p2pnet news view Politics | Freedom:- Is online hate speech free speech?

That, essentially, is the question dealt with by professor Richard Moon (right) who teaches private and public law at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

“It’s kind of like microwaving popcorn, you know?” -  the National Post has Jennifer Lynch, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), saying.

“For the first while on the Internet, there was this little pop, pop, pop. And now, the popcorn is in full popping formation. It’s just omnipresent, 24/7, popping up here, popping up there, and so it seems to make it difficult for measured voices to respond.”

Her comments came in National Post interview following the release of a 49 page report by Moon.

One of Moon’s recommendations is that ISPs should create hate speech complaint hotlines and advisory boards.

‘Online hate speech is a purely criminal matter’

“This course will examine the constitutional protection of freedom of expression in Canada,” Moon says on his university site.

He researches freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and religion, and the structural aspects of constitutional rights protection, and his course examines issues such as, “hate promotion, pornography, election spending, access to the media, publication bans, advertising, and picketing” focusing on Canadian cases, but also considering, “how different freedom of expression issues have been dealt with in other jurisdictions”.

In a 49-page report, Moon says Section 13, the hate-speech provision in the Canadian Human Rights Act, “should be repealed so that online hate speech is a purely criminal matter,” says the National Post.

It was written for telephone hate lines,  “but expanded in 2001 to include the Internet and, by extension, almost all modern media,”  says the story. It, “prohibits the repeated distribution of messages that are likely to expose an identifiable group to hatred or contempt. Some provincial human rights commissions have similar laws that deal with printed material.”

Now, the use of censorship by the government, “should be confined to a narrow category of extreme expression — that which threatens, advocates or justifies violence against the members of an identifiable group,” Moon writes in his review, commissioned by the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

“My position, which differs from quite a few people, is that it’s not practical to deal with what one might generously describe as group defamation or stereotyping through censorship,” the story has him saying.

“It’s just not a viable option. There’s too much of it, and it’s so pervasive within our public discourse that any kind of censorship is just overwhelming. I’ve tried to connect what we restrict to violence.”

‘Denounced as an Islamaphobic screed’

In the Internet age, “any attempt to exclude all racial or other prejudice from the public discourse would require extraordinary intervention by the state,” he says, according to the Globe and Mail.

“Because discriminatory attitudes and assumptions are so pervasive, it is vital that they be confronted, rather than censored.”

Moon’s report follows a controversy over The Future Belongs to Islam, a 2006 article in Maclean’s magazine, “which the Canadian Islamic Congress and other groups denounced as an Islamaphobic screed,” says the story, going on:

“This led to complaints to the CHRC, which in turn prompted critics of the government to claim a nascent nanny state was poised to gag unpopular opinion.”

The key thing the commission, “exists to protect Canadians from discrimination, and I’m fervently going to uphold this core principle, and we’re going to strive to find more effective means to protect Canadians from exposure to hate on the Internet,” Lynch says in the National Post story, which lists recommendations of the Moon Review as: -

• Repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits repeated communication of messages likely to expose identifiable groups to hatred or contempt
• Failing that, amend Section 13 to make it similar to criminal hate speech laws, by focusing on messages that advocate, justify or threaten violence
• Make it a requirement that violators intended to do so
• The CHRC should adopt a vetting system, rather than processing every complaint received
• Police should make greater use of the law that can force Internet service providers to remove hate propaganda
• Provinces should establish a “Hate Crime Team” of police and prosecutors
• Internet Service Providers should create hate speech complaint hotlines and advisory boards
• Provincial press councils should be revitalized and, failing that, a national press council with mandatory membership should be established

Stay tuned.

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National Post -  Drop hate from rights act, study urges, November 25, 2008
Globe and Mail – Let police investigate hate speech, report says, November 25, 2008

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Freedom, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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