The Free Press opposes efforts at online censorship. Such laws are bad for the exchange of ideas, bad for truth-seeking, bad for politics, and bad for independent thought. But we’ve also opposed them because, no matter how much lawmakers swear that they will censor only the most abhorrent material, it never turns out that way.
Sooner or later—and it’s usually sooner—the censors start finding “objectionable” material everywhere they look.
Including, we discovered recently, in The Free Press. Specifically, TGIF, Nellie Bowles’ witty take on the week’s news, is being censored in the UK.
This is because the UK this summer put in force its Online Safety Act, an omnibus law sold to the British public as providing protection for children against pornography, suicide promotion, and similarly dangerous materials. Ofcom (the “Office of Communications”), Britain’s media regulator, summarized the law in a few screenfuls of material, helpfully pointing out that the new law can keep children from seeing content that might promote, say, eating disorders.
