1 ' Free ' absolutely means 'free from any sorts constraints or controls. The context determines its different denotations, if any, as in 'free press', 'fee speech', 'free stuff' etc.
I checked Garner's Modern American Usage; although BG doesn't address free of vs. free from, he writes that the distinction between freedom of and freedom from is that the former indicates the "possession of a right" (freedom of speech) and the latter "protection from a wrong" (freedom from oppression). So free from is used to indicate protection from something problematic, and free of (which ...