Regulating hate speech online

Abstract

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. This paper examines the complexities of regulating hate speech on the Internet through legal and technological frameworks. It explores the limitations of unilateral national content legislation and the difficulties inherent in multilateral efforts to regulate the Internet. The paper develops to consider how technological innovations can restrict the harm caused by hate speech while states seek to find common ground upon which to harmonise their approach to regulation. Further, it argues that a broad coalition of government, business and citizenry is likely to be most effective in reducing the harm caused by hate speech.

Keywords:

• hate speech
• Internet
• First Amendment
• Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime

Notes

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Harris et al. suggest that each country's hate speech laws are rooted in historical and philosophical and constitutional traditions in relation to freedom of expression. C. Harris, J. Rowbotham and K. Stevenson, ‘Truth, Law and Hate in the Virtual Marketplace of Ideas: Perspectives on the Regulation of Internet Content’, Information and Communications Technology and Law 18, no. 2 (2009): 155–84.

La Ligue Contre La Racisme et L'Antisemitisme (LICRA) and Union Des Etudiants Juifs De France (UEJF) v. Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! France. English translation available at http://www.juriscom.net/txt/jurisfr/cti/yauctions20000522.htm (accessed 5 February 2010).

Ibid.

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Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L'Antisemitisme, 169 F. Supp. 2d at 1192 (“The extent to which the United States, or any state, honours the judicial decrees of foreign nations is a matter of choice, governed by ‘the comity of nations’” (quoting Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U.S. 113, 163 [1895]).

J.E. Kapplan, M.P. Moss, M.L. Lieberman and S. Wessler, Investigating Hate Crimes on the Internet (Washington, DC: Partners Against Hate, 2003).

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