Freedom of Expression on the Internet

Abstract: The Internet offers extraordinary opportunities for "speakers," broadly defined. Political candidates, cultural critics, corporate gadflies -- anyone who wants to express an opinion about anything -- can make their thoughts available to a world-wide audience far more easily than has ever been possible before. A large and growing group of Internet participants have seized that opportunity. Some observers find the resultant outpouring of speech exhilarating. They see in it nothing less than the revival of democracy and the restoration of community. Other observers find the amount -- and, above all, the kind of speech -- that the Internet has stimulated offensive or frightening. Pornography, hate speech, lurid threats -- these flourish alongside debates over the future of the Democratic Party and exchanges of views concerning fly fishing in Patagonia. This phenomenon has provoked various efforts to limit the kind of speech in which one may engage on the Internet -- or to develop systems to "filter out" the more offensive material. This module examines some of the legal issues implicated by the increasing bitter struggle between the advocates of "free speech" and the advocates of filtration and control.

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