Looking At The Social Problems Of Racism

flavor At The Social Problems Of RacismRacism was a pressing soci open problem long before the emergence of the digital age. Earlier, the proliferation of shun crimes was tied(p) to geography of the place, but due to the advent of modern technologies, the proliferation of loathe crimes and hate belief set up be unlimited transfer in the instauration through the internet. Therefore, the advancement of digital communication technologies has added a new dimension to the racial problem by make the racial abhorrence materials comfortably accessible. Through the internet, authors are free to post anything directly into the public champaign where on that point is a potential readership of millions of raft. This is totally dispa pass judgment from publishing a book or newspaper article, where the author is cognitive case to the discip ancestry and bidding of an editor. Thus, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to exclude from the internet those who would seek to dist ribute potentially offensive material via its various facilities.1The object of this test is to discuss the order of racial subject on the net. beginningly, it lead explore how the antiblack surfeit being g all overned by the linked States, atomic number 63 plain as salubrious as global level and then goes on to examine the problems in regulating racist confine on the internet. The final part of the essay will boil great deal on how to solve those problems.In the late 1990s, every country started to apply their anti-racist legislation to the mesh, based upon the principle that what is illegal off-line is illegal online.2Nevertheless, legal strategies for besiegeing racial crime subject differ from country to country.3In the United States, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the Congress from making laws which respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, infringing on the freedom of quarrel and infrin ging on the freedom of the press.4Thus, US law has been criticised for innately protecting racist and afraid(predicate) propaganda since public authorities are forbidden from interfering in the content of much(prenominal)(prenominal) communications. Besides, there is no clear guidance as to what constitutes a hate linguistic process crime in cyberspace from the United States Supreme Court and what is at a lower place the protection of freedom of speech.5On the separate egest, europium countries adopted a different way to solve this problem. gibe to Article 10 of atomic number 63an meeting on Human Rights, pay of free speech is not absolute it is subject to the consideration of morality, congenital security and public safety. No protection is given to speeches that deny or lead to the destruction of human dignity or opposites conference properly by virtue of Article 17. Moreover, the Council of Europe Recommendation on abominate Speech6called upon member States to ta ke appropriate steps to combat hate speech by ensuring that such steps form part of a comprehensive get down to the phenomenon which overly targets its social, economic, political, cultural, and other root causes.7As the racist problem is becoming more serious over the internet, the Convention on Cybercrime treaty was drawn up by the Council of Europe which signed by thirty-eight European countries, including United States, Japan, Canada and South Africa. However, the Convention failed to reach a substantial international agreement on racist speech standards. For instance, The U.S. relegating refuses to sign the treaty as such provision is not complying with its constitutional protection of free speech. Thus, the members decided to make these controversial provisions subject to a separate Protocol.8The Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime focus on the criminalization of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems. The purpose of the Additional Protocol is to harmonize polar criminal law in the fight against racialism and xenophobia on the meshing and to improve international cooperation in this area.As regards to the international legal regimen, there are numerous international instruments which attempt to address the problem of racism. These allow in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the excretion of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1963) (ICERD), the International Convention on cultured and Political Rights (1966) (ICCPR), the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976) (ICESCR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) (CEDAW), the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973) (Apartheid Convention).With respect to racism and xenophobia, whizz of the specific challenges arises from national differences in free speech protectio n.9As different jurisdictions internationally may not recognize the actionable form of racial hatred content, it is not easy to criminalize them if they are protected at a lower place various national freedom provisions. For instance, marketing Nazi memorabilia is legal under the First Amendment in the United States, whereas it is illegal in Germany. Even Europe citizens are willing to accept that freedom of speech does not immunise statement that intended to incite hatred and discrimination US citizens potently support their First Amendment which affords a citizens right to freedom of speech a higher status than other rights.10The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the disposal finishnot censor freedom of speech whether it is expression on the meshwork or public speech or cultivation on print or broadcast media. All Web sites in the U.S. are viewed within the handed-down limits of the Constitution. As illustrated by the case of Yahoo Inc. v La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L Antisemitisme,11it is a complex issue when nations with conflicting laws confront each other on the internet.Due to the lack of the international standard for the term racial discrimination, it is difficult to introduce effective criminal sanctions and enforce them strictly. Racist and xenophobic material was defined by the Additional Protocol as any written material, any image or any other internal representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as nearly as religion if use as a pretext for any of these factors.12However, it is potent to draw a line between forms of prejudice such as racism, on the one hand and emotions such as hate. Racism is a wrongheaded prejudice that deserves to be contested, whereas hatred is not objectionable in itself. Its simply an emotion, and it can be an entirely legitimate and appr opriate emotion at that. In fact, the discussions close to hate speech and hate crimes tend to muddle these two things. The Council of Europe uses the word hatred, in the context of the Additional Protocol to the Convention On Cybercrime, to mean intense dis wish well or rancor.13 further are right-thinking people not entitled to feel intense dislike or enmity towards racists?14Furthermore, some criticized that content regulation by the Additional Protocol to the Convention On Cybercrime is frightening in its scope as the Bible or the Quran could fall afoul of such all encompassing censorship.15In addition, the nature of the lucre makes the limitation of national sovereignty exist in reality. As we know each country does convey his interest and problem, it is hard to have a consensus on the judicial attitude toward racial hatred content. United States ref apply to adopt anti-hate speech laws is not because of the notion of American exceptualism, quite it is mainly because to co ntrol hate speech would contravene the First Amendment.16But when one states cannot or does not want to control the content of the web sites based on its territory, it will become the safe harbour for those lack to carry out particular forms of antisocial behaviour such as the distribution of pornography, the peddling of hate speech, or the sending of unsolicited netmail message.17Consequently, the other states may face difficulty to exercise their control over their web sites. With the United States legally unable to sign the Additional Protocol, it essentially undermines the effectiveness of the Protocol.18In order to tackle racial hatred content on the internet, law enforcement is the basic utensil that should be employed. First of all, there is a pauperism to have a global definition as to what constitutes hate speech or racist. Besides, the use of an international legal regime to tackle racial discrimination is highly recommended as this approach will give people a chance to have their cases heard in an international arena. This is very important especially when all local meaning of legal redress have been exhausted.19Further, law enforcement agencies dealing with cyber hate mustiness possess necessary knowledge and skill in order to correct this technical, fast and ever changing environment. Therefore, comprehensive training must be given from time to time.In addition, we should have a regulation like the European Directive on E-commerce, which limits the liability of ISPs for the content they host or to which they give access. This Directive is totally different from the United States law which allot complete immunity to ISPs.20Once obtaining actual knowledge that it is hosting illegal content, the provider need to remove the illegal content as soon as possible otherwise the hosting provider could be held liable.21This provision is very high-octane for tackling illegal content since ISPs are eager to ensure the benefit of immunity. This is in like manner true as most of the U.S. ISPs do have assets in Europe.22Furthermore, American ISPs that act in such a manner will be protected by the Good Samaritan provision under the Communication Decency shape which protects ISPs that voluntarily take action to restrict access to or approachability of material that they consider to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.23The gang of the European Directive and the Good Samaritan provision make it possible for Europe to reach American Internet companies with business interests in Europe, despite the First Amendment shield.24Such a tool has already been used by Germany against eBay pertaining to the sales event of Nazi songs, books and clothing.25After being notified, eBay disabled the access to the controversial items nowadays without any delay.26Cyber hate is a global phenomenon and cannot be settled via a local strategy. Thus, it requires an international approach to establish legal norms that respect national conventions but ensure cooperation between agencies and governments.27There should be better international co-operation and co-ordination by those NGOs and other private organizations monitoring the use of the Internet for offensive and terroristic purposes as suggested by Brian Marcus.28The International Network Against Cyber Hate, through partnership with the Anti-Defamation group discussion is a good example as to how international co-operation between non-governmental groups in the United States and the rest of the world can work together to combat on common issues that raised by the internet.29Besides, internet providers and hosts should incorporate inscribe of conduct in their Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies that includes agreed-upon definitions and/or broad rules on what types of materials they will not host and what types of materials are illegal, this is crucial by making codes of conduct enforceable and moving tow ards internationally agreeable minimum rules.30There are a lot of US-based companies have such exemplary models that could be followed to encourage this manufacture-based self-regulation.31In addition, any such efforts must be truly voluntary because any sort of government engagement in any self-regulation effort will not be able to avoid raising questions somewhat possible coercion no affaire how benign such involvement might seem.32Since the task of assessing the legality or illegality of specific data is difficult for Internet providers, there is a need to have a hotline such as UK Internet Watch arse (IWF) by enabling the public to response to racial hatred content on the Internet that they find of substantial concern.33These hotlines can help in ensuring effective and appropriate action be taken if the reported content is potentially illegal. In fact, so long as an ISP acted to take down on notice it could satisfactorily claim immunity as a host from liability.34Thus, the availability of hotline has to be widely publicized on the Internet as well as in traditional mass media. In addition, International cooperation between hotline is required to have effective action across boundaries in cases where the reported content is not hosted in that particular country. This also helps to overcome problems in the complex diplomatic procedures required for cross-border cooperation of law enforcement authorities.35 time ISPs and other organizations that host Web sites can restrict hate speech by taking down illegal content, racial content can also be restricted on the other end, by victimization a filter or other software that denies the Web substance abuser the ability to access sites containing those contents.36One technology that can be used to screen out unacceptable content is the Platform for Internet glut Selection (PICS) which proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium.37PICS can rate the content of Web sites based on a number of factors, such as viole nce or language. A Web site can voluntarily rate itself using the PICS criteria. Besides, the product called SurfWatch can be used to filters out hate speech and the filtering software product called Bess can blocks online content that advocates discrimination against others based on race, religion, gender, nationality or sexual orientation.38Thus, web users have the right to choose not to look at racist or hate content, even Bigots have the right to post them.No self-regulatory mechanism can work independently without an education and awareness campaign. The Internet industry should work together with government agencies to provide general awareness of self-regulatory systems such as filtering systems and hotlines. Such a campaign should be directed at children and parents as well as a general campaign involving order at large. School play an essential part in lot children to acquire and develop the knowledge and skills to understand the benefits and problematic Internet content. Therefore, the information dish outd between monitoring groups should be made widely available, and stick on on the Internet so it can be shared freely to help parents and educators recognize hate sites on the Internet.39As suggested by Durban Declaration, the Internet itself can be an effective tool in the fight against racism. Therefore, the Internet industry should work in conjunction with government agencies as well as private bodies to create awareness and promoting attitude change about discrimination.In conclusion, the regulation of racial content on the internet is in its infancy. It is a global phenomenon which cannot be tackled alone by a one country. In fact, given the global and borderless architecture of the Internet, no single approach can provide a solution to tackle racial hatred content on the internet. It must bear in mind that racism was there since time immemorial, it does not exist because of internet, thus education is a crucial tool in combating racism, ra cial discrimination and xenophobia. Therefore, I would share the view of Dr Karen Mock and Lisa Armony that the fight against racism and hatred on the Internet will be won through increased efforts to incorporate final solution education, multiculturalism, anti-racist, and human rights education in the schools.40