We will be dealing with this issue in both our segment on jurisdiction and our look into hate speech in the second half of the semester. The issues are multilayered and worth exploring.
French Twitter Lawsuit Pits Free Speech Against Hate Speech : NPR.
Please follow and like us:
The comment made by Guy Birenbaum about, “sending shocking tweets is a game,” made me think of Ann Coulter and some of her ridiculous tweets she has made of late that have come up in the news:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/16/ann-coulter-national-coming-out-day-tweet-glaad-_n_1970502.html
I do not believe Twitter should be forced to reveal the users who were posting the anti-Semitic tweets. Should they be removed? Yes, and Twitter did so, but since Twitter is an American company and America has laws upholding freedom of speech, then the people who posted the anti-Semitic tweets should not be prosecuted. All Twitter users, while in incidents like this sometimes tweet ignorant and offensive statements, have a right to privacy.
While I do not believe their statements (or any racist, sexist, or offensive statements of any kind) are right, they are also (controversially) protected under the First Amendment. In addition, as mentioned in the article, Twitter imposing censorship laws on every offensive comment and hash tag is unrealistic, if not impossible. Where would the line be drawn? Would only derogatory comments against specific ethnic groups, religions, etc. be censored or would the line continued to be pushed to include censoring rude comments about the Kardashians?
Just to give you all some perspectives. A while ago, South Korea proposed this law that would regulate online comments by making online users to use their real identities in order to leave a comment. There have been numbers of incidents when South Korean celebrities committed suicide from malicious rumors caused by anonymous commentators; the most recent one was less than a month ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/world/asia/south-korean-court-overturns-online-name-verification-law.html
New development: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3911802/twitter-must-identify-racist-tweeters-per-french-court-order