This collection of thirteen new essays is the first to examine, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, how the new technologies and global reach of the Internet are changing the theory and practice of free speech. The rapid expansion of online communication, as well as the changing roles of government and private organizations in monitoring and regulating the digital world, give rise to new questions, including: How do philosophical defenses of the right to freedom of expression, developed in the age of the town square and the printing press, apply in the digital age? Should search engines be covered by free speech principles? How should international conflicts over online speech regulations be resolved? Is there a right to be forgotten that is at odds with the right to free speech? How has the Internet facilitated new speech-based harms such as cyber-stalking, twitter-trolling, and revenge porn, and how should these harms be addressed? The contributors to this groundbreaking volume include philosophers, legal theorists, political scientists, communications scholars, public policy makers, and activists.

Hateful thoughts and words can lead to harmful actions like the March 2019 terrorist attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In free, open and democratic societies, governments cannot justifiably regulate what citizens think, feel, believe or value, but do have a duty to protect citizens from harmful communication that incites discrimination, active hostility and violence. Written by a public policy advisor for fellow practitioners in politics and public life, this book discusses significant practical and moral challenges regarding internet governance and freedom of speech, particularly when responding to content that is legal but harmful. Policy makers and professionals working for governmental institutions need to strike a fair balance between protecting from harm and preserving the right to freedom of expression. And because merely passing laws does not solve complex social problems, governments need to invest, not just regulate. Governments, big tech and the private sector, civil society, individual citizens and the fourth estate all have roles to play, and counter-speech is everyone’s responsibility. This book tackles hard questions about internet governance, hate speech, cancel culture and the loss of civility, and illustrates principled pragmatism applied to perplexing policy problems. Furthermore, it presents counter-speech strategies as alternatives and complements to censorship and criminalisation.

A first-person account of the fight to preserve First Amendment rights in the digital age. Lawyer and writer Mike Godwin has been at the forefront of the struggle to preserve freedom of speech on the Internet. In Cyber Rights he recounts the major cases and issues in which he was involved and offers his views on free speech and other constitutional rights in the digital age. Godwin shows how the law and the Constitution apply, or should apply, in cyberspace and defends the Net against those who would damage it for their own purposes. Godwin details events and phenomena that have shaped our understanding of rights in cyberspace—including early antihacker fears that colored law enforcement activities in the early 1990s, the struggle between the Church of Scientology and its critics on the Net, disputes about protecting copyrighted works on the Net, and what he calls "the great cyberporn panic." That panic, he shows, laid bare the plans of those hoping to use our children in an effort to impose a new censorship regime on what otherwise could be the most liberating communications medium the world has seen. Most important, Godwin shows how anyone—not just lawyers, journalists, policy makers, and the rich and well connected—can use the Net to hold media and political institutions accountable and to ensure that the truth is known.

The internet makes sharing ideas and communicating easy, and it connects individuals and communities like never before. However, with so much power available to the masses, should people be allowed to say whatever they want? Should there be consequences for spreading hate and harassing others online? This volume explores these and other important questions, with full-color photographs, annotated quotes from experts, and detailed sidebars providing a comprehensive review of the many points of view on these issues. Readers learn about free speech in an increasingly globalized and technologically advanced society, as well as their role in creating online culture.

There was never such a thing as true freedom of speech. In the past, in order to speak freely you had to have access to a printing press, a newspaper, a radio or a TV station. Until now. The age of blogging has begun. The internet revolution has given us all a chance to be irreverent, blasphemous and ungrammatical in public. We can reveal secrets, blow whistles, spill beans or just make stuff up. The old elites don't like it. In fact, they really hate it. Should we fall silent? Absolutely not! Let's demand that modern liberal society lives by the principles it claims to embrace. Bloggers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your gags.

Social media, texting and the Internet have given oppressed people the power to organize, communicate dissent and help lead revolutions throughout the world. While the Arab Spring in 2011 brought attention to "Facebook revolutions" in Tunisia, Egypt and other nations, the rise of global free speech around the world was happening in many more places for many more years. This collection of PBS MediaShift stories from 2006 to 2013 goes from China to Burma to Russia to Southern Sudan and beyond, looking at how average people used technology and social media to discuss and organize in places where governments cracked down on free expression. The stories also include updates on what's happening currently in those places. Unfortunately, many governments have made Internet and social media censorship their focus, passing new restrictive laws to hinder online speech or block sites wholesale. The good news is that activists and people who want to spread the word now have a global outlet in the Internet, with blogs, social media, YouTube and other tools.

Most people believe that the right to privacy is inherently at odds with the right to free speech. Courts all over the world have struggled with how to reconcile the problems of media gossip with our commitment to free and open public debate for over a century. The rise of the Internet has made this problem more urgent. We live in an age of corporate and government surveillance of our lives. And our free speech culture has created an anything-goes environment on the web, where offensive and hurtful speech about others is rife. How should we think about the problems of privacy and free speech? In Intellectual Privacy, Neil Richards offers a different solution, one that ensures that our ideas and values keep pace with our technologies. Because of the importance of free speech to free and open societies, he argues that when privacy and free speech truly conflict, free speech should almost always win. Only when disclosures of truly horrible information are made (such as sex tapes) should privacy be able to trump our commitment to free expression. But in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom, Richards argues that speech and privacy are only rarely in conflict. America's obsession with celebrity culture has blinded us to more important aspects of how privacy and speech fit together. Celebrity gossip might be a price we pay for a free press, but the privacy of ordinary people need not be. True invasions of privacy like peeping toms or electronic surveillance will rarely merit protection as free speech. And critically, Richards shows how most of the law we enact to protect online privacy pose no serious burden to public debate, and how protecting the privacy of our data is not censorship. More fundamentally, Richards shows how privacy and free speech are often essential to each other. He explains the importance of 'intellectual privacy,' protection from surveillance or interference when we are engaged in the processes of generating ideas - thinking, reading, and speaking with confidantes before our ideas are ready for public consumption. In our digital age, in which we increasingly communicate, read, and think with the help of technologies that track us, increased protection for intellectual privacy has become an imperative. What we must do, then, is to worry less about barring tabloid gossip, and worry much more about corporate and government surveillance into the minds, conversations, reading habits, and political beliefs of ordinary people. A timely and provocative book on a subject that affects us all, Intellectual Privacy will radically reshape the debate about privacy and free speech in our digital age.