“Before Twitter and social media, these things would have been said in a union hall and on a leaflet,” said COPE Ontario legal representative Glenn Wheeler. “The Charter of Rights provides for free expression, freedom of association. So we think we are in our constitutional rights to offer our version of the way we see things. That’s fair comment.”

Lawyers acting for Lord McAlpine have also drawn up a "very long list" of targets they intend to pursue for defamation, including the authors of 1,000 original tweets and a further 9,000 individuals who retweeted those messages.

Lord McAlpine's solicitor, Andrew Reed, said last night that those with under 500 followers will be asked to make a donation to charity as part of a settlement, with an "administration fee" for sorting it out. He added that higher profile figures, such as Ms Bercow, are "a separate matter".

I'm of course happy to abide by Twitter's rules, now and forever. But I don't see how I broke them in this case: I didn't publish a private email address. Just a corporate one, which is widely available to anyone with access to Google, and is identical to one that all of the tens of thousands of NBC Universal employees share.

It's no more "private" than the address I'm emailing you from right now.

Either way, quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journliasts who are critical of their Olympic coverage.

"I was in my green room checking on my Twitter," he said. "During the show, someone tweeted something negative about Richie. And I don't have a problem with stuff like this. I get made fun of and called all sorts of name every day. But if someone messes with my friend I have this weird reaction that happens, and I do things that probably are kind of not normal, abnormal. I just become extremely protective.

"I marched onstage, and in between songs with Richie, I grabbed the microphone and I said 'Who is this person's name,' he came up, and I said, 'You're going to have to go off with somebody with the venue and tell them to escort you off for talking shit on Twitter.'"

Firstly, there is the Congress Wants Too Much Information campaign on Twitter. Multiple groups are asking you to tweet your thoughts on CISPA with the hashtags #CongressTMI and #CISPA. U.S. citizens can look up and tag their representatives' Twitter accounts—and you can also include @HouseIntelComm, the authors of the bill. The groups behind the campaign suggest pointing out examples of data that could, but shouldn't, be shared under CISPA, such as:

@Myrepresentative Does the FBI need to know what books I checked out from my local library? #CongressTMI Stop #CISPA

@Myrepresentative Does the military need to know I send my Mom lolcat pictures? #CongressTMI Stop #CISPA

@Myrepresentative Does the NSA need to know I watch Netflix from my work computer? #CongressTMI Stop #CISPA

Now is also the time to directly contact members of Congress by phone or by email. There are tools to make this easier from the ACLU, the EFF and Free Press.

Pressure is also increasing on the companies that back CISPA, especially those in the technology sphere. In addition to contacting Congress, you can send a message to CISPA's private supporters by signing AccessNow's petition to all of them, and Demand Progress' petition directed specifically at Facebook.

CISPA still enjoys a lot of support in Congress, but the growing public backlash means the bill's future is uncertain. With continued effort, Congress can be convinced to back off and work on crafting smarter, more narrowly tailored cybersecurity legislation that protects people's privacy.

Of equal importance is the bigger message this sends to lawmakers. There are many people who still think what happened with SOPA was a fluke, driven by the technology lobby and a few key tech companies. But the growing opposition to CISPA—a bill supported by many of the same tech giants that opposed SOPA—proves that it was something much more significant, and that the online community will not be ignored when it comes to decisions that govern the internet.

Or maybe not:

The morning after French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he will run for a second term, several parodic Twitter accounts have mysteriously been suspended. @_nicolassarkozy , an account created in September 2010 and clearly labeled as a satirical Sarkozy impersonation, was suspended on Feburary 16th.

We don't know at this stage exactly who asked for these four accounts to be removed, only that according to Twitter's rules it must have been done "by Sarkozy, or someone acting on his authority". We asked Twitter about this and it refused to provide specifics on why the accounts were closed or the timing, other than to say that just because the accounts were suspended in the same general time frame, it wasn't necessarily for the same reason.

Be that as it may, the near-simultaneous closure of four accounts all critical of a powerful national politician inevitably reminds us that for many countries, "civilizing" the Internet often comes down to censoring it. It's worrying to see France apparently starting to go down that route -- and for Twitter to be helping it.

Update @_NicolasSarkozy has been unblocked, but the other three are still suspended.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Senators want to stop feeds which boast of insurgent attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan and the casualties they inflict. Aides for Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the move was part of a wider attempt to eliminate violent Islamist extremist propaganda from the internet and social media. The Taliban movement has embraced the social network as part of its propaganda effort and regularly tweets about attacks or posts links to its statements.

Rachel Bremer, a spokesman for Twitter, said: "This isn't something we'd comment on."

Even though the Internet is the newest medium for anonymous, uncomfortable expression touching on political or religious matters, online speech is equally protected under the First Amendment as there is "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied" to online speech.... Indeed "whatever the challenges of applying the Constitution to ever-advancing technology, basic principles of freedom of speech and press, like the First Amendment's command, do not vary when a new and different medium for communication appears."

Mr Franco tweeted: "Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken... We each define the great line."

Other tweets sent included: "The coffee here sucks" and "Court. Day 5. here we go again".

The current law seems to cover everything of substance. The only thing the new provision does that I can see is make it a jailable offense to use the internet in such a way that is neither improper nor interfering. I guess I don’t understand why we would want to jail jurors under such circumstances.

"However you feel about Twitter, it makes a big difference," says Kevin Strickland, owner of Ziggy's Bar & Grill and an avid Twitter user, who runs the account for both of his restaurant's locations. "I depend on it. It allows me to have a dialogue with my customers, and they'll usually get a response from me."

Strickland emphasizes that Twitter should not be used by restaurateurs eager to take a crack back at unruly diners. "I've done the opposite," he points out, referring to times when he's seen patrons Tweet about a bad meal elsewhere, and inviting them in to have a better meal at Ziggy's on him.

"What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out on Twitter. Why should someone be interested in what someone else has had for breakfast? ... It reminds me of a small child (saying): 'Look at me Mummy, I'm doing this', 'Look at me Mummy I'm doing that' ... It's almost as if they're in some kind of identity crisis. In a sense it’s keeping the brain in a sort of time warp."

It seems like every time we think the "what you had for breakfast" hydra is slain, it rears another head. Anyone who still thinks such "banality" defines Twitter is clearly making their assessment based on bitter third-hand descriptions passed around the water cooler or, in this case, the House of Lords. The statement is reminiscent of one she made last year after noting that video games and "fast-paced TV shows" were also a factor:

'We know how small babies need constant reassurance that they exist,' she told the Mail yesterday. 'My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.'

That's what the Baroness really takes issue with: the way modern technology is "rewiring" our brains and altering fundamental cognitive patterns. She's not alone, of course: Techdirt recently covered another set of claims about our "rewired" brains, and the media love these stories.

While it is undoubtedly true that our brains adapt to the way we communicate (use of the word "rewire" is misleading at best), the flaw in all these arguments is the assumption that this is somehow bad or even unusual. The entire history of progress has involved changing emphases on various skills. The Baroness made this point extremely well herself, though she seemed to think she was supporting her own position:

'I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf.'

I think from this we can begin to understand her a little better. In her world, digital communication is a distraction from real life—you know, just like supermarkets. One wonders if she avoids working by electric light and shits out the window, too. And you know what? There may well be a valid psychological or perhaps even neurological argument for humans getting back in touch with their roots—but while I'm sure it's lots of fun to entertain those arguments, most of us don't have that luxury.

Of course, Baroness Greenfield is no stranger to exaggeration. She made headlines last September when, in a stunning display of ironically wrongheaded hyperbole, she compared Stephen Hawking to the Taliban for denying the existence of God (don't bother trying to figure out how that makes sense). Meanwhile, her crusade against the-kids-these-days has been going on for years—in 2006 she signed an open letter to the Telegraph on the subject penned by fellow techno-panicker Sue Palmer, and also decided to examine the issue with an all-party group in the House of Lords. It consisted of herself and "three former education secretaries, Baroness Williams, Baroness Shephard and Baroness Morris"—a roster that would sound more encouraging for a fetish party than for a group dedicated to exploring new technologies.

The Baroness is no doubt a skilled neurophysiologist, but she seems to be drawing bold and broad sociological conclusions based more on instinct than evidence. Worse still, she apparently takes it as granted that any changes are bad, as if the dynamic nature of our identity and our relationship with our environment is not the very essence of being alive. I'm getting philosophical, I know, but perhaps a little fresh philosophy is exactly what Baroness Greenfield needs—she seems to be stuck in the past.

1/100 I've DEFAMED Blu Inc Media & Female Magazine. My tweets on their HR Policies are untrue. I retract those words & hereby apologize

OMG! @FCC Commissioner Baker voted 2 approve Comcast/NBC merger & is now lving FCC for A JOB AT COMCAST?!?

Malory: Please read the Tweet above. Given the fact that Comcast has been a major supporter of Reel Grrls for several years now, I am frankly shocked that your organization is slamming us on Twitter. This is not the first time either. I’ve seen at least one other negative Tweet about Comcast. I cannot in good conscience continue to provide you with funding--especially when there are so many other deserving nonprofits in town.

I respect your position on freedom of the press. However, I hope you can respect that this Tweet has put me in an indefensible position with my bosses. I cannot continue to ask them to approve funding for Reel Grrls, knowing that the digital footprint your organization has created about Comcast is a negative one.

"This morning I was shocked to learn that someone on my team reached out to you to withdraw our funding. I apologize for Steve's email, and assure you that Comcast's funding of Reel Grrls will continue," [Senior VP Len] Rozek wrote. "Comcast has long been a proud sponsor of Reel Grrls and your youth leadership development programs designed to empower young women through media production. Your organization aligns with our company's investment priorities, and your positive impact on the girls and women you serve in Washington is making a real difference here in Washington."

• If you read Brisbane's story alone, you might not realize that many other news organizations had already reported the story before the NY Times did. You might also not realize that it was all over Twitter by the time the NY Times got around to it.
  
• Salmon points out a particularly damning point, in that Brisbane's coverage focuses mostly on the work of reporter Helene Cooper, who apparently heard from a source at 10:34 that Bin Laden had been killed. At 10:40, she got a story up on the NY Times site, and then another NY Times reporter, Jeff Zeleny, tweeted the story. But... that completely ignores the fact that Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff, Keith Urbahn tweeted the news at 10:24, and the only reason so many people found out about that was because it was retweeted at 10:25 by NY Times reporter Brian Stelter who added the details of Urbahn's connection to Rumsfeld, thus adding credibility to the report.
  
  In other words, nine minutes before Cooper had the news, a different NY Times reporter had already tweeted about the news -- albeit unconfirmed. However, as Salmon notes, it really was Stelter's tweet that helped spread the news:

  For a very different look at how the Osama news broke check out SocialFlow’s exhaustive analysis of 14.8 million tweets on Sunday night. As far as Twitter is concerned, the news was broken by Keith Urbahn at 10:24pm. But it really got momentum from being retweeted at 10:25pm by NYT media reporter Brian Stelter, who added the crucial information that Urbahn is Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff. Urbahn, here, gets the goal, but Stelter absolutely gets the assist: Stelter's 55,000 followers are extremely influential people in the US media scene, and until Monday's physical newspaper started landing on subscribers' doorsteps, Stelter's tweets were the single most important thing that the NYT published on Osama

• It gets worse. Remember, Cooper only found out the news at 10:34pm. And yet... at 10:33pm, Stelter (again) tweeted that a CBS News producer had confirmed that Bin Laden was dead, via a House Intelligence Committee aide. Brisbane ignores all of this and Salmon points out how ridiculous this is:

  How come Brisbane is ignoring all this? Stelter was way ahead of the rest of the NYT, but Brisbane incomprehensibly discounts his excellent work. That might be because he doesn't consider tweeting to be part of a NYT reporter's job; it might be because he doesn't consider retweeting to be reporting. But Brian Stelter is a prime example proving that neither is true. Brisbane should have taken this opportunity to congratulate Stelter on a job extremely well done. Instead, he is completely overlooked, in favor of tweets from Zeleny and Roberts which came out more than a quarter of an hour after Stelter had publicly jumped onto the case. Which, of course, is an eternity in the twittersphere.

• Oh yeah, and throughout Brisbane's piece, at no point does he link to the tweets in question. Hell, he refuses to link to any non-NY Times URL.

USSR, August 19 1991: While Mikhaïl Gorbatchev was on holiday in his datcha located in Crimea, Eight apparatchiks attempted to seize power over the state. Hostile to reforms, the “Gang of Eight” tried to prevent the Perestoika reforms and the loss of their satellite states. These eight orthodox Communists launched an attempted coup d’état by installing themselves as The State Committee of the State of Emergency. After Gobatchev returned he tried to restore order and save face, but it was clear that this episode would eventually lead to his downfall.

In this well documented event, there is an interesting historically episode which is often overlooked. During the two days of the coup the Russian media was shut down, and thus not covering Boris Yeltsin ranting on top of a tank for the crowd, nor the shock of the international community. All channels were blacked-out except for one; Usenet, which is the grandfather of chat-rooms and is capable or surviving without the Internet. For these precious 48 hours, a few dozen individuals contributed to this last means of communication with the outside world.

"What was interesting about it," points out O'Brien, "is that all the legal prohibitions were coming from people in the old media. They were saying you can't do all these things, and pretty quickly we realized, 'Wait a minute!' Someone said, 'Does that include Twitter? No. It doesn't include Twitter.' And so I started tweeting."

[...] Just as quickly, O'Brien's team began to hear that NBC was far from happy. "The network isn't crazy about you tweeting. They're not sure that's cool," O'Brien recalls being told. His response was simple: "Tell them I would be thrilled if they shut down my Twitter account. I'd love it if that got out. You think PR's been bad up till now? Wait till you take away my Twitter account."

Team Coco, not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the next day at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."