The Web of Hate
Technology has provided our society with numerous innovations that have been created to improve the quality of life on a daily basis. One such innovation is the Internet. The access to a wide variety of information is perhaps the most valuable tool, as well as the most important tool, that we have entering the twenty-first century. There are virtually no limits on how much can be achieved through the use of the Internet. This is not, however, necessarily a good thing. Most people find that offensive material such as child pornography and hate-related propaganda can be viewed by people too easily via the Internet. While child pornography is a detestable subject, it does not have the sort of appeal that a hate group website does in that there are stricter guidelines preventing individuals from attaining child pornography material from the Internet. These stricter guidelines include the Communications Decency Act (1995), which forbids the use of the Internet for such purposes as attaining material of a child pornographic nature (Wolf, 2000). This law can also be used to monitor the hate group websites, but since the law is too broad, it is rarely held up in court. The hate group websites do, however, have a large enough following that there is legislation being formed to specifically target the material on the sites. Despite the highly offensive nature of hate group websites, the sites should not be censored because the right to free speech must be preserved. In this paper we will define what is considered to be hateful content; why this hateful content should be protected; what else can be done to monitor this material on the Internet; and when are the people cr...
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...nt rights in order to completely abolish the views of a entire nation to stop the ignorant views of a much smaller portion of our great democratic nation.
Works Cited
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2. Join, Free Speech, and the Internet at http://www.orins.com/freespe.html
3. Borland, John, Neo-Nazi Group Sued for Online Threats (10/20/98) at http://content.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981020S0010
4. Wolf, Christopher, Racists, Bigots, and Law on the Internet at http://www.adl.org/internet/internet_law3.html
5. Creativity Online Church Sites for a New Era of Evolution. 18 Apr. 2000. World Church of the Creator. 20 at http://www.wcotc.com
6. Schleifer, Yigal. Cyber Hate, The Jerusalem Report May 24, 1999: 37+.
7. Schleifer, Yigal. Taming The Wild Web, The Jerusalem Report Jan. 31, 2000: 36.
The KKK was set up to build an all white society based on Christian beliefs. They claim that
Right now, there are many active hate groups in the United States such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi, Skinheads, Christian identity, Black Separatists, etc. These hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which is one of America’s oldest and more feared, use violence and move above the law to promote their different causes. Another example is a group called Christian Identity, who describes a religion that is fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic; and other are the Black Separatist groups, who are organizations whose ideologies include tenets of racially based hatred. Because of the information gathered by the Intelligence Project from hate groups’ publications, citizen’s reports, law enforcement agencies, field sources and news reports, many people know about these hate groups. Many people know how these groups act and think and most of the American people agree that these hate groups are immoral and should not be allowed to exist neither in the United States nor on the rest of the world.
In this paper we shall present an important case involving the governments attempt to defend a child-protection law designed to guard minors against internet pornography. In Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 00-795, the court heard arguments over the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996 (CPPA).(Ashcroft)
There are over 2,405,518,376 internet users on a global scale. More than 50% of the world have a form of Internet censorship, and of those countries China, North Korea, Iran, and Vietnam heavily restrict its citizens. This recent topic has reached new heights in the US with the growing number of access to internet. More and more people are debating whether the internet should be censored. Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the internet. This would affect everyone and me. I specifically use the internet to read about controversial view and other information that gets ignored by the media or isn’t circulated anymore. Most of these sites would fall in the black list of censoring. A small percentage of users post conspicuous posts, graphic material, and infringing copyright links. Although inappropriate it shouldn’t demand internet censorship, because it goes against the individual rights of the people. Freedom of speech and press will be restricted by the government. To a point where people would be scared to express themselves, or spread information for they might be punished. Even if their opinion is erroneous and maleficent, it’s still that person’s opinion and he’s entitled to it. Same can be said for the common good everyone should be able to voice their opinions without censorship anywhere. Everyone should also have the access to any information on the internet. If anyone is offended by what is said on the internet, then they can remember to not visit the webpage next time and hold themselves accountable. This paper will examine the issue of internet censorship constituting a violation to the American people individual rights, common good, and the constitution.
Tears begin to fall down a child’s face. Her body goes into shock out of fear. Her mother warned her about watching inappropriate content, and there it was, right on her computer screen. This could not have happened though. All she was doing was casually browsing the internet before a pop-up appeared. Although it may seem hard to believe, the major cause of events such as this is the lack of censorship on the internet. Internet censorship relates to the removal of offensive, inappropriate, or controversial content published online. The current problem with the internet is that there are few restrictions on what can be published or viewed. Several sites on the internet only offer a warning about inappropriate content that can easily be bypassed by agreeing to the terms. Other websites provide access to private or military information. More dreadfully, however, are websites that use their explicit content as a promotion. These factors bring the conclusion that anybody of any given age can view and publish inappropriate or dangerous content. The current problems with the internet serve for clarification as to why the United States should create a nonpartisan assembly to censor the internet in order to protect its citizens from the mental, emotional, and physical harms the internet creates.
Since the internet has been available in schools and libraries in this country, there has been a debate about what should be accessible to users, especially minors. The amount of information disseminated on the world wide web is vast, with some sources valuable for scholarly and personal research and entertainment, and some sources that contain material that is objectionable to some (ie. pornography, gambling, hate groups sites, violent materials). Some information potentially accessible on the internet such as child pornography and obscenity is strictly illegal and is not protected under the First Amendment. Some information available on the internet that may be valuable to some is at the same time perceived to be worthless or potentially harmful to some. For libraries serving the public, there has been controversy on the issue of providing the internet, free of censorship or filtering, to users. While some librarians and their professional associations align with ideals of free and unfiltered access to all information provided by the internet, some feel that filtering internet content to exclude possibly objectionable materials is a reasonable measure to prevent potential harm to minors.
A gray area in the free speech of hate groups would be implying physical harm on a group of people without a direct threat. Everyone has the right to hold an opinion and say what they want about each other and feel a certain way about specific groups, but when violence is incited is where the line is drawn. The gray area would be people who praise violence by others but themselves do not incite any violence. This gray area is a concern when it comes to free speech because although a person may not try to hurt anyone the enjoyment they find in violence concerns other citizens (Sorial, Mackenzie, 2).
In order to reduce the astonishing number of hate crimes in the United States, the Federal Government should restrict hate speech, and the expressions of hateful ideas, in all its forms, in all places, both public and private. However, it is imperative that hate speech be defined first. Contrary to some opinions, it is possible to accurately define hate speech, because hate speech does not actually have many elusive forms. Hate speech includes fighting words as defined in Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire, and words that incite violence or aggression towards a specific group based on sex, sexual orientation, race, creed, or political orientation by the provision of information that is not valid against all members of the group. The wording must encourage a violent or physically aggressive action based on false information. For example, if one encourages violence towards those who worship Satan because all those who worship Satan sacrifice humans, he should be prosecuted under a hate speech code, because there is no way to prove that the information is applicable to all those in the group. However, if the same person encouraged political action, he would be perfectly justified, even if the information were still false. The basic reasoning behind hate speech codes is that they will protect people from violence.
McCarthy, M. (2005). THE CONTINUING SAGA OF INTERNET CENSORSHIP: THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT. Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, (2), 83-101.
Banks, James. Regulating Hate Speech Online. (2010) International Review of Law, Computers & Technology. 2Vol. 24, No. 3, November 2010, 233−239
The 90's internet boom gave rise to new ways of writing in through access to cyberspace. What used to be printed or handwritten on physical surfaces such as paper, cardboard, or bulletin boards has changed to 0's and 1's, bits and bytes of digitized information that can be displayed thru the projections of computer screens. Moreover, the internet has made the process of publishing one's works, writing letters, or chatting with one another much easier and convenient for everyone around the globe. The internet became a universal tool, giving much freedom and flexibility to the users; it gave them opportunity to deliver their thoughts with little or no restrictions. Since it's impossible to regulate all cyber-activities, internet users are often unrestricted by the normal laws or authorities that would set boundaries around the various online transactions. More importantly, the fact that a net user can take on different identities in cyberspace brings about several ethical and social issues. These anonymous and unrestrictive characteristics of cyberspace often permite abusive users to easily involve themselves in serious cybercrimes such as cyberstalking, cyber-rape, and cyber-harassment through chatting services, emails, cyber communities, and other online communication.
Free speech on the Internet is a very controversial subject and has been the key problem surrounding the Internet today. The attempt to regulate and govern the Internet is still pursued by government officials. This subject has been intensified due to terrorist attacks against the United States and around world within the past years. The government believes that by regulating the Internet, it will protect the general public from criminal actions and eliminate the exposure of children to pornography or vulgar language. Senator Jim Exon of ...
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