Regulations On The Freedom Of Internet Speech

In recent years, the citizens’ freedom of expression along with the rapid development of science and technology has made much more progress than ever before. Obviously, the internet widened the citizens’ freedom of expression empowered by the constitution, while it had also brought new sounds. These, together with the wide participation of public, led to new challenge to the existing discourse system.Government’s power of manipulating public opinion through controlling the way they receive message is on the wane, and it can be seen that, the internet can contribute more to the public to make up their own minds to decide what to say.This essay mainly discusses the definition, special value and legal boundaries of freedom of speech on the internet in the human rights perspective. This paper believes that the freedom of speech on the internet not only promotes the development of modern democracy and law-ruled society, but also provides a much more flexible platform for the public to express their own words.Freedom of speech in cyberspace means within the scope of the law, citizens are able to through the Internet to collect the information, comment, transfer ideas, spread information and so on,without any interference and punishment made by personal or public power or any other forms of behaviour which interfering the autonomy of freedom. Comparing to the traditional freedom of speech, speech in cyberspace has some new characteristics such as real-time, interactive, group, equality, anonymity and freedom alternative etc.,so freedom of speech in cyberspace is endowed with special value:First of all,network media promotes the development of modern democracy, opening a new paradigm of public participation. Secondly, the network provides more flexible expression platform for free speech which the majority of the Internet users and the public can take part in. Thirdly, the freedom of speech in cyberspace provides a new paradigm for citizens’ form supervision, public supervision’s civilian and diversity which a modern legal society calls for is now reflected.Modern countries realize the restriction on freedom of expression by the support of public’s consciously abidance by law and the punishment of judiciary.If the expression comes into the public or has impact on other people, it should be regulated, no matter what kind of expression it is and in any circumstances. Within the rapid development of network, a series of problems are inevitably produced, citizen’s individual rights, public management and judicial justice probably can be influenced by the exercise of speech in cyberspace. So it is very necessary to make the legal regulation for freedom of speech in cyberspace better. Once the network speech freedom conflicts with national security, the public interests and others, as its legal boundaries,the speech in cyberspace should not to be harm national security, not to infringe upon the privacy, not to infringe upon the copyright.Through the analysis of present situation of our current legal regulating for freedom of speech in cyberspace, this paper argues that our country’s legal regulation of freedom of speech in cyberspace has defects in legislation criteria, legislative process, legislation system and the feasibility at present, and concretly including the following four aspects:First of all, the freedom of speech in cyberspace has low legislation level.Most of them are gathered in the department level,threrfore the constrainting ability of legislation is restricted. Secondly, lacking of democratic participation during the legislative process.There is no widely listen to the comments from relevant agencies, organizations and citizens,meanwhile the feedback channel is not perfect. Thirdly, lots of legislative provisions are repeatability and messy, failure to form a professional legislation system which within basic law to give priority to, along with other laws, administrative rules and regulations and local laws and regulations. Finally, legislative situation does not adapt with the development of network platform and the trend of network public opinion, lacking of system protection and regulation.Phenomenons such as broad stripes, empty contents and poor maneuverability ect.are still existed in the current legislation.Through the analysis of the present situation, this paper argues that speech in cyberspace should be perfect at the greatest degree witnin the legal limits. The suggestions are as follow:Firstly, starting from the angle of legislation,improve the legislative level, regulates the departments and local’s legislation, ensure the democratization of the legislative process.Bulid up the professional legislation system of basic law to give priority to, department regulations and local regulations as auxiliary, and do extensive investigation, make the legislation predict, refine the specific operation of laws and regulations, make the legislation practical and feasible. Secondly, strengthen the function of self-discipline in speech in cyberspace’s protection, provide necessary preconditions and well industry environment for the freedom of speech in cyberspace’s achievement and specification. Based on respecting and perfecting the industry self-discipline, providing improvement suggestions of strengthening the website self-discipline and Internet users’ self-discipline. Establishing relevant network coordination institution, strengthening the network technology research and basic network knowledge’s popularization. Meanwhile, in order to protect the development of freedom of speech in cyberspace better,makeing regulations through the network real name registration and self constraint of speech subject is necessary,too.