Ok, so I'm currently enrolled in an English class called, "Race, Sex, and Identity Online." Until last night I've found it rather boring, as it had very much to do with MUD's and MOO's... which I'm still confused about but I know that it goes back to a game called Dungeons and Dragons from the 70's and is sort of like a chatroom... whatever.
Anyway, last night I got pretty fired up about something I read for the class. Apparently, in one of these MUD's, LambdaMOO to be specific, a Virtual Rape took place. Virtual Rape? What is Virtual Rape? Ok, let me tell you the story. A man signed in to this MUD calling himself Bungle. In this room there were "identites" named Starsinger and Legba, amongst others. In the chat room Bungles said that he had a voodoo doll that made others in the room do things. Keep in mind that this is all text, actions are written as text, for example, "Bungle walk across the room and sits down next to Starslinger." So back to my story; Bungle narates that he has a voodoo doll and he starts attributing actions to other identities in the room, primarily Legba and Starsinger. He begins attributing horrible, horrific, disgusting sex acts and acts of violence to their identites. Apparently Legba was traumatized by this and caused quite an uproar about the effect it had on her. Good for her I guess... Took it to court and everything, where it was thrown out - freedom of speech. This protected Bungle.
But this is why I became so irritated by this story: This didn't affect her REALLY. She let it affect her, she chose to let it affect her. She was Legba, she was anonymous, more than likely, no one in the room knew who she was in real life. If she doesn't want crap like that to happen, why doesn't she stay away from the chatrooms? And if that was too much to ask of her, why didn't she at least leave when Bungle started writing this junk?! She could have just walked away and made a sandwich and gone on with her life. Calculate your risks.... if you don't want to be exposed to that crap, stay out of the chatrooms. Just like if you don't want to increase your chances of getting raped in real life, don't walk through a dark park by yourself in a bad part of town where rapes frequently occur. Duh.
Not the end of my story. I had somewhat of a change of heart from tonight's lecture in this class.
Story #2
A student from Michigan University posted libidinous and violent descriptions of himself raping and murdering of a fellow student, complete with her name and everything. Now, these were only descriptions, there was no action of this at all. How freaked out would you be to google your own name (which I know we've all done) and see that come up? So this went to court also and it too was dismissed. Freedom of Speech. 
So here are my questions:
Where do we draw the line? So many things about "freedom of speech" have been contested.
1957 US Supreme court determines that "obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press." Obscenity is defined as "material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest." (I had to dictionary.com "prurient" - it means 'causing lasviciousness or lust") So in other words, if it turns ya on, it's obscene. There goes Matthew McConaughey... seriously though, that's a pretty general term.
1962 the definition of obscene was narrowed. It now had to be "so offensive on its face as to affront current contemporary standards." I added emphasis to contemporary. I work with a bunch of crude males, I dare say that absolutely nothing obscene would affront them, and the are a pretty good representation of today's society. Therefore, nothing would be ruled as obscene and we can have porn on the billboards and in the windows at the mall. Because it does not "affront current contemporary standards."
Also interesting to me is the whole debate on speaking ill of the country and it's leaders. In 1918 the Sedition Act was passed that which prohibited any form of criticism of the US, the government or the flag.
1942 US Supreme court determines that "fighting words" are not protected by Freedom of Speech but the rest of the stuff prohibited from 1918 on was protected. "Fighting words" being something that can be considered a threat to the government.
So what do we do? Although I hate all the negativity regarding America and it's polictics and politicians, we can't stop it because of freedom of speech (and I'm not arguing that we should.) We can't tell people what they can and can't post on their websites. We can't say that Victoria Secret can't put pictures of girls in thongs in their window displays. Nor do I want to. I'm not a fan of laws. I honestly wish that the US was the way it was when the founding fathers started the country. There didn't have to be a law for every little thing... but times change, and things do have to be addressed. And people do have to be protected. But where do you draw the line???
4 comments:
Like all rules we have, there is the "spirit of the law" and the "letter of the law". I think the spirit of free speech is to allow us the freedom to express our beliefs, given that we have the freedom to think what we want. Whether or not we actually think for ourselves is another issue.
Obviously there has to be limits in the letter of the law; slander, libel, assault, perjury, contempt of court, etc. But I don't think any of those things actually limits us from believing what we want to believe, and expressing those ideas without fear of repercussion from the government.
If a law actually diminishes that freedom, then that is a bad thing (and those do exist, no matter how patriotic of a name they find for the bill).
I had to read that twice Joe... but I agree with everything you said. Yes, none of those things (slander, libel, assault, etc.) limits us from believing, but it does limit us on expression, which still takes me back to my original question of how and where do you draw the line on these contested expressions? I don't know if that makes sense to you - my question makes sense in my head... Love ya!
It is a hard question to answer because it is a misleading question to ask. Just asking where the line should be drawn implies that a line can be drawn.
The problem is that humans are smart. We can tell the difference between real freedom of expression, and mean-spirited words masquerading as freedom of expression. Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible to write down a set of rules that will cover all scenarios, therefore there cannot be a "line drawn". We need to just use our best judgment, and that's why we have three branches of government, not two.
deep...
Post a Comment