The Legal Regulations On Internet Speech

Freedom of speech has always been attached great significance by people all over the world since ancient times. In recent years, with the rapid development of internet technology, interpret freedom of speech from some new perspectives and the concept of freedom of network speech has been formally put forward. Actually, there is no difference between freedom of speech and freedom of network speech in nature. Instead, the freedom of network demonstrates some new characteristics which are different from that of traditional media because they are communicated by different carriers.Internet has broken the traditional media’s characteristic of “monopoly” and enabled more freedom of speech to citizens under the background of Internet era. There must be a shadow under the sun, however, while bringing huge changes to people’s daily life, Internet also exerts some negative effects inevitably.Internet rumors, pornography information has threaten the reputation, right of privacy of vast majority of citizens and public order and moral of society, and hindered the steps of the construction of harmonious society in our country at the same time. Plenty of network violence and spam on the Internet has exposed our shortages in law, government regulation and self-discipline of our country. There is no doubt that the Internet has brought huge benefits to our society development, and the practice of restrictions on the Internet is only isolate, therefore, it has become an unavoidable issue for today’s China that how to make use of legal norms, administrative measures, as well as other social regulation methods reasonably and properly to solve the contradiction between the development of Internet and network speech. This paper plans to explore the various problems in the process of regulating Internet speech based on the actual condition of China’s Internet development, in order to build a free and harmonious net public opinion environment with the rapid development of Internet.The article is composed of four parts.The first part mainly expounds the concepts, characteristics and value of the freedom of speech on the Internet. The positive aspects of the freedom of speech on the Internet is fully affirmed, but at the same time, a variety of social events also prove that it is necessary to do some control.The second part introduces the measures adopted by some countries who are always walking in the front end of the outside Internet regulations at present.These provide some effective experience and methods for our Internet speech management in many respects, like law,administrative supervision and management, self-regulation and Internet technology.The third part analyses the methods taken by our country which are used to control Internet speech, and some disadvantages are put forward. Although some efforts have been made in the aspects of legislative, administrative and self-discipline, several problems need to be solved, like low legislative level, unclear administrative supervision responsibilities, and weak self-discipline.In the fourth part, improving the legislation level, standardizing the application of executive power, strengthening self-discipline and developing Internet technology are put forward after realizing the shortages of our country’s methods. The purpose is to protect the rights of our citizens, society and country through a reasonable control on Internet speech.