Free speech row as US TV channel forces removal of tweets

Starz criticised over Twitter takedown of users' links to news story about pirated shows

A US TV channel has forced Twitter to remove tweets linking to a news story about pirated content - including tweets from free speech campaigners complaining that the social network was removing other people's tweets.

Starz, the network that airs American Gods, The 100 and Knightfall in the US, sent the takedown requests after the copyright and privacy news site TorrentFreak reported on a leak of promotional copies of those TV shows and others. TorrentFreak's story did not contain any links to the pirated material, although it did include four screenshots of the content in order to report the alleged source of the leak.