ABSTRACT
While the courts have generally upheld the government’s authority to regulate traditional forms of broadcasting such as television and radio, that is not the case with the Internet. Advocates of cyberspace regulation claim that the Internet is similar to traditional forms of broadcasting because it involves transmission through an electronic forum. Opponents of Internet regulation, however, point out that the three factors that justify the regulation of traditional broadcast media-public ownership, scarcity, and pervasiveness-are absent in the case of cyberspace. There is also a bigger matter-practicality. With millions of websites accessible via the Internet-and many of them originating in other countriespoliticians realized long ago that any attempts to regulate the content of the Internet would be futile. Whether to apply standards-such as those spelling out the differences between hate speech and fighting words, between obscenity and nonobscene sexual expression, and between libelous and nonlibelous content-is a subject of continued debate.
