Hate Crimes in Cyberspace

Hate Crimes in Cyberspace Danielle Keats Citron. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. 343 pp. $29.95In "The Guardian," a story in P.G. Wodehouse's Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere, Tom Shearne, a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, is sent off to a public school for the first time.1 Another boy, Spencer, a veteran of the school and the son of a relative of a friend of Tom's mother, is asked to keep an eye on Tom - to see that he acculturates in his new milieu. But Spencer, caught up in the whirlwind of school activities, is too busy with his own pursuits to mentor Tom, who quickly develops a reputation as a mean-spirited dispenser of caustic and hurtful comments. With no one paying much attention to him, Tom convinces himself that his insults are not only innocuous, but also a sign of a rapier wit. However, when his harangues become too denigrating, when he dunks an unsuspecting victim in the school's pool, Spencer emerges from his state of general indifference and challenges Tom to a boxing match. In his next letter home, a bruised and chastened Tom writes that he finally understands what school life is all about. Fellow students are surprised at the sudden change in Tom's demeanor, and Spencer receives a message from Tom's father thanking him for acculturating his son into the ways of the world, as well as a gift of ten shillings.The lessons contained in Wodehouse's story have startling relevance to Danielle Keats Citron's Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. Through detailed consideration of the travails of three women subjected to online abuse - a tech blogger, a law student, and an individual dealing with revenge-porn onslaughts- Citron convincingly shows that cyber harassment, defined as "the intentional infliction of substantial emotional distress accomplished by online speech that is persistent enough to amount to a 'course of conduct' rather than an isolated incident," has "a totalizing and devastating impact" on victims' lives, not only jeopardizing their "professional reputations and careers," but also "discouraging] on- and offline pursuits, disrupting] both crucial and ordinary life choices, and caus[ing] physical and emotional harm." Yet despite the "tangible economic, social, and political costs" of the subordination perpetrated by cyber harassment, prevailing social attitudes minimize its effect on victims, approximately seventy percent of whom are women: complainants are labeled as overly sensitive; their concerns are trivialized; and they are told that inhibiting online discourse could have negative consequences for First Amendment free-speech rights (pp. 3, 22, 29).It therefore goes without saying that social attitudes regarding the innocuousness of cyber harassment must undergo profound change, especially on the part of employers, who would do well to examine the benefits of adopting the Finnish practice of prohibiting the use of the Internet "to research potential or current employees without first getting their approval." It also goes without saying that there should be "robust enforcement" of existing laws that address aspects of harassment. Note the adjective "existing" in the previous sentence, as well as the lack of the word "cyber" before "harassment." The point is that there is a wide range of legal avenues- both criminal and civil-currently available to police departments, prosecutors, and plaintiffs' attorneys to discourage and stop harassment. For example, "tort claims redress victims' damaged reputations, privacy invasions, and intentionally inflicted emotional distress," while "civil rights law redresses and punishes the economic, social, and psychic costs inflicted when individuals are denied the right to pursue life's crucial opportunities because of their membership in a protected group." In addition, the immunity provisions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which exempt website operators from liability for user-generated content, have "no effect" on Federal criminal statutes or intellectual property law. …