The Legal Regulation of Hate Speech on the Internet and its Conflict with Freedom of Expression

Abstract

The Internet with its unique ability of communication of one-to-many and many-to-many and its potential for anonymous and mobile interaction has become the new frontier for the dissemination of hate speech. To deal with this issue, many countries have enacted legislation criminalizing hate speech, but also international legal acts have been introduced for the harmonization of national legislations. In this paper, the regulations of hate speech on the Internet on an international level are presented and its conflict with the right to freedom of expression is explored.

Keywords: Hate speech, freedom of expression, Internet, Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime