Welp, somebody had to do it, and who better than the boys over at The Bee?
A little refresher on what we're talking about here:
Newsom defended the state's new laws, saying they focus on AI-generated content that could ‘undermine the public's trust through disinformation.' But buried in one of the new laws is a requirement for satire and parody content to either be clearly labeled or removed.
The Babylon Bee has its office in California, and here was their initial response to the new law:
And here, a few weeks later, is their legal response:
The Babylon Bee filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Monday after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of 'deepfake' laws that target outlets that publish satire and parody.
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The complaint explains that one of California's new laws will require social media platforms to become 'state snitches' and force them 'to field reports about user posts with 'materially deceptive content' and then remove or label them.'
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The Bee's suit against California is joined by California attorney Kelly Chang Rickert and was filed with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, whose president, Kristen Waggoner, warned that the leftist state's new laws 'target core political speech.'
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The lawsuit is filed against California Attorney General Rob Bonta, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, and Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Soto.
A few words from Bee CEO Seth Dillon (who is also an owner of Not the Bee):
Babylon Bee's content requires that we engage in this satire where we're adopting a voice and a viewpoint and using that to mock and ridicule a subject, and this law in particular ... effects [sic] content creators, specifically satirists and people doing parody, by requiring them to put disclaimers to let you know that this is parody that you're reading right now - which completely stifles and kills the joke. It disrupts our ability to do what we do the way that we do it, in the voice that we do it in. And so that's very problematic for us.
If we're unable to publish satire without putting disclaimers all over it, and we're going to face potential penalties if we don't do that, then that's a very serious issue too, so we're fighting back in every way that we can against laws that clamp down on speech.
Cheers to Seth and The Bee for standing up to California's clown world. ✊
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