Online Speech Quotes

When controversial speech can be taken offline through pressures on private intermediaries without any kind of due process, that is something we need to be concerned about.

Now is the time to draw a clean, clear, bright line and say if you are engaging in speech over the Internet you do not have to check with your lawyer or your accountant. You are a free American, and you have the opportunity to engage in free speech over the Internet.

I haven't heard of any cases of anti-American blog posts being censored or bloggers encountering consequences for anti-American speech on the web in China.

Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention.

'Intermediary liability' means that the intermediary, a service that acts as 'intermediate' conduit for the transmission or publication of information, is held liable or legally responsible for everything its users do.

I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

I can imagine Iceland becoming a good place to run a controversial Web site. But... Iceland may find itself forced to defend controversial speech.

While we generally believe in free speech and giving everyone as much ability to speak as possible, in practice there are lots of barriers to that, whether it's legal restrictions, technological restrictions or you can't share what you want if you don't have access to the internet.

Congress created a safe harbor for defamation in 1996 and for copyright in 1998. Both safe harbors were designed to ensure that the Internet would remain a participatory medium of speech.

We're muddying the waters when we are having a discussion about what's going on on YouTube and Twitter and whether that's a matter of free speech. These are private platforms and they're allowed to decide what should and should not be on its platforms. It's not an issue of free speech.

Unfortunately, opponents of online speech have decided to punish our changing technological world.

You shouldn't say things on social media that you wouldn't say to someone's face.

The level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.

Can any sane person say that before something comes on the Net you must screen it? How can there be pre-screening?

The whole freedom-of-speech thing is great. But I don't think that our Founding Fathers predicted social media when they created all of these amendments and stuff.

Good advice is just watch what you say on Facebook, on Twitter, on social networks because being sued is not fun. Filing a lawsuit is not fun. And being fired and having to do all of those things is not fun. So just avoid it.