Tag: free speech

Is Speech Preserved by More Speech Alone? – Part I

“The more speech the merrier,” was the central argument made by Justice Scalia in writing the majority opinion on Citizens United, but that case suggests, at least to many of us, that the mechanism of the speech matters a great deal. Yes, in many ways, money can be speech; but at the same time, I think Scalia conjured an illusion of more, which obscures the practical reality that the SCOTUS ruling ultimately provides a bigger voice for a privileged minority.  So, what about speech delivered via the mechanisms of social media and other networked communications? Nobody can argue that there is more of it. But does placing too much emphasis on volume alone risk overlooking the complex, even occasionally painful, ways in which speech, as we define it in the U.S., is preserved?

“The value of intellectual freedom is far from self-evident,” writes George Packer in his New Yorker editorial Speech Crisis.  “It’s hardly natural to defend the rights of one person over the feelings of a group; to put up with all the trouble that comes with free minds and free expression; to stand beside the very people who repel you.” Even among free nations, the United States is unique in policy and in its sustained public support for the absoluteness of speech.  But as networked communications alter our relationship to speech, new social dynamics emerge that can produce as many new forms of censorship as new forms of expression.  Quoting Packer again, he cites Joel Simon thus:

“Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, argues in his book ‘The New Censorship’ that the explosion of data in digital media keeps us from seeing how extensively information is controlled. ‘Repression and violence against journalists is at record levels,’ he writes, ‘and press freedom is in decline.’”

Interestingly, Packer begins his article with the description of a brutal murder of a Bangladeshi blogger, but his main thesis is a warning against the pitfalls of self-censorship, even here in the tolerant United States. Quoting Packer again:

“But, in some ways, an even greater danger than violence or jail is the internal mute button known as self-censorship. Once it’s activated, governments and armed groups don’t have to bother with threats. Here self-censorship is on the rise out of people’s fear of being pilloried on social media. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has been masterful at creating an atmosphere in which there are no clear rules, so that intellectuals and artists stifle themselves in order not to run afoul of vague laws and even vaguer social pressure.”

Packer’s assertion that self-censorship is “on the rise out of people’s fear of being pilloried on social media” exemplifies why I would caution against overemphasizing volume of speech in order to insure its universality as a right.  Personally, I believe that only when we uphold the right of the minority speaker above the majority’s capacity to silence that speaker, is speech as a right actually sustained.  Yes, this means American Nazis were given permission to march through the Jewish Village of Skokie, and it means Fred Phelps repeatedly made a public performance out of disrespect for grieving military families.  But such examples, when filtered through populist media like Twitter, seem to confuse support of the minority voice with unwavering tolerance of the offensive; the two are not necessarily intertwined. The offensive can also be the silencing mob.

Take the chronic occurrence of rape and death themes that flare up like herpes on Twitter when a woman says something a particular group of men doesn’t like. Setting aside actual threats, which are already criminal, wishing for sexual assault upon someone is offensive yet protected speech.  We the majority of ordinary citizens must, in the name of speech, tolerate the minority of apes, who have nothing better to do than tweet “I hope somebody rapes you,” to Ashley Judd because she dissed their basketball team or Emma Watson because she commented on women’s rights. But while speech defendants rush to make this point clear in these instances, we don’t seem to pay much attention to the potential or actual self-censorship of the original speaker.   Naturally, if the speaker is a celebrity, she has resources that inoculate and empower her to speak back, but not every individual with something to say is so blessed; and one consequence of this round-the-clock, global speech-a-thon we call the Internet is that it can certainly make almost anyone famous or infamous for a day.  Thus, one of the pitfalls of placing too much faith in more speech as a preservative of speech istelf is that both the dynamics and the economics of social media foster new types of crowds and new types of minority speakers. And the only real difference between a crowd and a mob is whether you’re with it or against it.

Meanwhile, the notion of tolerance itself, the basic idea that the health of speech depends on allowing or even embracing unpalatable ideas, seems to be changing online and in our national dialogue.  Paradoxically, from quarters like academia, one hears the refrain of what sounds like a new orthodoxy of “tolerance,” which is of course a form of censorship.  More on that in Part II.

Should Revenge Porn Be a Federal Crime?

First, for those lucky enough not to know, “revenge porn” is the term used to describe the practice (usually by disgruntled ex-boyfriends) of distributing nude or sexually explicit images of people via the Internet without permission.  Once out there, as we all know, images and videos can end up anywhere, copied and redistributed by anyone; and this includes websites designed specifically to profit from traffic drawn to revenge porn.  In some cases, owners of these sites have even extorted money from victims in exchange for removing their likenesses from these sites.  Nobody writing editorials or legal opinions on the matter defends the practice itself.  We all agree that posting these intimate images without permission and violating that trust is a despicable practice. Where opinions diverge is what to do about it from a legal perspective.

Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) is the lead sponsor of a bill that would make revenge porn a federal crime in the U.S., and the bill is set to be introduced in the House in coming weeks.  While some states have passed laws prohibiting revenge porn, and other existing laws already criminalize several of the actions required to perpetrate revenge porn (e.g. hacking or stealing data), the rationale for making revenge porn itself a federal crime is apparently Sec. 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  Section 230 provides safe harbors for site owners, who cannot be held liable for the actions of third parties using their sites.  These safe harbors do not apply to liability for federal crimes such as child pornography and copyright infringement; so enacting Speier’s bill would not only provide the grounds for prosecuting the individual perpetrators of revenge porn, but it would provide a legal basis for prosecuting site owners anywhere in the U.S. that host revenge porn.  On the other hand, some concerns have been raised that if Speier’s bill were to become law, it would jeopardize free speech by circumventing the intent of Sec. 230 of the CDA.

Last April, Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote a post that dispassionately suggests this bill could undermine safe harbors and foster censorship of legal and sanctioned material.  To quote:

“By spreading liability, you guarantee over-censorship. It’s easy for people who are narrowly focused on a single issue to not recognize the wider impact that issue may have. Trying to accurately describe what “revenge porn” is for the sake of criminalizing its posting, will almost certainly have chilling effects on third parties and undermine the very intent of the CDA’s Section 230.”

I don’t think Masnick is quite right to say that it is hard to describe what revenge porn is. I defined it above, he defined it in his post, others have defined it in other editorials. Admittedly, though, revenge porn is a problem different from child pornography, which is addressed simply by making all sexually explicit material involving minors illegal to produce, distribute, or possess.  But in the world of adults, how does one distinguish between an amateur nude shared by permission and one distributed without permission; and then where do we draw the lines of responsibility for that distribution given the chaotic nature of digital reproduction and distribution?  Still, it seems as though fears of “guaranteed,” rampant censorship are a bit overwrought in this context.

With regard to criminalizing revenge porn, the results I imagine we want ought to be legislatively achievable without chilling free speech.  We should want to prosecute the individual who initiated the unauthorized distribution, and we’d want to prosecute the site owner who knowingly and specifically trades in revenge porn.  And it is not clear why this narrowly-focused goal must lead to censorship anymore than statutes criminalizing child porn.

The concern Masnick and others appear to be raising is that innocent site owners, fearful of criminal liability, will be motivated to over-censor their own sites through TOS policies, and that will have a chilling effect on speech.  But this seems reactionary, given the very specific nature of the crime.  For instance, one way to indemnify site owners in this case would be to create a DMCA-like provision that enables a victim of revenge porn to demand removal of her/his private images and gives the site owner no option to refuse. If the site owner complies with the request, no liability should exist.  At best, victims of revenge porn should have as easy a mechanism as possible for removal of the unauthorized content; at worst, if the claimant isn’t really a victim of revenge but simply wants her photos removed, can anyone rationally claim free speech will suffer from this “abuse” of the new law? In such a case, she may be falsely accusing an individual of a crime, which is a serious offense, but not a First Amendment issue.  Regardless, the claimant should have to be the victim herself, so abusing the law to chill speech seems unlikely.

Another factor to consider with proposed criminalization of anything is whether or not the law would act as a deterrent.  Unfortunately, criminal penalties often do not deter criminal behavior; but in this case, I suspect making revenge porn a federal crime would have demonstrative mitigating effect, if, in fact, most of the sources of these images are grumpy ex-boyfriends acting rashly.  Criminals with profit or survival motivations and individuals with various psychoses are not easily deterred by the threat of prosecution, but regular guys just being stupid often are deterred by the law.  And in this regard, criminalizing revenge porn is an important step toward a more enlightened and civilized, digital future. It has become too easy to cause harm to someone by remote control, cloaked in anonymity, and normalizing this behavior is a betrayal of the original goals of the Internet.

Interestingly enough, last month, Google announced and then retracted new policy for its blog-hosting site Blogger that would appear to have censored legal and consensual, sexual content.  Originally meant to take effect on the 23rd of this month, Google stated that sexually explicit material would not be allowed on Blogger unless it provides “public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.” I have to say that’s some rather subjective language coming from a company that repeatedly states it “cannot be responsible for policing the Internet” with regard to criminal or offensive activities. Ever since the Deep Throat case, nothing in the law even presumes to make such distinctions with regard to censorship of explicit material, but Google’s TOS almost did, if it were not for the backlash from thousands of users, particularly those who post sexually explicit articles, photos, and videos. One of these bloggers, Zoe Margolis, even used the words “it breaks the Internet” to describe Google’s proposed policy to make all sex-oriented blogs private rather than public. Was Google motivated to change the Blogger TOS in anticipation of the success of Congresswoman Speier’s proposed bill, or was the company’s sudden priggishness motivated by some other factor?  Margolis suggests a financial incentive — that Google didn’t want to be hosting “free porn,” and this ought to at least give my friends with copyright interests reason to chuckle at that particular hypocrisy.

Regardless, I think the point in this context is that the amount of “censorship” on the web is a dynamic (dare we say evolving?) process that is driven as much by the business interests of the major site owners as by any particular statutes.  While I agree that free speech must always be a foundation of these debates, I believe it is incumbent upon us as a decent society to address the fact that new technologies create new ways for bad actors to rather casually cause great harm to individuals who cannot defend themselves. And this is hardly the first time we’ve had to seek a balance between liberty and justice.  Avoiding criminalization of a behavior like revenge porn for fear of some very improbable forms of censorship sounds like a cop out to me.

Double Standards at Facebook?

It took public outrage to get Facebook to back off its decision to allow video of a beheading to appear on its pages; and users still fight to get images of animal torture and pages promoting similar depravities off the site. But according to this article from Queerty.com, over 100 users were barred from access for posting a photo of two men kissing. Not two naked men having sex.  Just two men kissing. The author of the article, Matthew Tharrett suggests that it’s all too easy for  Facebook users who find homosexuality offensive to label such depictions of garden-variety romance between GLTB partners as “violating community standards.”

While Facebook may not be directly condoning the mistreatment of homosexuals, it certainly seems the company is going to need a better system if it is to remain relevant in, y’know, this century.  One minute, these companies want the Internet to be a free-for-all of vitriol, misogyny, and plagiarism on the grounds that it’s all free speech.  The next minute, this kind of thing happens, and one has to wonder.  And to what lengths are these users going to suss out these images they find so offensive?  I know there’s plenty on Facebook that would offend me, but I don’t see it because I’m not friends with people who would post it.  Duh.

Of course, if the story isn’t true, I apologize in advance.  After all, I got it from the Internet.