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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > Freedom of information & freedom of speech
The Supreme Court's 1919 decision in Schenck vs. the United States
is one of the most important free speech cases in American history.
Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is most famous for saying that
'shouting fire in a crowded theater' is not protected by the First
Amendment. The case itself upheld an espionage conviction, but it
also created a much stricter standard for governmental suppression
of speech. Over time, the standard Holmes devised made freedom of
speech in America a reality rather than merely an ideal. In The
Free Speech Century, two of American's leading First Amendment
scholars, Geoffrey Stone and Lee Bollinger, have gathered a group
of the nation's leading legal scholars (Cass Sunstein, Lawrence
Lessig, Laurence Tribe, Kathleen Sullivan, Catherine McKinnon, and
others) to evaluate the development of free speech doctrine since
Schenk and assess where it might be headed in our post-Snowden era.
Since 1919, First Amendment jurisprudence in America has been a
signal development in the history of constitutional
democracies-remarkable for its level of doctrinal refinement,
remarkable for its lateness in coming (in relation to the adoption
of the First Amendment), and remarkable for the scope of protection
for free expression it has afforded since the 1960s. Since 1919,
the degree of judicial engagement with these fundamental rights has
grown exponentially. We now have an elaborate set of free speech
laws and norms, but as Stone and Bollinger stress, the context is
always shifting. New societal threats like terrorism, heightened
political sensitivities, and new technologies of communication
continually reshape our understanding of what sort of speech should
be allowed. Publishing on the one hundredth anniversary of the
decision that established free speech as we have come to understand
it today, The Free Speech Century will serve as essential overview
for anyone interested in how our understanding of the First
Amendment transformed over time and why it continues to change to
this day.
The principles of freedom of expression have been developed over
centuries. How are they reserved and passed on? How can large
internet gatekeepers be required to respect freedom of expression
and to contribute actively to a diverse and plural marketplace of
ideas? These are key issues for media regulation, and will remain
so for the foreseeable decades. The book starts with the
foundations of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and
then goes on to explore the general issues concerning the
regulation of the internet as a specific medium. It then turns to
analysing the legal issues relating to the three most important
gatekeepers whose operations directly affect freedom of expression:
ISPs, search engines and social media platforms. Finally it
summarises the potential future regulatory and media policy
directions. The book takes a comparative legal approach, focusing
primarily on English and American regulations, case law and
jurisprudential debates, but it also details the relevant
international developments (Council of Europe, European Union) as
well as the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.
Cartoonists make us laugh - and think - by caricaturing daily
events and politics. The essays, interviews, and cartoons presented
in this innovative book vividly demonstrate the rich diversity of
cartooning across Africa and highlight issues facing its
cartoonists today, such as sociopolitical trends, censorship, and
use of new technologies. Celebrated African cartoonists including
Zapiro of South Africa, Gado of Kenya, and Asukwo of Nigeria join
top scholars and a new generation of scholar-cartoonists from the
fields of literature, comic studies and fine arts, animation
studies, social sciences, and history to take the analysis of
African cartooning forward. Taking African Cartoons Seriously
presents critical thematic studies to chart new approaches to how
African cartoonists trade in fun, irony, and satire. The book
brings together the traditional press editorial cartoon with
rapidly diverging subgenres of the art in the graphic novel and
animation, and applications on social media. Interviews with bold
and successful cartoonists provide insights into their work, their
humour, and the dilemmas they face. This book will delight and
inform readers from all backgrounds, providing a highly readable
and visual introduction to key cartoonists and styles, as well as
critical engagement with current themes to show where African
political cartooning is going and why.
The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the
government from "abridging the freedom of speech," but does not
define what that freedom entails. Chapter 1 provides a broad
overview of the main categories of protected and unprotected speech
in First Amendment jurisprudence. Chapter 2 examines the scope of
protection extended to freedom of speech in thirteen selected
countries. In particular, the chapter focuses on the limits of
protection that may apply to the right to interrupt or affect in
any other way public speech. It also addresses the availability of
mechanisms to control foreign broadcasters working on behalf of
foreign governments. Chapter 3 highlights the First Amendment and
examines those places where the right to free speech is being
stifled and sometimes even silenced by government. Chapter 4 begins
by outlining the current legal framework governing social media
sites' treatment of users' content, focusing on the First Amendment
and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA).
Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government's system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.
In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.
Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online - a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet's conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.
At the turn of the twentieth century, American journalists
transmitted news across the country by telegraph. But what happened
when these stories weren't true? In Bad News Travels Fast, Patrick
C. File examines a series of libel cases by a handful of plaintiffs
- including socialites, businessmen, and Annie Oakley - who sued
newspapers across the country for republishing false newswire
reports. Through these cases, File demonstrates how law and
technology intertwined to influence debates about reputation,
privacy, and the acceptable limits of journalism. This largely
forgotten era in the development of American libel law provides
crucial historical context for contemporary debates about the news
media, public discourse, and the role of a free press. File argues
that the legal thinking surrounding these cases laid the groundwork
for the more friendly libel standards the press now enjoys and
helped to establish today's regulations of press freedom amid the
promise and peril of high-speed communication technology.
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