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You are here: Home > Law > Free Speech > An International Issue? An International Issue?The First Amendment only regulates free speech in the United States. No other country in the world protects speech, generally, as extensively as the United States does. In China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, among other places in the world (estimated by watchdog groups at exceeding 20), information coming in and out of the country through the Internet is filtered. In Saudi Arabia, Internet access is limited to universities and hospitals. In China, Internet users must pre-register with the government before being allowed access to the Internet. Germany has asserted extraterritorial reach of its hate laws, and has prosecuted U.S. citizens for publishing speech online from the United States that is legal in the U.S. Barry Steinhardt, who now heads the Electronic Frontier Foundation having left the ACLU's position as Associate Director, helped form the Global Internet Liberty Campaign. The GIIC is devoted to promote free speech and expression in cyberspace. Because cyberspace is borderless, each country may attempt to regulate content which can be accessed in that country, without regard to the legality of such speech where published. In the United States we believe that our laws should not be applied around the world. While it's easy to seek to apply our standards extra-territorially, the differing standards for speech can be best viewed when the U.S. attempts to regulated foreign speech online, such as in the case of child pornography. In the U.S. pornography which uses children in its enactment (as well as that which appears to use children in its enactment) is outlawed. The FBI and U.S. Customs Service are charged with keeping child pornography out of the U.S., and that includes keeping it off the Internet. Yet certain countries do not criminalize child pornography, as abhorrent as it may be. Can we regulate this speech? Can Germany prosecute U.S. residents for publishing hate information on the Internet? There's no easy answer to this... We'll be reporting developments in Internet regulation as we find them. |
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