[Air-L] law papers on freedom of speech

[Burcu Bakioglu]

Thanks for this Dan, this is really useful.

BsB


On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 9:30 PM, Dan L. Burk <dburk at uci.edu> wrote:

> > Hi AoiR peeps,
> > If I may bother you with one more request: Do any of you legal types have
> > a
> > legal paper to recommend on freedom of speech for my Internet Governance
> > class? I have a couple at hand but I'm not convinced that they are the
> > most
> > current ones. As with everything Internet, even last year's paper could
> be
> > sometimes considered to be outdated and with governance you want to
> > present
> > the latest out there, i think...
> >
> > I remember a few legal scholars on the list, I just can't remember
> exactly
> > who they were, so apologies for a blanket call like this.
> >
> > Thank you in advance.
> >
> > BsB
>
> This is as current as it gets:
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> "Old School/New School Speech Regulation"
>      Harvard Law Review, Forthcoming
>
>   Contact:  JACK M. BALKIN
>               Yale University - Law School
>     Email:  jack.balkin at yale.edu
> Auth-Page:  http://ssrn.com/author=293225
>
> Full Text:  http://ssrn.com/abstract=2377526
>
> ABSTRACT: In the early twenty-first century the digital
> infrastructure of communication has also become a central
> instrument for speech regulation and surveillance. The same
> forces that have democratized and decentralized information
> production have also generated new techniques for surveillance
> and control of expression.
>
> “Old-school” speech regulation has traditionally relied on
> criminal penalties, civil damages, and injunctions directed at
> individual speakers and publishers to control and discipline
> speech. These methods have hardly disappeared in the twenty-first
> century. But now they are joined by “new-school” techniques,
> which aim at digital networks and auxiliary services like search
> engines, payment systems, and advertisers. For example, states
> may engage in collateral censorship by threatening Internet
> intermediaries with liability to induce them to block, limit, or
> censor speech by other private parties.
>
> Public/private cooperation and co-optation is often crucial to
> new-school techniques. Because the government often does not own
> the infrastructure of free expression, it must rely on private
> owners to assist in speech regulation and surveillance.
> Governments may use a combination of carrots and sticks,
> including offers of legal immunity in exchange for cooperation.
> States may also employ the “soft power” of government influence.
> Owners of private infrastructure, hoping to reduce legal
> uncertainty and to ensure an uncomplicated business environment,
> often have incentives to be helpful even without direct
> government threats.
>
> Finally, governments have also devised new forms of digital prior
> restraint. Many new-school techniques have effects similar to
> prior restraints, even though they may not involve traditional
> licensing schemes or judicial injunctions. Prior restraints are
> especially important to the expansion of government surveillance
> practices in the expanding National Surveillance State. Gag
> orders directed at owners of private infrastructure are now
> ubiquitous in the United States; they have become fully
> normalized and bureaucratized elements of digital surveillance,
> as routine as they are invisible, and largely isolated from
> traditional first amendment protections.
> ===================================================
>
> Regards, DLB
>
>


-- 
Thanks,

Burcu S. Bakioglu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow in New Media
Lawrence University

http://www.palefirer.com

-- "There is nothing more frightening than a clown after midnight." Lon
Chaney