Should hate speech be banned from the Internet, or are the dangers of political censorship too great? How far should prohibitions
WK6 Discussion Answer stated Question 250 words. Respond to 2 Classmates 250 words each
Stated Question: Should hate speech be banned from the Internet, or are the dangers of political censorship too great? How far should prohibitions on sexual representations of minors be extended? Are the concerns about internet stalking and pedophilia mere moral panics and unwarranted over-reaction to a marginal crime problem?
Classmate 1 Brent:The problem with ‘hate speech’ is that it is so hard to define. You only have to look at American politics for the last four years to see that in action. A former President is being impeached for sedition for saying to ‘Peacefully and patriotically march to the Capital’ (Giella. 2021) while sitting Senators have said when you see a cabinet member in public you ‘Get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.’ (Ehlich. 2018). This shows that hate speech is in the eye of the beholder and apparently whoever is in charge at the time. This is a slippery slope that gets very steep very quickly.
Pornography falls under the same general vein as hate speech in that consenting adults are doing what they want to while other consenting adults watch in one way or the other. There is a moral complaint against pornography, but that is not something that any person has the right to impose upon any other person. The First Amendment is very clear on that.
While I believe that pornography is protected speech, I also believe that it should be kept from children. Sex and violence are very closely linked in our brains, and just as the exposure to violence can cause lasting harm to a child, so can exposure to sexuality (Fields. 2016). This also encompasses child exploitation and pedophilia. These are crimes due to the fact that the children involved are not old enough to consent and they ‘shock the conscience’ of society. It is interesting to note that a movie like ‘Cuties’ on Netflix would have resulted in several arrests for child exploitation only 10 years ago. This could be argued as using the 1st Amendment to make child exploitation more palatable to mainstream society and negate the shock to the conscience of that sort of behavior.
Bart
Cuties. Directed by Miamouna Doucoure. Written by Miamouna Doucoure. Netflix Studios.
Ehlich, J. 2018. Maxine Waters encourages supporters to harass Trump administration officials.https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25/politics/maxine-waters-trump-officials/index.html
Fields, R. 2016. The Explosive Mix of Sex and Violence. Psychology Today.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-br…
Giella, L. 2021 Fact Check: Did Trump Say to ‘Peacefully and Patriotically’ March to the Capitol? https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-trump-say-peacefully-patriotically-march-capitol-1561718
Classmate 2 Sesan: Cybercriminals are spreading their influence as fast as the Internet is developing. Since people do not see or know them, they inadvertently trust cybercriminals, thus giving them their strength; hence, no one is immune. Whether via the manipulation of opinion, spying, identity theft, terrorism, harassment, swindles, financial fraud or various types of crimes, cybercrime touches all the sphere of our society and cause great harm. Through the use of various services offered by the internet, users are vulnerable to criminal threat and can become a victim or an unwilling author of a crime. Cybercrime has become a reality of contemporary life, which has had consequences for people, organizations and states, but within a very few years, cybercrime has really grown into a veritable plague on our society. This plague is expressed in many forms, which are discussed as follows within the requirements of this discussion:
Hate speech can take different forms, but in general targets individuals or groups on racial, ethnic, religious, gender or sexual grounds, or based on other characteristics such as physical or mental disabilities. Online hate speech often takes the form of websites and associated chat rooms and bulletin boards established by different organized groups (for instance, far right, ultra-nationalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, extreme Christian fundamentalists, anti-abortion). Most often these websites are designed to target young people and do not hesitate to use video games to propagate hate speech, incite or urge the elimination of Black, Jewish or Arab people. The Web provides the extremists with an efficient and cost-effective means of communication for reaching a potentially global audience. Acting remotely and in anonymity reduces the risk of identification and prevents the perpetrators from being prosecuted under national anti-hate speech laws. The dissemination of racist and xenophobic material through computer systems, racial and xenophobically motivated threats, racial and xenophobically motivated insults, denialism, gross minimization, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity, and aiding and abetting are criminalized in the Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime (Ghernaouti-Helie, 2013).
The Internet makes it possible for virtual communities to form around practices that are subject to legal sanction. This may involve pornography, pedophilia, or so-called snuff movies. This type of crime is commonly linked to human trafficking, which most often involves women and children. Films and photos can be shared with little risk of police detection. As the relevant servers are frequently located in countries where law enforcement is absent or ineffectual, and with the use of private Internet relay chat services for very limited periods of time, peer-to peer exchanges greatly increase the unencumbered action of criminals.
Pornography is a term used for adults engaging in consensual sexual acts mostly distributed legally to the general public for their sexual pleasure. However, child abuse images should not be conflicted with adult pornography because child abuse usually involves children who would not and cannot consent to a sexual act, and are simply victims of such, a crime. Suffice it to say that, this represents juvenile pornography, which is the exploitation of children online, the seduction of a child through the Internet, or the possession of movies, pictures or documents that show the aggression or sexual exploitation of a child are all thoroughly illegal. Crimes against children are facilitated by the Internet, the increased use of which in recent years has led to a huge rise in offending. Not only can offenders distribute and access child abuse material more easily, but they can also come into direct contact with children through chat-rooms and social networking sites. Child abusing criminals can profit by the non-existence of laws or the variation of legal age for sexual activities to store child pornography on servers in countries that do not have relevant laws or in states where the age of sexual activities is considered irrelevant to crime. The internet is a means for cybercriminals to produce and distribute pornography especially as it relates to child abuses. Pedophiles may use the Internet to contact children in order to subject them to sexual abuse. Crimes specifically against minors include the dissemination of pornographic messages that may be seen by minors (Ghernaouti-Helie, 2013).
In the same vein, Cyberstalking is the use of information and communication technologies (internet, telephony, etc.) for the purposes of stalking, resulting in online harassment or abuse. Here, internet serves as medium for cybercriminals to distribute harmful emails harassing, threatening or defaming people. Internet users can even now find online malicious sites that purport to provide contract murder planning. The Internet is also used to harass and intimidate people as a new modus operandi for the traditional offence of stalking. For instance, unwanted communications that may contain abuse or threatening or inappropriate words or images, directed by individuals at specific targeted persons to do persistent harassment, are considered as cyberstalking. Another form of cyber-harassment refers to the use of a perceived or real position of power or authority to attempt to annoy, frighten, or hurt a person, or to make somebody do something they are unwilling to do, through, for example, e-mail, instant messaging, text messages, websites, blogs, or mobile phones. An instance of this could be the decision of an employee to impact a corporation by sending harmful emails in order to damage the firm’s reputation. The content of the emails could be deliberately obscene, vulgar, abusive, intimidating, humiliating, and defamatory in nature.
References
Ghernaouti-Helie, S. (2013). Cyber Power: Crime, Conflict and Security in Cyberspace (1st ed.). EPFL Press, NY. DOI: https://doi-org.ezproxy1.apus.edu/10.1201/b15441
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