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To Coordinately Guarantee Human Rights In Cyberspace

Posted on:2015-05-20Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y L ZhaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1226330467483178Subject:Political Theory
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
From the perspective of human rights, the dilemma of Internet governance lies in how to coordinately guarantee human rights or public interest which are in conflicts. For both sides in a conflict, we need to determine protection scope to one side and restriction scope to the other.To promote coordinately guaranteeing human rights or public interest in the process of Internet governance, this paper mainly adopts three research methods (textual analysis, comparative study, case study), takes three typical online social problems as analytic targets (pornography, violent speech, disordered political participation), divides online human rights conflicts into three categories (standard form, policy form, means form), analyzes value bases guarding to resolve online human rights conflicts, analyzes features, application conditions, valid ranges, limitations, and possible improvements of international typical Internet policies, analyzes functions of network technology in settling online human rights conflicts.To be able to cover main rights and public interest in online human rights conflicts, this paper focuses on three typical and universal online social issues:firstly, online pornography, to resolve conflict between "freedom of expression, freedom of information" vs "children’s rights, public moral"; secondly, online violent speech, to resolve conflict between "freedom of expression, freedom of information, privacy" vs "reputation, freedom from discrimination"; thirdly, online disordered political participation, to resolve conflict between "freedom of expression, freedom of information, freedom of opinion, privacy" vs "personal safety, public order, national security".International human rights standards fail to demarcate boundaries among human rights and public interest strictly. Value basises are necessary in guiding to weigh and balance conflicting human rights or public interest. There are two popular perspectives in guiding to resolve conflicts between human rights and public interest: the subject value perspective which is represented by liberalism and the objective interest perspective which is represented by utilitarianism. Thought trains in guiding to resolve conflicts between human rights mainly include:to distinguish basic and non-basic human rights, to rank human rights, to identify rights’ core and periphery, and to compromise between human rights. All the above-mentioned guiding frameworks respectively have some limitations, while inter-subjective view of human rights interprets human rights as inter-subjective consensus among community members against special social and historical conditions. It regards that human rights rely on the existence of certain social community and cannot absolutely outmatch public interest. Therefore, there are none universal solutions of human rights conflicts, it’s important to figure out application scopes and function conditions of every solution.Aiming at online social issues, different countries or regions adopt policies with its own particular characteristics. Firstly, for online pornography. The USA pays more attention to freedom of speech, takes "laissez-faire policy". While in countries where religion or traditional culture has strong influence, such as Islamic countries and Asian countries influenced by Confucian culture, public morality and children’s online health receives much more concern,"complete prohibition policy" is in implementation. European Union member states create a middle path: to limit only child pornography. Secondly, for online violent speech. The America indulges the spread of racism in cyberspace, Internet intermediaries enjoy more freedom without interference. While European Union countries have been suffering from racism and exclusivism, strictly limit online hate speech and introduce "told and delete" mechanism to assign intermediaries’responsibility. To curb domestic serious online violence, South Korea takes the lead in enforcing real-name system. Thirdly, for online disordered political participation. British and American strong tradition of freedom of speech hinders their process of regulating by law, emergency responses lacking of legal support give rise to criticism at home and abroad. Facing severe online penetration and radical mobilization, several countries formulate stringent laws which have flaws of excessive restriction.Approaches and effects of resolving human rights conflicts in cyberspace can be affected by many technological means, such as the accuracy of information blocking and filtering technology, the security of personal information, self-management of Internet intermediaries, netizens’computer literacy, introduction way of specific policy, and etc.On the base of learning from international experiences, according to features of Chinese online human rights conflicts, from the following three aspects:value base, policy tool, and technological means, this paper analyzes the characteristics, effectiveness, and limitations of Chinese resolving online human rights conflicts, puts forward a series of improvements.
Keywords/Search Tags:human rights, Internet, human rights conflict, governance
PDF Full Text Request
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