What Is Harassment
Q: I'm working on a paper for a law school class on the topic of sexual
harassment on the internet. This includes (but is not necessarily
limited to) unwanted email that is offensive, degrading, sexually
explicit, threatening, etc. Of course I'll be addressing as well the
free speech rights of those who send email, whether legal approaches
are appropriate in the anarchy of the internet, alternative forms of
adressing the problem (flaming, the sys admin's role, etc), the
difficulty of defining harassment and the "reasonable person" standard,
etc.
A: Sex harassment is not an issue we need to regulate on the internet. The internet is a free-flowing thought producing medium that shouldn't have such restrictions. Usually harassment is challenged and argued away by many posters; why should we try to regulate something that doesn't appear to be a problem? I think the whole issue of sex harassment has gotten way out of hand.