Should Internet Content be Regulated and Checked by the Government? Free Essay Example

Freedom of speech has been recognised as one of the fundamental human rights for almost a hundred years now around the world, and has been inspired by the American first amendment, which has been around since 1791. The freedom of speech right is stated by article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Right, and it states that “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” and ‘everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression”.

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Freedom of expression allows us to share new ideas, which allowed new discoveries to be shared and not be ridiculed, for example Nicolaus Copernicus at first when challenging the commonly believed idea that the Sun is revolving around the Earth was laughed at and ridiculed by other scientists, however, after over a century, his theory was accepted and commonly received as the truth.

This is a clear example of why freedom of expression is important, as if it wasn’t for that, we still might’ve not known about it.

It is however important that freedom of speech doesn’t defend act of hate speech, which isn’t always clear to distinguish one from another. Example of this would be a $107.9 million fine against anti-abortionist for publishing a list of abortion doctors on a website. There wasn’t any call to action, however, the intentions to incite violence against the doctors were clear, and some of the doctors actually were unable to live free from fear.

After this fine, anti-abortionists won a right in court to publish a ‘hit list” of abortion doctors and the amounts of abortions done by them, as well as their addresses, emails and phone numbers.

Even though there wasn’t a direct call to action, it had an effect of 7 doctors published on the site being murdered in a span of 10 years, and their exact death dates and weapons used to execute them were published on the site before even the police knew all the details, which leads to a clear conclusion that the killers have been cooperating with the creator, or that at least he’s known about them. The website was called the Nuremberg files, and has been created in 1997, then shut down in 2002 and re-opened a few times, after being shut down for good.

In every argument there always is an extreme case, and here are two completely opposite examples, one, which helped to speed up the humanity further understanding of the universe by possibly centuries, and one, because of which 7 innocent people have died. These two extremely rare cases allow us to determine a clear line between doxing and harassment, between actual freedom of expression. Judge Alex Kozinski has said ‘Political speech may not be pushed just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future by an unrelated third party”, which is very true and I agree with, however, an act of doxing has been committed with a clear purpose, of the doctors being harmed.

Although governments don’t control what can or can’t be said on websites such as Facebook, they can still overview and possibly charge you for things you say, do or buy online. After the death of Ann Maguire, who was stabbed to death by a pupil in Leeds, a 21-year-old man, Jake Newsome, from the same city, has posted on his Facebook page: ‘Personally i’m glad that teacher got stabbed up, feel sorry for the kid he shoulda pissed on her too”. Shortly after the post has been shared over 2000 times, police have arrested and jailed Jake Newsome for 6 weeks under the 2003 Communications Act with having sent ‘by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature”.

People argue that stating this unharmful opinion online is breaking our right to free speech, as anything else being said, even mildly offensive, could be interpreted just as this post has been, and we could be jailed for having banter with friends. This isn’t the case because law like this cannot be specified perfectly, and that’s why we’ve got people, judges, reviewing these cases and not having the machines deciding whether something is offensive or not. A former bus driver has been sent to prison in regards to the same case of Ann Maguire’s death. He’s tweeted that he also would’ve killed her colleagues as well, which is a clear call to action.

There was many tries to regulate the internet, first being tried by President Clinton, with a Communications Decency Act in 1997, whose idea was to limit or maybe even ban the distribution of pornographic materials in the web, has met with a wide disapproval among citizens, which led to protests not only on the streets, but also, the internet, and this is exactly why we need freedom of expression. Such thing would never happen in China or other communist country, where there isn’t any freedom of speech/expression, people wouldn’t be able to disagree or protest against ideas they don’t like, and with internet, all these things are easier, from organising them, to actually executing them over the internet with no need of going outside your house. This is called ‘internet activism”, where any form of communication; social media, e-mail, podcasts and videos are used to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences as well as coordination.

One of the biggest platforms today, Tik Tok, has been increasingly used for spreading social issues through creative, short videos. For example, a make-up tutorial with a subtle call to action on China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs, went viral and rose the awareness on the issue. We are mostly anonymous on the internet, meaning that unless we do, or plan on doing something really bad, like a terrorist attack, and are not careful enough, it’s not too hard for the government to track us down. Being anonymous allows people to express their opinions regardless if someone will find it offensive, or wether is actually hate speech. Racism is commonly found on the internet, there is not doubt, but for the government to track down every person being racist, committing an act of hate speech, it’s just impossible with the internet we now know.

Chinese internet is easily regulated by the government as for every user, there is an actual number they have registered with, associated with their real name, address and phone number, and the Chinese system could maybe even actually work, however, they’r ealso censor the information in the internet. In my opinion, this is the only possible way to actually kill hate speech in the internet, and even though the actual, surface web could possibly be 99.9% free of any hate speech, there still is the deep and dark web, which, even by China, isn’t regulated, as it’s nearly impossible. Luckily, the deep and especially dark web isn’t accessible by standard users of the internet.