In reply to Paul Lawley-Jones.

@KTS915 Sorry, I wasn't trying to debate -- I am genuinely curious.

About the "horizontal effect" of the HRA and how it has been applied, I understand how it allows a private entity to bring a suit against another if a court decides the defendant should be regulated as a public entity in that particular case. To me this seems like it ends up working the same way as it would in the US. The important public/private distinction I was referring to has nothing to do with this; I was just noting that a case that has been tried this way in the UK was decided in favor of not allowing an employer to restrict an employee's speech since the speech was private, not public speech. A similar case also involving Facebook went the other way in the US by applying the same principle the same way.

I can see how it might be an American tic to use "censorship" to describe almost any kind of speech restriction because we focus on the thought "someone is restricting me!" But even with the British focus on the speaker, why would you not use the word in roughly the same way in common speech? Is "censor" seen as a very precise term even in a colloquial context -- an absolute restriction on speech and not to be used casually to describe lesser limitations on speech?

I just got am email from a prominent blogger and transportation activist who is describing an attempt to strip his state civil engineering license because his advocacy amounts to "professional misconduct." He describes this as "clearly an attempt by an industry insider to silence me and discredit our movement." This may be typical American hyperbole that has nothing to do with actual censorship or defamation under the law, but wouldn't Americans and Brits agree, at bottom, that there is a censorious intention at work, legal as it may be, whether you agree with it or not?