Resumen de How can the internet change human rights on online hate speech regulations?
Different legal cultures have a variety of approaches to regulating hate speech, ranging from the American libertarian approach to the German positive liberty approach. There are current phenomena linked with the increasing levels of online hate speech. Cyberspace could be a good place to show the effectiveness of human rights. One view is to affirm that rights should be the same on- and offline while the other view is to defend that rights must be interpreted differently on internet.
There is a European regulation on online hate speech, but the American approach is not to regulate this issue. The point has been made in some Court cases that the Law is local but the internet is global. The restrictive rules on hate speech from one country can be easily left behind on the net. We are, therefore, faced with two possibilities: a) A change in how Law and human rights are currently conceived; b) Maintain the current situation, accepting the flaws in an imperfect system. Likewise, some people argue that cyberspace should not be rule free and laws must be enforced against internet users as they are for the rest of the citizens.
Hate speech has a ‘silencing effect’ -Fiss- for the members of minorities and this justifies some kind of regulation. The liberty/equality dilemma on free speech sometimes requires a solution in terms of protection of minorities. This view is near to the European approach and far from the American, but the net is single space and is global. Human rights must be conceived globally but in a sense compatible with the protection of minorities.
