Pornography, Privacy, and Digital Self-Help

19 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2001 Last revised: 29 Mar 2016

See all articles by Tom W. Bell

Tom W. Bell

Chapman University, The Dale E. Fowler School of Law

Date Written: 2000

Abstract

With regard both to inhibiting Internet pornography and promoting Internet privacy, the adequacy of self-help alternatives ought to play a crucial role in evaluating the propriety of state action. Legislation that would have restricted Internet speech considered indecent or harmful to minors has already faced and failed that test. Several prominent organizations dedicated to preserving civil liberties argued successfully that self-help technologies offered less restrictive means of achieving the purported ends of such legislation, rendering it unconstitutional. Surprisingly, those same organizations have, of late, joined the call for subjecting another kind of speech - speech within or by commercial entities and about Internet users - to political regulation. With regard to privacy no less than pornography, however, self-help offers Internet users a less restrictive means of preventing the alleged harms of free speech than does state action. Indeed, a review of privacy-protecting technologies shows them to work even more effectively than the filtering and blocking software used to combat online smut. Digital self-help, in defense of Internet privacy, thus offers an alternative, making regulation by state authorities not only constitutionally suspect but also, from the more general point of view of policy, functionally inferior.

JEL Classification: K39, O38, O33

Suggested Citation

Bell, Tom W., Pornography, Privacy, and Digital Self-Help (2000). Pornography, Privacy, and Digital Self-Help, 19 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 133 (2000), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=257689 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.257689

Tom W. Bell (Contact Author)

Chapman University, The Dale E. Fowler School of Law ( email )

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Orange, CA 92866-1099
United States
714-628-2503 (Phone)
714-628-2576 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.tomwbell.com

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