Dave Winer:

BTW, this brings us around to the EFF, which now claims to be supporting the interests of bloggers. Well they miss this one very basic point. We're inevitably headed for a faceoff with Google, just like the one with the book publishing industry. I think it's pretty clear that the EFF will be defending Google, not us.

If that made a smidgen more sense, I'd call it incoherent. Never mind Google and the book publishing industry (although, I tend to think that's part of the same disintermediation that's happening with music downloads) - what exactly can Google do to bloggers? I suppose they could remove a blog from their search index for reasons A, B, and C but - there's no legal problem with them doing that.

Here in the US, a lot of people get confused about the first amendment. It guarantees that the government will not censor you. It says nothing about your friends, your associates, your employer (etc). Unless you get to the level of defamation or libel (or physical threats), any non-governmental entity can try to censor you as much as it likes.

Go ahead, start wandering around the halls at work yelling "The CEO is a (insert insult here)". See how much free speech you have :)

Update: Time for the tinfoil hat.