Overview
Before there were any
computers there were laws that provide for guidelines for human behavior
and sanctions for those act deemed most reprehensible or dangerous or
intolerable if humans are to live with one another in groups and have a
social life. As computers have been introduced and their power
and uses continually expanded there have been laws violated and laws
observed and new laws created. Computers have been used to commit
old crimes in a new way. Computer technologies have also been used
in ways that have led to new laws to prevent what have been seen as new
crimes - those not possible before the advent of the computer technologies.
In this chapter there will be attention given to the relation of Law to
computer technologies focused on the law that provides for the basic or
foundational freedoms of speech and of the press and practices involving
the computer technologies that have presented challenges to the
traditional conceptions of those freedoms and the grounding of those
freedoms in such entities as the constitution and local laws and court
decisions.
Computers have facilitated the
creation, storage and transmission of huge amounts of information and
provided for access to that information in an ever growing number of ways
and with an increasing number of devices. From more locations on
planet Earth people have access to more types of information and in more
ways than ever before. And all of that is increasing each year.
For the most part people think of this as a good thing. But then
again problems have developed. A number of problems and of various
sorts concerning the accuracy of the information , the potential
harmfulness of the information, the manner in which the information was
obtained and how it is being displayed or offered. The basic value
of FREEDOM of expression is being opposed by a sense that people have that
harm to human beings should be avoided and most particularly harm to
innocent children.
Some of what will be presented
in this chapter will deal with freedom of speech and child pornography.
There are other examples of where computer technologies present potential
harms to others as well as in violations of their privacy that will be
dealt with in subsequent chapters.
Law also comes into play with
computer technologies as they have presented novel creation that law had
not previously considered and there arose a need to create new law such as
in the case of the claim that ideas about how to process information
should be considered as property of the inventor or creator, thus
Intellectual Property law needed to expand to cover software and
programming and database creations that were non-existent prior to
electricity and the computing machines. Enough folks thought
that there were harms occurring and potential harms to the future
development of technologies valuable to society that lawyers, judges and
social policy makers created a new from of property through law.
This topic is significant in its own right and will be covered in a
subsequent chapter.
If you consider so basic a
principle as the freedom of speech, something that is highly valued in
democratic societies, then the existence of computers and the information
systems and networks they make possible will bring about something of a
re-conception of that principle. So many people have so many ways of
receiving and sending information to so many people that the power of
speech has changed. Printing presses and internet sites, telephones and
cell phones, instant messaging and text messages, email and electronic
bulletin boards and chat rooms and "myspace" networks and on it goes: an
increasing number of ways in which speech is communicated and to the
entire world's population. How does so much speech to so many people
cause us to think about the principle of freedom of speech?
What is the law regarding
speech in the USA? What is that notion of freedom of expression
through speech or print or electronic media such as radio and television?
READ
Freedom
of Expression ACLU
How are such notions mitigated
or impacted or challenged by the development of computer technologies and
the internet and all that incorporates and represents?
READ
The Constitution in Cyberspace, by Laurence H. Tribe
Tribe concludes with a rather strong call for an extension of the constitutional protections
to clearly encompass the new technologies:
It would be fitting, in a world where youth
has been enfranchised, for a twenty-seventh amendment to spell a kind of
"childhood's end" for constitutional law. The Twenty-seventh Amendment,
to be proposed for at least serious debate in 1991, would read simply:
"This Constitution's protections for the freedoms of speech, press,
petition, and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable searches
and seizures and the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without
due process of law, shall be construed as fully applicable without regard
to the technological method or medium through which information content
is generated, stored, altered, transmitted, or controlled."
Now an examination of the ongoing tension
between the value placed on freedom of expression and some of the uses of
the new computer technologies.
Here are two such cases:
READ
Banning newsgroups at CMU in 1994
READ
The Great Cyberporn Scare of 1995
For a more
general overview of such cases consider:
Readings on Computer Communications and Freedom of Expression
VIDEOS:
http://current.com/items/88795904_keeping-the-internet-open-expression-collides-with-control.htm
Internet Free Speech Under Attack by Government, Provocateurs
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1-hk4tFYZA
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