Stardate 20020226.1952

(On Screen): You see, we got this thing here in the US called the First Amendment. We really care a lot about it; it's one of the most important sentences in the Constitution. It guarantees us a right of free expression, which we in the US think is indispensable. One thing in particular that it doesn't do is to protect us from being offended, because we in the US think that if only inoffensive speech is protected then the protection is a sham. Anyone could censor anyone else just by declaring that they were being offended in some way.

We're not about to give up the First Amendment just to get along with other governments, and especially not just so we can suck up to a pompous French court that doesn't know its own limits. And that is what we're facing now.

France has much more stringent restrictions on speech. It's their nation; they can do what they want within their borders. But a French court has decided that this isn't enough; it wants to apply French law to what Americans say within the borders of the US, if it is possible for anyone in France to be exposed to that speech. Of course, on the Web anyone can read what anyone else in the world writes, and so the French court is trying to force a US company to remove certain materials from a web server based in the US, because it can be accessed in France. It issued a court order.

A US court ruled last year that the French court did not have jurisdiction to issue such orders to be applied within the US, and that First Amendment rights of free expression could not be abridged in that way. That was exactly the right way to rule. Were that ruled otherwise, Americans would only have the ability to express things online if they did not violate any law in any nation anywhere on earth, which would shred the First Amendment and make it completely meaningless.

The precedent was set by the Third Circuit Court's CDA decision, which decided how the First Amendment would apply online, and which was upheld by the Supreme Court. Americans have extremely broad right to express themselves online, and by long precedent that applies to corporations as well. And it emphatically does include the right to unpopular speech, even to offensive speech because if it did not it would be useless.

But never let it be said that the French are not tenacious: a court there has decided to initiate criminal prosecution against the American company and its CEO. Prison and fines.

The French court can stuff it. There is no possible way that the US will extradite someone solely because they exercised their constitutionally protected right of free expression within US borders. The French can abridge their own right of free expression all they want, but they better damned well keep their fingers off of mine here in the US.