Regulating Hate Speech under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Focusing on the Internet
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Lin, Yu-Teng
Abstract
Regulating hate speech has become an international consensus, but it is facing with some problems in this information era. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereinafter “the ICCPR”) article 20 (2) asks countries to enact laws to prohibit hate speech. While countries are trying to set up the regulations to comply with the ICCPR, there are some difficulties regarding hate speech on the Internet.
The purpose of the thesis is to analyze how to regulate Internet hate speech under the ICCPR. For one thing, the standard of hate speech may vary from country to country. What standard should the countries use to define hate speech, when such speech is spread via the Internet? Should ICCPR adopt a universal standard or a differentiated standard? Moreover, even regarding it as hate speech, how can countries regulate or punish the speakers abroad? All these questions are unavoidable, when countries want to enact such laws.
To achieve the above, this thesis is divided into four parts. First, the thesis analyzes the trend in international law of regulating hate speech. This thesis finds that a lot of international covenants regard spreading hate speech as a crime, and it is punishable. However, the ICCPR provides countries with multiple measures to regulate hate speech.
Second, the thesis tries to find the ICCPR’s interpretation in applying article 20(2). By reviewing scholar’s discussions, analyzing the Human Rights Committee of ICCPR’s (hereinafter “the Committee”) explanation and observing the hate speech law of countries, the thesis finds the following tendency. The ICCPR respects nationalized cultures and decisions to determine what kind of speech is hate speech and whether it shall be punished or not. Therefore, it is possible that the same speech may be considered as hate speech, while in another country does not.
Thirdly, the thesis analyzes whether the Committee should apply the same standard when regulating internet hate speech. The thesis analyzes the feature of Internet hate speech, and finds that there are two challenges to regulate it. The first thing is that since the Internet has the characteristic of “de-contexualization”, it is hard to judge whether an internet speech is a hate speech. Secondly, it is also hard to punish speakers who spread hate speech abroad. This thesis analyzes the ICCPR’s interpretation about freedom of the Internet, and finds that the Committee still adopts the same standard to deal with internet hate speech as with real world hate speech.
Finally, the thesis analyzes how the ICCPR’s standard is practiced on the Internet. The thesis refers to Lawrence Lessig’s method to analyze the issues, and holds that technology can help countries to efficiently regulate Internet hate speech. Using this method, the thesis concludes that the key to fulfilling the ICCPR’s standard is to block hate speech from other countries, not to punish those who spread it. Moreover, by deciding who has the authority to control the Internet code to block information, the thesis establishes four modes to regulate Internet hate speech, which are the governmental mode, the semi-governmental mode, the ISPs-mode, and the user-mode. The thesis holds that the government-mode is the most powerful method to control the Internet. Nevertheless, by using this method free speech will likely be infringed, hence it must not to be adopted to regulate Internet hate speech. Apart from this, countries may adopt the other three modes to regulate Internet hate speech.
In conclusion, this thesis holds that the main point of regulating Internet transnational hate speech is the relationship between technology and messages. Via technology, different countries can have different standards toward regulation of internet hate speech which can be tailored to their own cultures. Hence, the regulation object will shift from the punishment of the speakers to the message itself. Eventually, it will conform to the ICCPR’s “differentiated standard”. However, since technology is a powerful tool, countries should show self-restraint in order not to infringe free speech.
Subjects
公民與政治權利國際公約
言論自由
仇恨性言論
網際網路
網路管制
跨國網路仇恨性言論
多元標準
SDGs
Type
thesis
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