This is a few days old, but still worth a look.
On 3/22, Ian Steadman reported for Wired.co.uk on an interesting battle playing out between Twitter and the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF). Steadman explains:
In January, a French court ruled that Twitter must hand over the details of people who had tweeted racist and anti-semitic remarks, and set up a system that would alert the police to any further such posts as they happen. Twitter has ignored that ruling . . . arguing it was based in the United States and thus protected by the 1st Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantees. A Parisian circuit court ruled against the social network, giving it two weeks to comply or face a fine of up to €1,000 (£849) for every day it doesn’t.
This caught my eye because it sounds remarkably close to the same situation Yahoo faced over a decade ago, as recounted in Jack Goldsmith’s book Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. While it would be nice to see Twitter stand up for free speech AND stick it to the French, the more likely result is that they will comply. Nation-states still wield a lot of power on the internet, as Twitter will shortly find out.
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