Chapter 6 Issue Project
Free speech on the Internet is an important topic.
What is legal in one country may not be legal in another, so there might be some questions about what country has jurisdiction over a particular website.
Generally, it is up to the country where the site is hosted, however there has been cases where the US has arrested people who host websites that are legal in the country in which they are hosted, but illegal in US. There was one case where a person who ran an online gambling website based in Europe (where it is legal) was arrested during a layover in the US (the person was flying through the US, between Europe and somewhere in the Caribbean I think). Clearly, in that instance, the actions of the US law enforcement were questionable at best. I cannot really understand how law enforcement could believe that the person they arrested committed any crimes – considering that what they did (hosting the website) was legal in the country in which it was done.
I think any government censorship of the web is very dangerous and it risks making America a totalitarian regime like China or Myanmar/Burma, that restricts the dissemination of information in order to stay in complete control of their population and, in affect, “brainwash” them. On a side note, I read an interesting article on some of the ways that the Chinese government communicates with news websites about what they are allowed to post. Its available here. The definition of “hate speech” is something that is invariably going to be different from person to person. Additionally, I feel that people have the right of freedom of speech. Even if what they are saying is outrageous and offensive, I feel that they have the right to say it. The only potential exception I could see in that area would be something that realistically encourages people to harm others. And that could be kind of vague too. In that particular case, however, I think the crime of actually harming other people is much more significant that simply posting an article or something that encourages others to do so. While I am not against taking legal action against those who encourage violence against others, I do not think that governments should block their websites or anything – just potentially arrest/charge the people who posted the opinions.
In the case of pornography (other than child pornography which obviously is illegal and the people posting/distributing it should be prosecuted), I see no reason why the government should be censoring it. It is not their job to play “moral police” regardless of what some people may think. In fact the New York Court of Appeals recently ruled against a law that would require sites to keep incredible amounts of detailed paperwork on those who are in the videos, apparently because of the first amendment.
I think that parents do probably have the right to monitor the usage of their children, however I’m not sure if that is actually beneficial to the child. They are obviously going to have to take responsibility themselves one day, and parents who “protect” their children too much might be hurting their child by not exposing them to the real world.
