One of the threads in the comments on the postings regarding a recent obscenity conviction (upheld by the 4th Circuit) for “receipt of obscene cartoons” involved my friend Mr. Jefferson, and his views on the First Amendment and “the freedom of speech.” One reader added a helpful link to Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions, in which he argued that the Sedition Act, “which does abridge the freedom of the press, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force.”
I always like to comment on Jeffersoniana, and in this case his views really do help to explain my own. I spend a fair bit of time in my book on Jefferson and the Internet — you haven’t forgotten to get a copy of my book, have you??! — talking about Jefferson’s free speech positions, both because they’re interesting in and of themselves and because they’re of particular relevance to the many speech-restricting laws that have been enacted in response to Internet communication. I devote a chapter late in the book to comparing Jefferson’s views on free speech law with his views on intellectual property law — the two issues that “have been featured in virtually all of the Internet