The Future of Freedom of Expression Online

Should social media companies ban Holocaust denial from their platforms? What about conspiracy theorists that spew hate? Does good corporate citizenship mean platforms should remove offensive speech or tolerate it? The content moderation rules that companies develop to govern speech on their platforms will have significant implications for the future of freedom of expression. Given that the prospects for compelling platforms to respect users’ free speech rights are bleak within the U.S. system, what can be done to protect this important right? In June 2018, the United Nations’ top expert for freedom of expression called on companies to align their speech codes with standards embodied in international human rights law, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). After the controversy over de-platforming Alex Jones in August 2018, Twitter’s CEO agreed that his company should root its values in international human rights law and Facebook referenced this body of law in discussing its content moderation policies. This is the first article to explore what companies would need to do to align the substantive restrictions in their speech codes with Article 19 of the ICCPR, which is the key international standard for protecting freedom of expression. In order to examine this issue in a concrete way, this Article assesses whether Twitter’s hate speech rules would need to be modified. This Article also evaluates potential benefits of and concerns with aligning corporate speech codes with this international standard. This Article concludes it would be both feasible and desirable for companies to ground their speech codes in this standard; however, further multi-stakeholder discussions would be helpful to clarify certain issues that arise in translating international human rights law into a corporate context

European Court of Human Rights: Case of Szima v. Hungary

Short analysis of judgment ECtHR on freedom expression of president labour union, in relation to freedom of association. Disciplinary sanction because of insubordination

Policy paper on freedom of expression in Tajikistan

Nigina Zaripov

National Security and Democracy on the Internet in Israel

A recent parliamentary committee meeting devoted to “Freedom of Expression and the Internet”, began with a short demonstration in which Internet sites describing the Order of Battle of the Israeli Airforce, Nuclear weapons1, as well\ud as some pornography were reviewed. Members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) were shocked and astounded -- not by the pornography, but rather by the fact that “classified” information was readily available on the Internet. The discussion quickly turned from dealing with freedom of expression, to how to prevent information of this kind from being readily available on the Internet. This incident serves to underscore the inherent conflict of values in Israeli society -- the primacy of national security, which subordinates almost every other aspect of democracy in Israel, versus the ideal of liberal democracy focusing on individual rights -- chief among these being freedom of expression. These conflicting values have been brought to the surface in recent years due to the incredible growth of Internet use by the general public in Israel

European court of human rights: case of Axel Springer AG v. Germany

Grand Chamber judgment on freedom of expression, privacy and presumption of innocenc

The Right to Freedom of Expression in Context of Kosovo's Regulatory Norm

This paper focuses on the media regulatory norm in Kosovo in the period of a media transition, in a specific context of the public relations, as well as the ethical and professional impact of the norm in the context of the rights and freedom of expression, dissemination, and reception of information. The focus is placed on the public relation of the media, the audience, ethical liabilities, and the legal right in the Kosovar society after 1999. It examines the regulatory norm in two particular periods: The first, the postwar period, namely 1999-2006 year when Kosovo was administered by a United Nations' interim mission, UNMIK (the Constitutional Framework, the media regulations, and administrative instructions). Second, the period before and after the recognition of the state of Kosovo by the international community (2006-2014), namely, after the promulgation of the regulatory norm by the legislative bodies of the Republic of Kosovo

Legal opinion/expert report in the case of Rocio San Miguel Sosa and others v. Venezuela, case nr. 12.923, on request of the Inter-American Court on Human Rights : Expert report in the case of Rocio San Miguel Sosa and others v. Venezuela

First the report examines the preliminary question whether signing a statement or a petition in a political context, such as a petition to carry out a recall referendum on the term of office of a head of state, is to be considered as an act of exercising the right to express a (political) opinion (by a civil servant or employee in the public sector), guaranteed by Article 19.2 ICCPR and/or Article 10 § 1 ECHR. Second it analyzes under what circumstances a termination of employment contract or dismissal of an employer or civil servant is to be regarded as an interference with the right to freedom of expression, and in particular in case the public authority or employer bring forward that the termination of contract or dismissal is unrelated to the exercise of the right to freedom of expression by the employee or civil servant. - Next this report will focus on the (limits of the) right to political freedom of expression in the employment relation, including the public sector, and on the (limitations of the) right to express political, critical or non-neutral opinions about the head of state, the government or other public institutions. Therefore it will elaborate on the criteria and conditions that may justify an interference with the right to (political) freedom of expression of public servants and employees in the public sector. It will also clarify in what circumstances an interference with this right amounts to a violation of Article 19 ICCPR or Article 10 ECHR, with references to the UN Human Rights Committee General Comment No. 34 “Article 19. Freedoms of opinion and expression” and especially analyzing and reporting the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights

Entanglement and interference between different degrees of freedom of photons states

In this paper, photonic entanglement and interference are described and analyzed with the language of quantum information process. Correspondingly, a photon state involving several degrees of freedom is represented in a new expression based on the permutation symmetry of bosons. In this expression, each degree of freedom of a single photon is regarded as a qubit and operations on photons as qubit gates. The two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference is well interpreted with it. Moreover, the analysis reveals the entanglement between different degrees of freedom in a four-photon state from parametric down conversion, even if there is no entanglement between them in the two-photon state. The entanglement will decrease the state purity and photon interference visibility in the experiments on a four-photon polarization state.Comment: 11 pages and 2 figure