Showing posts with label hate speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hate speech. Show all posts

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Regulating Hate Speech in Cyberspace: Issues of Desirability and Efficacy

Cyber-libertarians believe that cyberspace must support unlimited free speech and no regulation on internet content. Despite this idea, nations are making obligatory individual regimes of content regulation. It is impossible to obtain universal agreement on Internet content regulation. There is a wide disagreement about how freedom of speech applies to the Internet. Nations such as Germany and France have considered both criminal and civil penalties for hate speech on the Internet. However, they face with difficulties, especially when the defendants are not nationals, and when the content originates from foreign jurisdictions. The Council of Europe has recently moved to include an additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime. This Protocol would cover offences of racist or xenophobic propaganda, making them subject to reciprocal enforcement provisions by Member States. Although the piecemeal approaches may lead to failure, the international efforts have more chance of the success.
source: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713670470
image: hate speech cartoon by David Fitzsimmons

Monday, June 7, 2010

Hate speech

Any communication that is intended to humiliate any person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race or sexual orientation is hate speech. In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is banned. The reason to ban hate speech is to prevent the violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group.
The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, or other characteristic. In some countries have considered criminal or civil penalties or both for hate speech.
A website that uses hate speech is called a hate site. Most of these sites contain Internet forums and news briefs that emphasize a particular viewpoint. You could find common characteristics of hate sites in following link: