcast media very broadly to include the internet and all other forms of communicating text, video or audio. It also defines prohibited content incredibly broadly, as anything which negatively affects social peace, national unity, the principle of citizenship, public order or public ethics. In short, the proposal would grant the Egyptian government near-totalitarian control over all forms of media.

A few weeks ago, I had a "debate" with a very unpleasant fellow at the University of Toronto Law School on the "cartoons."  At the time I accepted the offer to appear in the same forum as this fellow, I thought I was doing a service for a group of students who wanted to create a chapter of the Federalist Society at the U of T.  While never a fan of the politics of that group, I recognized the role that a serious conservative legal group could play in the intellectual life of the law school.  Little did I know that my counterpart in the exercise may very well be the Ann Coulter of Canadian politics.  In any case, I think I more than held my own.  This story in the law school student paper, ultra vires, provides an account of the event.