I'm not sure how many technology writers and commentators would attempt to write a letter to John Stuart Mill concerning the subject of free speech, but Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT Technology Review, chose that as a way to explore the sometimes "vexing" issues concerning free speech in the Internet age. (The Tracker is published at MIT but has no connection with Technology Review.)
Addressing Mill as "pale ghost," he begins by noting that "much has changed since you died in 1873," but "your lucid little book On Liberty (1859) has survived." In that book, Mill lays out the "harm principle," which says that individuals are sovereign except when they must be constrained to prevent harm to others. Free speech, an expression of individual sovereignty, must be constrained, too–one can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater because of the danger that poses to others.
Pontin then goes on to outline three events that call into question whether Mill's harm principle can continue to guide us in the future. The first is that people, and nations, define "harm" differently. So what does Google do when a YouTube video thought to be an expression of free speech in one country is deemed blasphemous in another? Google (which owns YouTube) has chosen to follow local laws, Pontin reports, blocking content in certain countries, but not all. But Pontin worries that Google's recent decision to restrict access to a video about Muslims suggests that the company will suppress legal speech "if protestors objected to something with sufficient violence," hardly a principle on which to base decisions in the future.
Pontin's second example involves a demand that Twitter release user information, and the third involves Reddit and allegations that some content constituted child pornography.
Pontin argues that the Internet "has a bias in favor of free expression" and that U.S. companies "should apply a consistent standard everywhere in deciding what they will censor upon request." Free speech should be limited when it can cause physical or commercial injury, but not when it gives personal, religious, or ideological offense, he writes.
Others might have different views about which harms should be included, and which excluded, but Pontin is correct to argue that consistency is probably the only thing that will protect free speech on the web, giving Internet companies a sound basis on which to resist pressure even from violent protests.
-Paul Raeburn
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