Wu Yee Ng's Webpage For CS408

Contact Information

wzk5@wildcats.unh.edu

Assignment 6: Hate and the Internet

1. I would define hate speech as any form of communication that purposely berates another person
2. I think some limits should be placed on free expression to deal with problems caused by hate speech. I would include religion related speech in those limits as I think everyone(even if that person is not religious/does not believe in any religion) should respect another person's religion so there should never be any hate speech on another person's religion.
3. I think that we should attempt to do that . However, I do not think it will work out well because amongst the 196 countries in the world, there will be multiple issues that can be considered hate speech from each country and that would lead to it being too broad to actually define and deal with.
4. I think censorship and/or filtering of hate group websites is necessary. These hate group websites promote hostility towards individuals just because of a different in race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. These websites are also how the hate groups primarily recruit their members. If no action is taken to deal with these websites, it could lead to hate crimes happening at a much higher rate.
5. In my opinion, the creators of hate-oriented websites should be held responsible to some extent for any of the actions of people who view those websites and commit hate crimes. They created the websites in the first place to promote hostility against one particular individual/group of individuals. Therefore if the material that they posted on their websites lead to someone else committing hate crimes, they should be held responsible as well, rather than putting the entire blame on the person who committed the crime.
6. I think that restrictions should be imposed on hate-related material from being available to children on the Internet. I simply cannot think of a reason why children should be exposed to websites promoting racism, discrimination because of sexual orientation, religion, etc. I think that these websites should require viewers to register with proper identification to prevent children from accessing them. I also think that parents should pay more attention to what their children are looking at on the internet.
7. I think that there should be no distinction between what is legal or illegal online or offline. All material posted online are posted by people who live in the real world so if the material is illegal in the real world, it should be made illegal online as well.
8. I think that there is a huge difference between hate-related material and objectionable material. Hate-related material purposefully promotes hostility towards other people (be it an individual or a group of individuals) and could lead to hate crimes. On the other hand, objectionable material on the internet does not have adverse consequences like that. However, precautions should be taken to prevent children from accessing these objectionable material like pornography or material with heavy violence in them.

Assignment 7

Assignment 8

Assignment 9