A Study On The Mechanism Of Rule By Law In China's Network Speech Regulation

The influence of online speech on the real society is more and more important as the Internet industry prosperous.Online speech means the speech in the cyberspace of net citizens which not only can be expressed in text or picture,but also in video,emoji or internet program.A network environment that allows netizens to freely express their views not only helps to improve the efficiency of democracy,but also enhances citizens' participation in public life.The development of the network has also brought a lot of negative effects which have a tight relation with online speech,such as rampant pornographic content and crimes frequently happened on Internet.Thus,every country in the world take measures to regulate the online speech.In our country,the regulation of online speech happens on three levels:the first level is the government,the second is the Industry Associations,the third is the network service providers.At the level of government,the state regulates the network service providers and the behavior of netizens by formulating series of laws and regulations,so as to achieve the purpose of regulating online speech.Cyberspace Administration of China whose power including administrative legislative power and administrative enforcement power is authorized by the State Council is the government department specialized in regulating the contents of the network information.Internet police also have certain regulatory power over the network speech for the need of maintaining the network security.At the level of industry associations,they regulate network speech mainly through the signing of conventions in conjunction with network service providers,promulgation of codes of conduct and the initiation of proposals.Industry associations mainly play a connection and communication role between the government and Internet users or network service providers.Members of the association who fail to comply with the Convention may impose penalties in accordance with the Conventions drew by industry associations.Meantime,the industry associations undertake the task of network technology innovation.At the level of network service providers,they mainly regulate the network speech through a basic protocol which signed by the users when they use the network service for the first time and a series of supporting documents.Some Internet users obtained part of the management power through certain procedures have the power to drew rules and censor the speech made by netizens.In addition,internet service providers use automatic filtering technology as the first procedure of the regulation of network speech.There are problems in the network speech regulation mechanism of our country from two aspects,including the form of rule of law and the substantive of the rule of law.Vague normative terms,the recessive regulatory means,the unclear status and power of Cyberspace Administration of China are problems in form of rule of law.In the aspect of substantive of rule of law,the problem is there is no effective means to restrict the discretionary power of censors.To solve the problems above,the solutions can be draw in both form of rule of law and substantive rule of law.In the form aspect,the first step is to clear the boundary of the speech which is not allowed online,the second step is to disclose the implicit regulatory means,the last is to clear the administrative status and the power of Cyberspace Administration of China.In the substantive aspect,the discretionary power of censors shall be limited effectively.As an internet power,China should not only learn from foreign advanced experience,but also actively innovate the network speech regulation mechanism by play the technological advantages when regulates the internet speech.Thus,we can provide experience for the world's rule of law in cyberspace.