This chapter discusses the development of international law in the post-war era that aimed to liberate global information flow to guarantee world peace. It starts by discussing the achievements and failures of the 1948 Geneva conference on the freedom of information and considers two avenues in which the post-war project of freedom of information continued after the 1948 conference. First, in the drafting of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, freedom of information as a peace project became framed into a fundamental human right, displacing the question about the material and interstate aspects of freedom of information. Second, freedom of information was addressed in forums of international telecommunication and trade dominated by the United States, where freedom of information became equated with the elimination of discriminatory telecommunication rates to enable American global trade. This chapter shows a division of labour and crucial conceptual compatibility between the human rights framing and free trade framing of freedom of information and multiple fault lines surrounding the early intimation of the dual-sided framework.

This chapter examines the human rights framing for the governance of information from the 1990s to the early 2010s and argues that, overall, it did not fundamentally unsettle two basic logics of neoliberalism, namely, securitization and marketization. In commonplace positive narratives about technology, human rights were presented by policymakers and international technocrats as one benefit of new information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs), to justify the market-driven technological change. By contrast, negative narratives about technology focused on the social harms of new ICTs and invoked human rights to normatively ground technological development. However, human rights struggles in this period suffered from two processes of dilution – firstly, the proceduralization of human rights obligations of the state during the War on Terror years and, secondly, the narrowing down of a broad social programme into focusing only on classic civil and political rights in civil society campaigns – and were therefore unable to fundamentally reshape the governance of information towards more equitable distribution of power and wealth.

This chapter revisits the legal and cultural legacy of Naked Lunch, tracing its trajectory from an outlaw text at the center of a landmark obscenity trial to a canonized modernist classic – and back again to contested status in the context of contemporary book bans. Loren Glass reflects on the enduring influence of the 1966 legal exoneration of Naked Lunch, arguing that its victory relied on disavowing the very queer and obscene qualities that characterize its content. Through comparisons to current legislative efforts Glass highlights the persistence of moral panic around sexual representation, particularly as it relates to LGBTQ identities. The chapter probes the paradoxes at the heart of literary freedom, including the right not to read, and considers Naked Lunch’s fraught place in classrooms today. Ultimately, it calls for re-situating Burroughs’ work on the margins, where its destabilizing, subversive power can be more fully acknowledged – and responsibly engaged.

This chapter explores the delicate balance between the need to combat online disinformation and the safeguarding of fundamental rights, particularly media freedom and pluralism, as essential elements of freedom of expression and democracy. The chapter outlines the evolution of the EU’s policies and regulations related to information integrity and discusses the key elements and challenges of the EU’s approach to addressing disinformation in the context of media pluralism. Focusing on the Code of Practice on Disinformation, the Digital Services Act, and the European Media Freedom Act, the chapter discusses their complex interplay and overarching strategy, which delegates the critical task of assessing systemic risks and fundamental rights – including media freedom and pluralism – to very large online platforms.

Infrastructures that underlie public debate have a significant role in public opinion formation and have long been regulated in multiple ways. Limiting the domination of opinion power by particular interests has been one of the stated aims of such regulation. But the approaches have also depended on the often-unstated presumption of a journalistic-editorial role being highly influential in the formation of public speech and opinion. This chapter examines how communication infrastructures have changed with the development of major platforms and resulting changes in journalism’s role within public debate. These changes raise new regulatory challenges if opinion power is to be limited, and they make the positive dimensions of freedom of expression all the more valuable for understanding what would now be required for communicatively legitimate forms of democracy. The chapter examines aspects of the Digital Services Act and the European Media Freedom Act in light of freedom of expression’s positive dimensions to consider how European law and practice might promote a pluralism of public speech that is curated in the audience’s interests.

The contemporary proliferation of ‘reimagining’ as a cultural practice has evolved from a largely personal or artistic pursuit into a broader societal and technological phenomenon. A diverse range of actors – artists, political actors, corporations, advocacy organizations, and minority communities – now routinely engage in the reworking of popular works, symbols, and culturally significant designs. Against the backdrop of the shift from a linear economic model toward a circular economy, this chapter contends that a substantive recalibration of IP law is required. It argues that reimagining practices should be protected from excessive control by IP rights-holders through both legislative and judicial intervention. In doing so, the chapter contributes to ongoing debates concerning the appropriate equilibrium between exclusive IP rights and the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

This introductory chapter maps the evolving field of European media law and policy and unravels the roles that the Council of Europe, the European Union and European states play in the shared regulatory space. The chapter provides an overview of the key standards and instruments in European media law and policy. It critically reflects on overarching challenges for European media policy that result from the digital transformation of the media ecosystem, the dominance of global tech platforms, the enlargement of the European Union, rising political pressures on independent media and disruptive new technologies such as generative AI. Lastly, the chapter offers a roadmap to the contributions in the handbook.

This chapter explores potential advancements in co-regulatory settings to better cope with basic rights and democratic requirements when tackling disinformation online. While dubious information has become increasingly prevalent on social media platforms and might cause individual and societal harm, regulatory measures have depend on state regulation, self-regulation, and traditional co-regulation. In view of the disadvantages of state regulation and self-regulation, co-regulatory approaches are seen as the way forward in disinformation governance. The chapter argues that current co-regulatory settings have inherited structural deficits from state regulation and self-regulation when dealing with the specific challenges of disinformation, especially in cases of ‘awful but lawful’ speech. The chapter examines the requirements of adequately advanced co-regulatory approaches, the roles of the relevant actors, and the implications for future EU audiovisual policies.

Media ownership and its concentration in a few powerful hands have been on the European political agenda since the 1980s. To date, no coherent and effective control mechanism has been put in place. Instead, and despite repeated calls from the European Parliament for strong rules to control media ownership, recent policy activity in this area has sidelined the problem of media ownership concentration and focused on ownership transparency. This focus risks absorbing transformative energy at the expense of progress in limiting the power and dominance of transnational media and communication conglomerates. As a minimum requirement, European regulatory mechanisms should impose obligations for greater internal editorial freedom as media ownership concentration increases.

During his month-long visit to Cuba in 1965, Allen Ginsberg’s ideals of expressive freedom, sexual openness, and poetic individualism came into direct conflict with the increasingly repressive Castroist regime. Invited by the state organization Casa de las Américas to judge a poetry competition, Ginsberg quickly drew scrutiny from the regime for his outspoken views on homosexuality, drug use, and freedom of expression. His subsequent surveillance by the state’s vice squad, arrest, and deportation underscored the Cuban government’s intolerance for nonconformist expression, especially as it pertained to sexuality and dissent. Ginsberg’s experiences, recorded in his Cuban diaries, letters, and poems, reveal a central paradox of revolutionary politics: While seeking liberation, regimes might deploy repressive mechanisms of censorship and control. Ginsberg’s confrontation with Cold War ideologies – both US and Cuban – solidified his vision of a humanist poetics aimed at disrupting authoritarian systems and expanding consciousness through individuals’ radical self-expression.

When it became clear that gender critical belief is protected in our anti-discrimination law, it was often said that, while such views were protected, manifesting or expressing them was not. This is simply not true. Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects both the absolute right to hold a belief and the qualified right to manifest a belief. The manifestation of protected beliefs is also protected under Article 10, which protects the right to freedom of expression. Because these are qualified rights, it may be permissible to interfere with them where proportionate. Where discrimination or harassment arises because someone holds gender critical views, this will be unlawful. However, where the treatment complained of is a genuine response to the fact or manner of manifestation of a protected belief, the legal situation becomes more complex. In assessing the extent to which is it permissible for an employer or other duty-bearer to interfere with the fact or manner of manifestation of a protected belief, the central importance of freedom of expression must be recognised as the background context of any analysis.

This use of preferred pronouns for those with trnsgender identities is extraordinarily contentious within the context of debates on sex and gender identity. This chapter begins by exploring why pronouns are so contentious, arguing that their use is an important signifier of underlying beliefs about the relationship between sex and gender identity. From here, the chapter explores whether and under what conditions an emplouyer could interfere with the expression of employees to prohibit or compell the use of particular pronouns. It concludes that this will require a fact-sensitive analysis which begins from the understanding that the right to freedom of expression is robustly protected, especially in the context of compelled speech.

One of the most contentious issues relting to sex and gender identity is whether a transgener person has a right to keep informaiton about their biological sex private from others. Related to the right to freedom of expression, discussed in previous chapters, is the countervailing right to private life. Nowhere encapsulates the potential for human rights to conflict more clearly than the tension between the interest of one person to disclose information that another party would rather be kept private. This chapter examines circumstances when it may be lawful to disclose information about the biological sex of another when they would strongly wish that information not be shared at all. Relatedly, it explores circumstances when heightened rights of privacy may obtain as a result of data protection obligations placed on businesses and public bodies. There is no absolute right to keep the fact of one’s sex private, but there may be some circumstances where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy and where disclosure may be unlawful.

The Court of Appeal in Higgs v Farmor’s School has provided a detailed analysis of the relationship between anti-discrimination and human rights standards in the workplace where employees manifest protected beliefs. Unfortunately, this analysis suffers from a central flaw by presuming that if manifestation of belief is protected under direct discrimination, it will always be unlawful for an employer to interfere. It is this presumption which prompted the Court of Appeal to defend the introduction of a justification test into what was previously a factual analysis of causation, by deeming less favourable treatment in response to ‘objectionable’ manifestations to have not been ‘because of’ the protected belief itself. This chapter argues that such an approach is unnecessary because it responds to a problem which does not exist. It is simply incorrect to presume that protection from direct discrimination necessarily implies that any interference with the manifestation of a protected belief is directly discriminatory. The ordinary application of the Equality Act is already coextensive with the protections afforded under the European Convention on Human Rights. Any interpretation needed under s.3 of the Human Rights Act is needed within the sphere of indirect discrimination, not direct discrimination.

David Collier and Steven Levitsky’s original “Democracy with Adjectives” article (1997) offered a useful corrective to Sartorian thinking about conceptualization, and the new revised version further clarifies its contribution. There is a crucial difference between identifying a diminished subtype (moving from democracy as attributes “A and B and C” to “A and B and not C”) and moving up the ladder of abstraction (from democracy as attributes “A and B and C” to “A and B and either C or not C”). Diminished subtypes are more precise and do not necessarily increase the extension of a concept. This chapter offers a critique of both examples of conceptual innovation, which are grounded in categorical thinking, from the conceptual approach used by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, which conceives of democracy as an aggregate of multiple continuous dimensions. Examples using V-Dem data suggest that it is possible to create measurements of specific concepts that are both qualitatively rich and quantitatively precise. However, the measurement of very general concepts such as democracy comes at the cost of some quantitative information and conceptual clarity.

In June 1966, the International PEN Club held its annual conference in New York City. It was the first time in forty-two years that the United States had hosted the meeting, and there was much to celebrate. Pablo Neruda, who had repeatedly been denied visas to the United States since 1943 on the grounds that he was a communist, was one of the stars of the show. Throughout – and, indeed, long after – the conference, he made headlines, drew audiences, and made statements that had a lasting impact. He also earned the wrath of supporters of the Cuban Revolution, who attacked him for betraying the revolution by participating in the conference. This chapter discusses Neruda’s participation in the event, including the controversies that he sparked during and afterward, as well as his other activities in New York and his travels in the United States afterward.

This chapter formulates the research question and clarifies the critical methodological issues pertaining to the analysis. This is important because the book aims to bring together science and technology studies, sociological systems theory and jurisprudence The topic of the book is then introduced by giving an overview of all the chapters, making clear that a common thread runs throughout the book and that the argument addresses all of the theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the research question posed at the beginning.

Chapter 6 reconstructs the technology-specific legal contours of freedom of expression in the Internet age, presenting empirical evidence of the growing importance of technology for legal practice and regulation. Since data-processing technology is a prerequisite for free speech, the starting point is privacy law. An important distinction is made between data integrity and network integrity and the discussion on net neutrality and the open Internet is revisited. The case law of the ECtHR on Article 10 ECHR is also examined to see if there is a tendency to recognise an independent ‘right to transmit’. Moreover, the activities of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) can be seen to produce technology-related standards relevant to the freedom of expression. ICANN, which is responsible for routing data packets to their destination, controls the ‘master key’ to the entire global Internet and can thus influence the conditions under which freedom of communication is possible. Finally, the chapter addresses the technical standards for the Internet developed by the independent Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Task Force, which are also crucial for the freedom of expression.