Human versus Inalienable Rights: Is there still a future for online protest in the Anonymous world?
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: The protection of legitimate political protest is one of the hallmarks of a functional liberal democracy.Certainly, there is increasing legal debate about the parameters of what constitutes legitimate protest and theappropriate scope of police powers to regulate it. However, there is no widespread call for the dismantling ofthe concept of a right to protest. The same consensus is not present however when one considers the rightto protest in cyberspace. This article considers the possible reasons for this beginning with the recentpractice of protest online, then by considering factors which may affect the legitimacy of that practice orwhich are unique to the online environment. The main argument of this paper is that human rights discourseas interpreted by the judiciary is very much focused on humans beings as embodied entities and thus hasdifficulty recognising that a human being acting in the disembodied sphere of cyberspace is still a rightsbearing agent. In other words the disembodied human is alienated from their rights. With this in mind weshall explore the legal framework in which online protest operates within the EU and offer some suggestionsabout how online protest could be better managed and protected
Author: Martina Gillen
Institution: Oxford Brookes University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1837103052