The Trouble With Regulating Hate Free Speech7/24/2000; 10:37:31 AM 'While some would like to see new laws to deal with these sites – wherever they are and as many as there may be – the U.S. constitutional right to free speech protects most of them. Some European nations, however, lack the same free-speech standards. So, like other Internet policy issues such as data privacy and encryption, Europe's standards on hate speech clash with American ones. It's another instance where there's little or no consensus on how to govern this global medium.''National laws used to be buttressed by geographic barriers, customs inspectors and the like. But innovation has been eroding national barriers for decades, and the Internet has eroded them even further.... For now, Europe hopes to make do with a filtering system being developed by the Internet Content Rating Association, a nonprofit British group that's partnered with AOL Europe and the Bertelsmann Foundation, among others. But ICRA's system hinges on the voluntary adoption of a ratings system by content providers. It's hard to imagine hate sites agreeing to rate themselves.'Heh heh heh... can't you see it now? You're browsing around and suddenly a warning dialog comes up: Warning! The site you are now viewing has been rated as the following by the owner: Hateful to Minorities, Hateful to Government, Hateful to Pinko Liberals. Do you wish to continue (Yes/No)?I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt self-labelling will be it.