Can Free Speech and Internet Filters Co-Exist?
The British government and the blogging site Tumblr are both cracking down on porn this summer. But their crackdowns are blocking more than porn, like social networking sites and posts about gay and lesbian issues. The filter in Britain is even being administered in part by a company with close ties to the Chinese government, known for political censorship. With the goal of being “family friendly,” is the Internet becoming too censored? Can efforts to filter the Internet be compatible with free speech, or will the two always be in conflict?
* crack down on ~ = / close ties = 친밀한 관계/ censorship = 검열/ compatible with ~ = ~와 양립할 수 있는/ free speech = 언론의 자유
인터넷(특정 정보)을 차단하는 것이 언론의 자유와 양립할 수 있나요, 아니면 항상 대립을 할까요?
1. Untouched by the First Amendment
We treat services like Tumblr and Facebook as the public commons, but they are private companies. Still, their censorship has a chilling effect.
2. The Only Sound Approach Is to ‘Opt In’
Filtering can co-exist with free speech if each user chooses to avoid some content. That doesn't strip others of the right of expression.
3. It’s Just ‘Security Theater’
No one seriously pretends that this will stop kids from finding porn. But a regime of total, national surveillance serves an important political purpose.
4. Censoring, Without Filtering
Britain has already found an effective model to limit access to images of child abuse. There may be lessons to be learned from it.
5. Instead of Resisting Porn, Improve It
So much online pornography is user-created that would-be censors should consider what role the genre plays, and what good it could do.
Sample Essay
Instead of Resisting Porn, Improve It
People have been making and consuming pornography since time immemorial. The difference today is that we can get plenty of high-quality pornography easily and cheaply. Not just sexual pornography, mind you. I’m counting food pornography, musical pornography, mental pornography – things that stimulate and/or satiate a single desire without doing much for the rest of our being. It is like drinking sugar water: there is only sweetness, no other flavor.
It is easy to criticize such things, rattling off classical arguments about true happiness coming from living a whole virtuous life in moderation, developing our higher pleasures, and making sure they come from achieving some purpose rather than passively consuming. But that is not why people get up in arms over sexual pornography. The real reason is of course cultural taboos: sexual things are exciting, disgusting and have low social status. They tie in with strong emotion, our beliefs about religion and what it means to be proper in our culture.
The current attempts to censor the Internet in the name of making it “family friendly” might occasionally stem from honest intentions. But that doesn’t justify them. Censorship is a blunt and potentially dangerous tool. By nature, it involves centralized surveillance of what information people exchange and the ability to block it. Justice Potter Stewart’s famous “I know it when I see it” human understanding cannot be transferred into software: instead we get rigid rules that will both block and stigmatize legitimate content, and will also let through things that should have been blocked. Media that have little cultural capital, like self-created content, will tend to be treated harshly – and the “little guy” is unlikely to have much recourse to get off the filters’ blacklists.
Censorship does have chilling effects on public discourse: if your Facebook profile or blog is important to your life, you must be careful to not get it closed or ghettoized for discussing, say, gay rights – now taboo by law in Russia and by policy on Tumblr. Even if one takes a dim view of pornography, it is unlikely that its harms outweigh the harms of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship.
But even mild “nudges” that try to lead us away from smut are problematic. Censorship is not going to remove the desires themselves, and they are going to drive people to seek out or create whatever pornography they want. In a free society, it will not be possible to stop them unless we give up freedom of speech and creative work. But we don’t have to just throw up our hands and do nothing. While the desires are going to be there, whether they express themselves in simplistic habits or interesting, authentic forms may be open to manipulation. As a society, we should aim at turning them virtuous, in a sense.
The fact that so much online pornography appears to be user-created should make would-be censors consider what role it plays: it is not just about sex. Getting people more involved in creating, manipulating and responsibly indulging their own desires might be much healthier for society than trying to channel them all in one direction. That requires talking about them, not just hiding them behind a censor box.
