3.2 Controlling Offensive Speech

1. 3.2 Controlling Offensive Speech What is it? Is it illegal?

2. What is offensive speech? What should the law prohibit or restrict on the web? The answer depends on who you are. It could be political or religious speech, pornography, racial or sexual slurs, Nazi materials, depictions of violence, etc.

4. Many efforts to censor the Internet in the U.S. focus on pornographic or sexually explicit material, so pornography becomes the first example. The National research Council estimated that there are roughly 400,000 subscription Web sites providing adult entertainment.

5. What was already illegal? • There is a three-part guideline for determining whether material is obscene or not: • It depicts sexual (or excretory) acts whose depiction is specifically prohibited by state law. • It depicts these acts in a patently offensive manner • It has no serious literary, artistic, social, political, or scientific value. In another note, child pornography laws prohibit using, abusing, and exploiting children, not portraying them (crime reports or crime fiction describing a rape of a child, for example, would not generally be illegal).

6. Internet Censorship Laws and Alternatives The Communications Decency Act

7. The Communications Decency Act • One of the biggest problems on the internet is “Cyberporn”. • In one click, kids can encounter pornographic sites as be recruited into sexually illicit relationships. • To prevent this many organizations began a campaign to pass federal legislations to censor the internet.

8. Internet Censorship Laws and Alternatives How technology created new threats to children

9. How technology created new threats to children • Now in day, internet is used as a form to discuss sexual activity and promote racism and violence. • Every computer with an access to internet is invaded with pornographic material. • One of the problems is that the site can’t visualize if the customer is a child or an adult.

10. Internet Censorship Laws and Alternatives Why the CDA is unconstitutional

11. Why the CDA is unconstitutional • Many organizations protested freedom of expression on internet and the CDA was to vague. • It is difficult to design a law that keeps inappropriate material from children while allowing it to adults. • They concluded that filters software will protect children and free expression.

12. Internet Censorship Laws and Alternatives The Quality of Filters

13. The Quality of Filters • Software filters can work in different ways: • They can block sites with specific words and phrases. • Block sites according to the rating system. • Specific site. • Filters were not perfect. Filters depends on the subjective of the person. Filters can block educational or health sites as well they can’t block offensive sites.

14. Internet Censorship Laws and Alternatives Alternatives to censorship

15. Alternatives to censorship • As the government can’t censor the internet because of freedom of expression, many companies developed rules so that any person who break them will be expelled. • The video game industry developed a rating system so that sites can choose what games will be published. • Web sites provide information to prevent children view inappropriate material. • A good communication about inappropriate material and how to deal with it is a good example.

16. SPAM

17. What is the problem? Spam angers people because both the content and the way it is sent Spam has infuriated users of the internet since the mid-1990s. It invaded cell phones and Instant Messaging in the early 2000s. Some businesses and organizations buy huge lists of e-mail addresses and send their unsolicited messages Most, but not all, spam is commercial advertising. It developed because e-mail is extremely cheap compared to printed direct e-mail advertising.

18. Pornography Content can be Commercial advertising Political advertising Solicitations for founds from nonprofit organizations

19. Solutions for markets, technology, and business policy Businesses and programmers created a variety of filtering products to screen out spam at the recipient’s site By blocking e-mail from specified addresses, by blocking messages with particular words, and by some more sophisticated methods

20. Antispam Laws! It targets commercial spam and covers labeling of advertising messages (for easier filtering) The federal CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited pornography and Marketing Act) went into effect in 2004 Commercial messages must include valid mail header information, a valid return e-mail address, and a valid physical postal address, and subject lines are prohibited

21. Many businesses supported CAN-SPAM. The law has been helpful in reducing problem spam. Spam continues to be a major annoyance… A wide variety of antispam tools are available to individuals and online service providers Spammers continually find new ways around spam blockers, for example hiding messages in images files (that text scanners cannot scan for spam keywords). Eventually new defenses develop…

22. Because antispam laws must avoid conflicts with freedom of speech, and because the most abusive spammers ignoere laws, these laws can reduce spam but are not likely to eliminate the problem

23. 3.2.4 Challenging Old Regulatory Structures and Special Interests

24. The web challenges special interests by providing new options. Most of the cases have free-speech implications. • Several involve regulatory laws that restrict advertising and sales on the Web. • Such regulations have some noble purposes, but they also have the effect of entrenching large, establiched businesses, making it more difficult for small ones.

25. Investment Newsletters • In 1997, publishers of online newsletters and Web sites about commodities and futures investments discovered they were violating 25-year-old regulations requiring government licenses. • In 2000 the CFTC revised its rules to exempt newsletters publishers, software developers, and Web site operators from the licensing requirements. • This case led to termination of a long-standing unconstitutional restraint of free speech in traditional media.

26. Wines sales • Thirty states in the US had laws restricting the shipping of out-of state wines directly to consumers. • Government protected large wholesaling businesses, as well as, the state revenue. • In 2005, the Supreme Court rules that bans on out-of-state shipments directly to consumers were anticonstitutional.

27. Selling a home • In 2004, a federal court ruled that California's real state licensing law violated the First Amendment rights of Web site operators on other states who list California homes for sale. • The government of California had attempted to require that operators of Web sites get real estate licenses in California. • These licenses requirements are irrelevant and expensive for such sites.

28. Posting and selling sensitive material: Ethics and social concerns.

29. Sensitivematerial • Publication and distribution of material, that include: legal “adult” entretaiment, nazi materials, vicious attacks by bloggers, how to make bombs, terrorists, etc.

30. Large companies • Yahoo!: • sells legally adult material (erotica, sex videos, etc.) • Easy access to pornography. “With a parental protection”. • People critics Yahoo, and wanted to censorship this kind of information. But that was an unprincipled censorship, because they have “free speech”.

31. Large companies • Wall-Mart and Best Buy: • courts create a policy to prohibited the sell to violental, sex or nudity material to young people. • Also, they are prohibited to have hate material, bomb-making information, and other unpleasant or risky material.

32. What with web companies? • If Adult people want to read or purchase “adult” material, the web page that sell that kind of stuff has an ethical-social problem? • The goverment does not decide what material we can or can’t read or view. • It is a “legal” Business. • They “have” an 18+ Policy. • A lot of sensitive material apear in The search results.

33. Small web sites and individuals • Individuals should exercise responsibility and discretion when posting personal or any information on web pages. • Suppose someone posts a false profile for a friend as a joke. A small group of friends might have a big laugh. But they don’t know that the false information migth be copied, e-mailed, and reposted elsewhere. And imagine, the grandmother or the boss of that person see that unpleasant information, what potentialdamage could it do?

34. To Summarize • Here are few guidelines for making decisions about posting sensitive material: • Consider unintended readers or users. • Consider potential risks. • Consider ways to limit access to intended users. • Remember that it can be difficult to remove material from the Net once you have posted it.