The ADL has just had a conference in Israel about "hate speech". They seem to have put out a very mixed message as a result. On the one hand they say:
"Dozens of experts from Israel and the United States joined Marcus for the first ADL conference on "Hate and the Internet" that was held in Israel Monday. While experts explored the various definitions of hate speech, and how it manifested itself online, the focus of the conference was what should be done to stop "cyberhate."
"We cannot just say we will shut down all these sites and they will go away, and I don't think ignoring them will help either," said Marcus. "I think the best approach could be summarized in a phrase that was said by [US Supreme Court Justice Louis] Brandeis long ago... 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.'" ....
You can't censor your way out of hate," said Marcus. "Brandeis knew that a long time ago."
But on the other hand we read:
"Instead, said Marcus, lawmakers in individual countries should consult with Internet policing units to create legal standards. "It's not the decision of the private companies or the international bodies or the international experts to say what is and isn't good content," said Meir Brand, director of Google Israel. "It's the decision of the lawmakers, the people elected by government."
Which seems to be a recommendation that governments SHOULD censor the speech concerned. It seems rather a pity to me that they did not stick to the sensible first part of their message.
But the excerpt I like best is this one:
"The problem is that each country has its own standard of what constitutes hate," said Marcus, who recounted that during a recent conference in Europe, Russian representatives believed that Seventh-Day Adventists should be qualified as a hate group because of their views on the army and nationalism. "We clearly cannot adopt a universal standard that everyone agrees on."
Exactly.
