Sarah logan
Kerstin Tuttle
James Banks writes “The exponential growth in the Internet as a means of communication has been emulated by an increase in far-right and extremist web sites and hate based activity in cyberspace. The anonymity and mobility afforded by the Internet has made harassment and expressions of hate effortless in a landscape that is abstract and beyond the realms of traditional law enforcement”(Nair) And I must firmly agree .The internet is a horrible place. Many people think that as soon as you are speaking through a screen you can say whatever you wish. This lease to Insults and in some cases obvious hate speech. But the problem is no one can do anything about it. There are little to no national laws regarding the use of free speech on the internet. The united states must create and enforce laws regarding free speech on the internet.
First we must look at free speech. The Constitution of the United states says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. First Amendment, U.S. Constitution, 1791.”(White) For the use of this paper free speech or freedom of speech shall be defined as the right to speak or use language free of restraint or censorship using this definition we can now work towards defining hate speech. To begin with we should look into what hate speech is in the article Free Speech, Hate Speech, And the Hostile Speech Environment the author writes “R.A. V. V. City of St. Paul concerned a city ordinance banning symbols that aroused anger, alarm, or resentment based on race, color, creed, religion, or gender. Local youths burned a cross on a black family's yard; forgoing an array of available charges such as trespass or vandalism, the city prosecuted the youths under the ordinance. Even though the Minnesota Supreme Court construed the statute to cover only "fighting words,"" the U.S. Supreme Court found the ordinance unconstitutional because it outlawed speech "solely on the basis of the subjects the speech covers." (juahn) the reader can also look to “In doing, the Court enunciated the so-called "clear and present danger" test, contending that "[t]he question .. . is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger . . . ."15 Thus, the clear and present danger test requires more than the possibility of disruption in order for free speech to be curtailed” (Osburne) Using these two quotes we can define hate speech as speech that attacks or harms an individual based on factors such as race ethnicity religion sex or gender, this is not a complete definition however it should work for he proposes of this paper.
At this point the question is why is legislation needed. To begin with first look to any comments section on any website. It is now common knowledge that on sites such as YouTube where users are able to upload content that many users also feel the need or decide to post hateful and harsh comments, while many of the comments do not constute hate speech they enable people who use hate speech on line to have a “safe” environment to post their hateful ideals. In the article Can Students Be Disciplined For Off-Campus Cyberspace?: The Reach Of The First Amendment In The Age Of Technology authors state “administrators are rightfully concerned when students post negative comments about school personnel or peers on the Internet for all to see. Litigation has arisen when school officials have disciplined students for derogatory, defamatory, lewd, and threatening items students have posted about teachers, administrators, and classmates on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. In challenging the disciplinary sanctions imposed on them, students have alleged that punishments, such as suspensions or loss of privileges, amount to unconstitutional censorship and have questioned the rights of administrators to impose discipline for off-campus activities.” By looking at this quote we can see that while intuitions have the right to discipline based on alleged hate speech in matters of law there is a lot of arguing.
Moving on to the concerns of the legislation. When asked about restrictions on freedom of speech people will often argue that it opens the door to mass censorship of whatever the government dislikes, that people have rights and can say literally anything they wish to say regardless of the consequences or that what little restrictions we have are more than enough, this being said these concerns can be carried over to regulation speech on the internet. In addition to this many people bring up concerns of privacy on the internet and that by changing the regulation we would cause problems with privacy. To begin we need to look at each concern on its own. The assumption that the act of regulating any speech would lead to regulating al speech is face. It is akin to saying, if president trump tweets the world will end in nuclear war. This is flce logic relaying on the use of emotion and is not a valid argument. By examining the argument that people have right we can see an integral need to have these legislations. While people have the right to free speech people are also afforded the rich to freedom of religion and nondiscrimination under the law. By arguing that people have rights the opposing side must recognize that people also have rites that should be protected by legislation against hate speech. It is made clear by simply looking at a comments section that the current legislation is simply not enough. Regarding concerns of privacy readers must consider that mean websites consider resatration already and it would not be a large change to simply require the use of registration across the internet. In addition privacy may only be assumed in situations in which you are guaranteed anonymity and there are very few places in the internet that guarantee it.
To conclude stricter legislation on free speech on the internet is vital.
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Juhan, S. Cagle. "Free Speech, Hate Speech, and the Hostile Speech Environment." Virginia Law Review, vol. 98, no. 7, Nov. 2012, pp. 1577-1619. EBSCOhost, login.ezproxy.usd.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db =aph&AN=83517333&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Nair, Abhilash. "Perils of Technology and the Regulatory Dilemma." International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, vol. 24, no. 3, Nov. 2010, pp. 205-207. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/13600869.2010.523610.
Ohm, Paul. "We Couldn’t Kill the Internet If We Tried." Harvard Law Review, vol. 130, no. 2, Dec. 2016, pp. 79-85. EBSCOhost, login.ezproxy.usd.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db =aph&AN=120157315&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Osborne Jr., Allan G. and Charles J. Russo. "Can Students Be Disciplined for Off-Campus Cyberspeech?: The Reach of the First Amendment in the Age of Technology." Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, no. 2, June 2012, pp. 331-367. EBSCOhost, login.ezproxy.usd.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db =aph&AN=79701578&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
White, Mark H. II and Christian S. Crandall. "Freedom of Racist Speech: Ego and Expressive Threats." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 113, no. 3, Sept. 2017, pp. 413-429. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/pspi0000095.
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