Free speech on the internet

In my 14 effective days of internship so far in a large law firm, i.e. at the 2/3rds of the internship, I have mainly worked on one single, important case involving freedom of speech on the internet. Though there were times during my research when I felt despair for lack of tangible results (basically, few people seem to tackle the subject in a manner of interest to us in the case), the subject was truly interesting, and the occasional golden find encouraged me to keep going.

This research, mainly focussed on internet liability (legal responsibility, for non-lawyers), was a true eye-opener, because I had never thought of the internet from that angle: how free is speech on the internet?

Filtering

If you want truly free speech on the internet, then you have to allow hate speech, (child) pornography, instructions on how to make bombs, …

For reasons linked to history and culture, some countries have decided to place “filters” and thus block access to some of this content. The most well-known example is China, with its “Great Firewall”, but some in Western Europe have done the same in a more limited way: in France, for example, Yahoo! was ordered by a court to block access by French users to auction pages for Nazi-related goods, and in the UK, CleanFeed is a mechanism whereby Internet Service Providers (ISPs) block access to child abuse material.

Now, I am a great believer in free speech.
For example, I am fully opposed to certain laws on hate speech, even more so those on negationism: if you feel like saying something, go ahead. If people can’t deal with it, too bad for them (dealing with this stuff is part of growing up, I’ve been told). If people are offended, they also can exercise their right to free speech and respond.
As it stands, for example, I could start saying that the Rwandan genocide never took place (note: I know that it did take place). Many would take offence, but it’s not a crime. Why should Holocaust deniers be punished, if people denying other horrors are not? The obvious response to such speech should not be punishment, but rather a display of evidence showing that the events did take place. And if the people aren’t convinced at that point, too bad.
[Note: I do have a problem with free speech in schools, because few question what a teacher tells them is a fact - as such, the teaching of creationism and the refuting of evolution in a classroom of 10 children is, in my opinion, worse than denying the Holocaust in a hall of 2000 adults]

As you can guess, I am therefore even more opposed to filtering. Indeed, filtering takes place before the information is even made public. It’s ex ante censorship (“prior censorship”, for non-Latinists), preventing you from becoming aware that the information exists.
The internet has quickly become the greatest medium of expressing ideas, and by installing a filter, one completely hinders free speech.

Moreover, an interesting thing about filters is that they don’t work. There have been many studies on the subject (if interested in references, do say so), and three observations recur in them:

• Filters (both automatic and manual) let through some content that they should block
• Filters block some content that they shouldn’t
• Filters can be bypassed

By the way, my research was done on a computer connected to a server on which there was a filter. My research led me to a number of links that I wasn’t allowed to access, because the filter considered them dangerous, when in truth they either discussed ways to bypass filters or published studies on the ineffectiveness of filters (I know that from visiting the websites at home).

Liability for web content

The second major aspect of my research did not concern filters, but rather another aspect of free speech: the liability for content on the internet.

Say you publish content on the internet, for example by writing a post on a webboard. If the content is illegal (hate speech in certain European countries, child pornography, …), anyone may bring an action against you for this content if it is your content.
Can they bring an action against an intermediary, such as the website owner, ISP, …? This is generally not the case, most fortunately, because otherwise intermediaries would be liable for content whose existence was unknown to them (this is an overly simplified answer, to avoid going into too much detail).

To cut a long story short, I would most probably be liable for content published by other users on this part of the website, because the few comments do not require a lot of effort to read. I can therefore edit comments I find offensive (so far, there haven’t been any).
Still, don’t test the system.

The link with free speech is pretty obvious: laws on illegal or offensive content have a direct impact on the freedom given by intermediaries to users, because intermediaries will tend to prefer censorship over liability (as shown in many cases brought before the courts – pretty normal, I would say).

“Conclusion”

As you can see, the internet is not so much of an ideal place for free speech nowadays. It’s still the greatest medium for speech, but there is no absolute free speech here.
Nonetheless, I hope to contribute to changing that in the future.

Other posts:

« Are we all “Big Brother”?

Droïdes launched! »

Tags: Internet

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 at 16:37 and is filed under Computing, Internet, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.