Hate Speech on the Internet

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Hate Speech on the Internet I. Hate Speech on the Internet Generally, hate speech receives constitutional protection and is not prosecuted that is why there are relatively few court cases addressing this issue on the Internet. For this reason, sites containing speech discriminating people because of their race or sexual inclinations are available on the Internet. These include the "Ku Klux Klan," "Nazis," "White Socialist Party," "Skinheads" or "Aryan Nation," for example, which speech is not directed to any person in particular, thus not punishable. In addition, the nature of this medium makes it difficult to trace the perpetrators of hate crime indeed, Web sites are easily relocated or abandoned when legal problems arise. In RAV v. St Paul , the Supreme Court defined that speech leading to racially motivated violence could be punished. Hence, threatening private message involving racial epithet sent over the Internet to someone, as well as a public message on a Web site, are legally actionable. II. The Internet At the dawn of the new century, the rise of new media such as the Internet, seem to create new issue about the limitations of free speech. However the chore of some free speech cases remains the same as in the past 100 years. The Internet is an outgrowth of a military program called "ARPANET," which began in 1969. The ARPANET no longer exists, and today the Internet is an international network of interconnected computers. The Internet is "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." People can access the Internet from many different sources, several major national "online services" such as America Online, or CompuServe provide access to their own networks as well as broader li... ... middle of paper ... ...indlaw.com/expression "Hatecrime." http://ucl.boward.cc.fl.us "Hate Speech: The Speech that kills." http//www.indexoncensorship.org "Indecency, Ignorance, and Intolerance: The First Amendment and the Regulation of Electronic Expression." http://warthog.cc.wm.edu Internet Law Library. Available at: http://www.priweb.com "Legal Information Institute." www.law.edu/topics/communication Middleton, Kent R., Trager Robert, and Chamberlin, Bill F. The Law of Public Communication (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000. "Pending Court Cases and Legislation." http://www.nlp.cs.umass.edu/aw/ch13 Perkins Coie LLP. www.perkinscoie.com "State Law on Hate Crime." httpp://gsulaw.gsv.edu/lawland "Telecommunications and The First Amendment" Available at http://www.bsos.umd.edu "Terrorism on the Internet." www.loundy.com

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