Explicit Content, Expletives, and the Internet: Free Speech, or Blatant Lack of Restraint?

16 Aug
2010


The Internet is burst­ing with rel­e­vant and quickly acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion, incon­ceiv­able social con­nec­tions, con­tin­u­ous vari­eties of lit­er­a­ture, and emerg­ing global thought. There is no end to the depth of pure lov­ing good­ness avail­able within this resource.

This land­scape is also soaked drip­ping wet with exple­tives and explicit con­tent. It is loaded with heavy com­mer­cial­ism, bul­ly­ing, lies, and rude­ness. Ornery lit­tle crea­tures known as trolls plague sites, inten­tion­ally dis­rupt­ing com­ment com­mu­ni­ties with offen­sive lan­guage and in the dark­est cor­ner of the Internet spec­trum, child pornog­ra­phy thrives.

Obscenity is not pro­tected under Free Speech, but cur­rently in the United States there exists a grave lack in con­sen­sus as to what con­sti­tutes obscen­ity. Many cases of obscen­ity crum­ble in the cour­t­house when faced against stead­fast advo­cates of expo­sure who have no doubts of what con­sti­tutes their free­doms. This weak stance has led to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of obscen­ity and inde­cency in all forms of media, but nowhere is it as preva­lent as it is online.

Without reli­able reg­u­la­tion the Internet is ulti­mately man­aged by the users. It is the self-​regulating users who access and cre­ate sites, which form this online envi­ron­ment.

Does free­dom imply an oblig­a­tion of respon­si­bil­ity?

Freedom of Speech is a gift worth pro­tect­ing.

But what about those who abuse this free­dom while reck­lessly harm­ing the rights of oth­ers? What about those who mis­in­ter­pret the recog­ni­tion of this free­dom as enti­tle­ment, believ­ing they can say any­thing with­out con­se­quence?

Obscenity is not pro­tected by the First Amendment. Neither is libel, threats, extor­tion, harass­ment, fraud, false adver­tis­ing, incit­ing a riot, or child pornog­ra­phy, among oth­ers.

Who will draw the line where the law is con­cerned?

Should Internet users take notice when free speech becomes out­weighed by social costs?

The prob­lem lies in defin­ing social costs.

A work is con­sid­ered obscene by the United States Supreme Court only if it sat­is­fies the entire three-​pronged test:

  1. whether the aver­age per­son, apply­ing con­tem­po­rary com­mu­nity stan­dards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the pruri­ent inter­est;
  2. whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offen­sive way sex­ual con­duct specif­i­cally defined by applic­a­ble state law; and
  3. whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks seri­ous lit­er­ary, artis­tic, polit­i­cal or sci­en­tific value.

Opinions as to what qual­i­fies as obscene under this require­ment vary by state, gen­er­a­tion, mood, and so on. Is it even pos­si­ble to define ‘con­tem­po­rary com­mu­nity stan­dards’ across the global land­scape of the Internet?

The label, ‘inde­cency’ is used to define mate­r­ial which (among other require­ments: see FCC FAQ’s ) is ‘patently offen­sive,’ but which does not rise to the level of obscen­ity. In the United States inde­cency is awarded much pro­tec­tion under the Supreme Court’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Constitution. Therefore, vir­tu­ally all mate­r­ial that is merely inde­cent as opposed to obscene is legal under the American law.

Advocates of unbri­dled free­dom sug­gest, “If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.” But unlike a library or book­store an online user must wade through all cat­e­gories lumped together. Users are often blind­sided when coarse lan­guage or explicit con­tent does not fit the pur­pose of the post, site, or search results.

How will you choose to express your­self online?

Freedom of Speech enables valu­able explo­ration of the human con­di­tion.

Unfortunately, when use of this free­dom lacks viable pur­pose it becomes nar­cis­sis­tic and vio­lat­ing.

Responsible use of free speech does not mean express­ing only that which will offend no one. In fact, it may offend many. But respon­si­bil­ity requires the unleash­ing of the free­dom of restraint. It requires sin­cer­ity, crit­i­cal thought, and ben­e­fi­cial pur­pose. It requires knowl­edge and con­sid­er­a­tion of the audi­ence.

It’s pos­si­ble that offen­sive lan­guage and con­tent are merely crimes of per­cep­tion.

The ques­tion is: Do blog­gers and Internet users know how their intended audi­ence per­ceives their con­tent?

Imagine the Internet was a com­mu­nity gar­den. Users of this gar­den are free to choose how they tend this shared ter­rain. Free to plant weeds that choke. Free to grow mag­nif­i­cent blooms. The man­ner in which the major­ity of these gar­den­ers choose to cul­ti­vate will deter­mine the land­scape of this gar­den, cre­at­ing a pic­ture of what the peo­ple of the earth express col­lec­tively.

What do you think? Do online users have a respon­si­bil­ity to con­sider the rights of oth­ers?

by Theresa Santy

[Sources used: moral​i​ty​in​media​.org, and The Repeal of Reticence, America’s Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art by Rochelle Gurstein]

Theresa Santy has written 1 article(s) for this site

Theresa Santy is the author of the blogfiction, KristenAC the ManiAC, and a member of the incredibly supportive forum, Faithwriters.com. She loves Jesus, family and chocolate and recently discovered a Google search of ‘happiness is’ results in 61.5 million hits.

  • http://topsy.com/www.literarynobody.com/2010/08/explicit-content-expletives-and-the-internet-free-speech-or-blatant-lack-of-restraint.html?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that men­tion Explicit Content, Expletives, and the Internet: Free Speech, or Blatant Lack of Restraint? | Tales of a Literary Nobody — Topsy​.com

    […] This post was men­tioned on Twitter by Toya Bryant, Social Media Insider, JobShoots, JobShoots, Alltop Social Media and oth­ers. Alltop Social Media said: Explicit Content, Expletives, and the Internet: Free Speech, or Blatant Lack of Restraint? http://​bit​.ly/​b​2​2​uFl Social-Media.alltop […]

  • Mickfly

    There are few too many rep­re­sen­ta­tives of decency. Kudos to Theresa Santy for rec­og­niz­ing the sec­u­lar­iza­tion ball rolling with great momen­tum. The inter­net is just a cat­a­lyst for a speedy process of this move­ment. Free Speech is prob­a­bly one of the most mis­un­der­stood (and abused) aspects of the Constitution. Whenever I hear the term “free speech” I know that I am in for an ear­ful of com­plaints about vio­lated “rights”. Of course, there are oth­ers that use the term “free speech” as a pro­tec­tive umbrella to elicit obnox­ious behav­iors.
    Because of this, an unfor­tu­nate turn of the tables has occurred. Those that desire to pro­tect free speech as intended in the Constitution are accused of being “uncon­sti­tu­tional”. Those that use no dis­cre­tion what­so­ever as to the effect of words or printed mate­r­ial main­tain that this is a “right” and can­not be denied.
    We’ve moved from the unthink­able to the think­able (as described by Francis Scheaffer in “Whatever Happened to the Human Race”). The late Mr. Scheaffer had no clue as to what was in store for the future in elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He only observed the medi­ums of the day (60’s 70’s) but took notice that there was a def­i­nite par­a­digm shift in val­ues that would pave the path­way to the prob­lem we now have. He gave a warn­ing far in advance but we’re in deep.… Pray about it.

  • http://www.kristenacthemaniac.blogspot.com/ Theresa

    Thanks for your com­ment Mickfly. I agree there are too few rep­re­sen­ta­tives of decency. I also believe that the major­ity of Americans are in favor of decency. How can this be?

    Those who are in favor of decency tend to be more reserved and are less likely to protest. Advocates of expo­sure tend to be less restrained and are more likely to protest.

    Silence is often mis­un­der­stood as accep­tance.

  • Lisamarie40

    I must live by a dif­fer­ent moral code than most. I write in com­par­i­son to how I would speak to some­one facet to face. Maybe that is part of the prob­lem oth­ers use exple­tives in casual con­ver­sa­tion so it comes nat­u­rally to them. I do wish there could be some sort of fil­ter sim­i­lar to the cable net­works and if you are not signed up for porn etc. you don’t get it on your screen. I hon­estly just wish there were more writ­ers like Theresa who are inter­est­ing and thought pro­vok­ing rather than shock­ing. When some­one writes graf­fiti with exple­tives it gets cleaned up is there some way to clean up the inter­net? It is my hope we pro­duce a gen­er­a­tion with strong use of the eng­lish lan­guage so that they are able to express them­selves fully with out gut­ter talk.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    I com­pletely agree with you Lisa Marie. I don’t use pro­fan­ity and I avoid any­thing obscene but it is becom­ing harder and harder to find things that aren’t. Television cen­sor have relaxed their views and it seems even pro­fes­sional media no longer ascribes to any rule when it comes to obscen­ity.

  • http://www.kristenacthemaniac.blogspot.com Theresa

    Thanks Lisamarie and Toya for your com­ments. There are fil­ters for the inter­net, pro­grams which can be pur­chased, but they either over fil­ter, mak­ing web searches use­less, or they under fil­ter, mak­ing the pro­gram inef­fec­tive. The Internet envi­ron­ment is so dynamic, a decent fil­ter pur­chased today, may be use­less a cou­ple of months from now.

    But there is some­thing bet­ter than a fil­ter, and that is our voice. If you are on a site, and you enjoy what you’re read­ing except for some of the lan­guage and content–contact the author. You can send a pri­vate mes­sage. List two or three things you like about the site then respect­fully men­tion the por­tions you find offen­sive, and why. It may be the author has no idea a vis­i­tor is offended.

  • http://geekgirlwife.com/ Serenity, The Geek.Girl.Wife

    I don’t use exple­tives or any of that…you can express your­self cre­atively with­out all that. I call shenani­gans for poor cog­ni­tive and writng skills on those that do.

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    Thank you for the com­ment Serenity :) Neither do I. I don’t think it is nec­es­sary espe­cially in a pro­fes­sional set­ting. Profanity dom­i­nates every medium unfor­tu­nately mak­ing it a chal­lenge to avoid.

  • Theresa

    @Serenity and Toya,

    I agree. Vulgar lan­guage is out of place in a pro­fes­sional set­ting. Often while read­ing a well-​written arti­cle on an infor­ma­tional blog, I’ll come accross course con­tent that doesn’t fit the pur­pose of the arti­cle. It’s like eat­ing a deli­cious cup­cake and then notic­ing rat drop­pings in it. Yuk!

    Serenity, you are absolutely cor­rect that one can express them­self cre­ativ­ley wouthout course or vul­gar con­tent. In fact, one can express them­self more cre­atively when using crit­i­cal think­ing skills, tak­ing plenty of time to for­mu­late a post, and move beyond super­fi­cial and mean­ing­less text.

  • Stacy

    Theresa, you have hit the nail totally on the head. I can add noth­ing to what you said — thank you for post­ing this!!!

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    I totally agree with you on that Stacy. Thanks for the com­ment :)

  • http://www.kristenacthemaniac.blogspot.com Theresa

    Thanks for com­ment­ing Stacy. It is my hope media lit­er­acy will increase accross cul­tures, and in turn, use of crit­i­cal think­ing skills regard­ing use of media will also increase.

  • http://www.gutterguardreviews.net Gutter Guard Reviews

    Bravo, Bros! keep going like this, more good info again.

  • http://www.gutterguardreviews.net Gutter Guard Reviews

    Oh!…that’s great help­ful, it’s so right to me! Million thanks for the arti­cle,

  • http://www.literarynobody.com/ Literary Nobody

    You are so wel­come. Thank you for tak­ing the time to read this great guest post :)



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