Virtual Freedom

Communications giants like Google, Comcast, and AT&T enjoy increasingly unchecked control over speech. As providers of broadband access and Internet search engines, they can control online expression. Their online content restrictions—from obstructing e-mail to censoring cablecasts—are considered legal because of recent changes in free speech law. In this book, Dawn Nunziato criticizes recent changes in free speech law in which only the government need refrain from censoring speech, while companies are permitted to self-regulate. By enabling Internet providers to exercise control over content, the Supreme Court and the FCC have failed to protect the public's right to access a broad diversity of content. Nunziato argues that regulation is necessary to ensure the free flow of information and to render the First Amendment meaningful in the twenty-first century. This book offers an urgent call to action, recommending immediate steps to preserve our free speech rights online.

"In her book, Virtual Freedom, Nunziato predicts that if the High Court does not embrace what she calls an 'affirmative' concept of free speech, requiring powerful private conduits of speech such as Internet service providers (ISPs) to facilitate individual communication, the Internet, as we have known it, will cease to exist . . . Virtual Freedom is a provocative book that could not be timelier."—Jane E. Kirtley, Jurimetrics, "Nunziato . . . provides a well-written, insightful work that discusses private censorship of online communication and that proffers wise solutions designed to protect free speech in the Internet age."—Pat Newcombe, Law Library Journal, "Whether sympathetic to net neutrality or not, readers will find Virtual Freedom a commanding argument for affirmative free speech rights online."—Harvard Law Review, "Ultimately, Virtual Freedom is an informative tour of relevant law and a provocative discourse on how that law should—and should not—apply to the Internet."—S.B. Lichtman, Choice, "This short but detailed book provides a great deal of information about an important subject, conveying it in the context of the author's open opposition to current policy and support for bringing greater neutrality to the Internet. It is a useful book about a subject that will likely be of considerable legal interest for decades to come."—Gloria C. Cox, Law and Politics Book Review

Dawn C. Nunziato is Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School.