Title: Gaining Cyberspace 'Sea Legs': A Proposal for a Judicial Cyber Education Program in District Courts
Abstract: As the Internet becomes increasingly integrated into everyday life, maintaining control over the portrayal of one’s image becomes exceptionally difficult. Speech over the Internet, or “cyberspeech,” enhances the means by which people communicate to the masses. Other increases in technology have created the permanence of online activity. For example, search engine sophistication makes cyberspeech permanent, “divorced from context,” and available to all. The permanence of an online footprint poses devastating consequences for those “dogged by the digital scarlet letter.” Courts have largely interpreted § 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) to grant blanket immunity to online intermediaries from civil liability for content posted by third parties. This broad immunity leaves defamation victims without recourse since third-party posters often hide under the veil of anonymity. The First Amendment undeniably gives publishers the freedom to speak through various Internet platforms, but this freedom cannot exist in a vacuum. Eventually, the demand for accountability will increase when those freedoms are more frequently abused. One way to reduce harmful online speech would be for online norms to shift, perhaps through education, towards discouragement of such speech. That would not likely be enough, however, because the public seems to have an insatiable appetite for scandal, drama, and gossip, particularly online. With the speed of technological progress, statutes regarding technology quickly become outdated. At the same time, judges are constantly having to reevaluate precedent to account for new factual and technological contexts. Yet, courts resist judicial reevaluation of CDA § 230 because the statute lies in the cyberspace domain where judges “feel most at sea.” Cyberspace requires a new understanding of how law interacts with technology. Courts need enhanced training to play the active role society demands in the contexts of cyberspace and technology. This Comment argues that judges’ lack of technological and sociological cyberspace knowhow inhibits them from clawing back at CDA § 230 immunity, and performing adequate analysis in other cases involving online intermediaries. As a remedy, this Comment proposes a Judicial Cyber Education Program to be implemented at the district court level.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-11-24
Language: en
Type: article
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