It’s a long-standing belief here at The Verge that copyright law is the only real law on the internet, because it’s the only speech regulation most people on most platforms will accept. (At least in the United States.)

Post something that blatantly infringes someone else’s copyright, and most platforms will spring into action to take it down, because they are protected from liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if they take action in a reasonable amount of time upon request. And the way the DMCA influences user behavior on platforms is really well-known: we have been writing about “no copyright intended” for over a decade now. There are lots of and lots of people out there who know how it works.

Anyway, Elon Musk isn’t...

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