Chapter 3:
Speech in Cyberspace
1. Communication Paradigms
2. Speech In the Cyberspace
3. Posting, Selling, Leaking Sensitive Materials
4. Anonymity
5. Net Neutrality Regulations or the Market?
3.1 Communication Paradigms
Internet Speech Principles
It can be written for offensive and/or controversial speech and ideas
Moreover, speech covers spoken and written words, pictures, art, and other
forms of expression of ideas and opinions
Speech can be limited for the following examples:
Publishers do not have to publish material they consider offensive, poorly
written, or unlikely to appeal to their customers for any reason.
Rejection or editing by a publisher is not a violation of the writer’s First
Amendment rights. Web sites, search engine companies, and magazines
may decline specific advertisements if they so choose. That does not violate
the advertiser’s freedom of speech.
Corresponding page number: 137-138
3.1 Communication Paradigms
• Protection and government regulation in KSA
• Governments place regulation to govern all types of media
• In Saudi Arabia, there is the General Commission For
Audiovisual Media
• The aim of the system is to regulate audiovisual media
activity within the Kingdom, to develop it, to provide an
appropriate investment environment for it, and to ensure
that its content is consistent with the Kingdom's media
policy.
• Link: [Link]
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Communication Paradigms
Communications Decency Act of 1996
First major Internet censorship law
Corresponding page number: 137
Controlling Speech
Offensive speech: What is it? What is illegal?
Answers depend on who you are.
Most efforts to censor the Internet focus on pornographic and
other sexually explicit material
Corresponding page number: 139
Controlling Speech
Internet Censorship Laws & Alternatives
Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA)
More limited than CDA
Federal crime for commercial Web sites to make
available to minors material “harmful to minors”
as judged by community standards
Corresponding page number: 142
Controlling Speech
Internet Censorship Laws & Alternatives
Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 (CIPA)
Requires schools and libraries that participate in certain
federal programs to install filtering software
Corresponding page number: 142-143
3.2 Speech in Cyberspace
Video Games
A California law banned sale or rental of
violent video games to minors but in 2011, it
ruled out.
What are the regulations of video games in
Saudi Arabia?
Corresponding page number: 143-144
3.2 Speech in Cyberspace
Alternatives to censorship
Filters
Blocks sites with specific words, phrases or images
Parental control for violence
Updated frequently but may still screen out too much or too
little
Not possible to eliminate all errors
Corresponding page number: 145
3.2 Speech in Cyberspace
Alternatives to censorship
Policies
Commercial services, online communities, and social
networking sites develop policies to protect members.
Video game industry developed rating system that
provides an indication for parents.
Corresponding page number: 145
3.2 Speech in Cyberspace
• Spam
• Defined as the “unsolicited bulk email” (Baase, 2012).
• Now applies to text messages, tweets, and phone calls as
well.
• Spam has infuriated users of the Internet since the 1990s.
Most, but not all, spam is commercial advertising.
• Some businesses and organizations compile or buy huge lists
of email addresses and send their unsolicited messages.
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3.2 Speech in Cyberspace
Spam
What’s the problem?
Loosely described as unsolicited bulk email
Mostly commercial advertisement
Angers people because of content and the way
it’s sent
Should they be banned legally?
Spam imposes a cost on recipients
Spam filters do not violate the sender rights
Corresponding page number: 148-149
3.2 Speech in Cyberspace
Anti-spam Laws
• Businesses and programmers created a variety of filtering
products to screen out spam at the recipient’s site, by
blocking email from specified addresses, by blocking
messages with particular words, and by more sophisticated
methods.
• The impact of antispam laws and decisions about their
constitutionality can be quite significant. A man convicted for
spamming in Virginia was sentenced to nine years in jail.
Virginia’s law prohibited anonymous, unsolicited, bulk email.
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Controlling Speech
Anti-spam Laws
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and
Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM Act)
Targets commercial spam
Criticized for not banning all spam
Corresponding page number: 151
3.3 Posting, Selling, and Leaking Sensitive Material
• A Web site with risks
• Do search engine providers have a social or ethical
obligation to provide complete search results to all
queries, or do they have a social or ethical obligation to
omit very dangerous sites from search results?
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3.3 Posting, Selling, and Leaking Sensitive Material
• Leaks
• Type of material
• Value to society
• Risks to society and individuals
• Responsibilities of operators of Web sites for leaks
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3.4 Anonymity
• Negative uses of anonymity
• Protects criminal and antisocial activities
• Aids fraud, harassment, extortion, theft, and copyright
infringement
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3.6 Net Neutrality Regulations or the Market?
• Refers to a variety of proposals on how telephone
and cable companies interact with their broadband
customers and set fees for services.
1. Whether the companies that provide the communications
networks should be permitted to exclude or give different
treatment to content based on the content itself.
2. Whether the companies that provide the communications
networks should be permitted to offer content providers
and individual subscribers different levels of speed and
priority at different price levels, this is known as “tiered” 18
service.
3.6 Net Neutrality Regulations or the Market?
A. Net Neutrality
• Argue for equal treatment of all customers.
• Equal treatment includes charging all customers the same rate for
sending information over the Internet and not giving priority to any
particular content or customer.
• Many Internet content providers and large companies such as eBay,
Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, argue for net-neutrality rules.
B. Market
• Flexibility and market incentives will benefit customers.
• Charging different rates for products and services is not unusual and
makes economic sense in many areas.
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Net Neutrality Regulations or the
Market?
Discussion Questions
Should companies be permitted to exclude or give
special treatment to content transmitted based on
the content itself or on the company that provides it?
Should companies be permitted to provide different
levels of speed at different prices?
Corresponding page number: 169-171
Reference List
• Sara Baase. A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical
Issues for Computing and the Internet, 4th Edition,
2012, Pearson.
• Sara Baase and Timothy M. Henry. A Gift of Fire:
Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computing and
the Internet, 5th Edition, 2018, Pearson.
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