Restricting Speech to Protect It
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ARTICLE SUMMARY
Attitudes to cyber harassment have changed. Lawmakers, law enforcement officers, and the public recognize that online stalking, threats, and “revenge porn” interferes with victim’s ability to speak and engage online.
POLICY RELEVANCE
In the last decade, laws have been passed to address cyber harassment. These legal remedies are necessary to protect the rights of victims of cyber abuse.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Decades ago, even when individuals were subjected to threats of rape, denial-of-service attacks, or threats online; victims were expected to tolerate abuse.
- Some incorrectly argued that legal intervention to stop cyber harassment would jeopardize the Internet’s role as a public forum; abusive speech online does not warrant more protection than abusive speech in the workplace or in coffee shops.
- Today, law enforcement officers and the general public realize how much online abuse interferes with victims’ ability to speak and engage online.
- Since 2006, new federal and state laws have been passed to address cyber stalking and harassment; however, at first, law enforcement officials lacked the will, training, and resources to enforce those laws.
- As of 2014, legislators, law enforcement officers, and regulators have initiated key prosecutions of revenge porn site operators.
- Civil liberties groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have recognized that intervention against abuse speech online is a necessary precondition to free expression; cyber harassment typically involves threats, defamation, extortion, and blackmail, categories of speech that receive little or no first amendment protection.
- Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter have taken steps to address the posting of nude images without the consent of the subject.
- Combatting cyber harassment is good for free expression because it prevents abuse that would otherwise silence victims.
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About Danielle Citron
Danielle Citron is the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. She writes and teaches about privacy, free expression and civil rights. She is an Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Center on Internet and Society, Affiliate Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project, Senior Fellow at Future of Privacy, Affiliate Faculty at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School, and a Tech Fellow at the NYU Policing Project.
