CrossRoads Addresses the First Amendment – Internet Tensions

David Skover, Fredric C. Tausend Professor of Law at the Seattle University School of Law, will come to Orcas for the CrossRoads Lecture.

Sunday, April 1, 2 p.m. at the Orcas Center

From the CrossRoads Committee

Orcas CrossRoads Lecture Series will host professor, writer and lecturer, David Skover, who will present – The Huxleyan Internet & the Antiquated First Amendment – on Sunday, April 1st, 2:00 pm at the Orcas Center

The formal name of the presentation – The Huxleyan Internet & the Antiquated First Amendment – might seem more puzzling than enlightening, but as we review the series of bold questions Professor Skover will raise the name’s relevance is revealed.

The questions:

• Although we often hear accolades for the Internet – everything from “the global village” to “a vibrant marketplace of ideas” – the Internet has its darker sides.  Indeed, there is much on the Internet that resembles the mind-numbing entertainment culture associated with Aldous Huxley’s anti-utopian Brave New World.  It is a safe haven for defamatory charges, serious invasions of privacy, flourishing hard-core obscenity, and national security breaches.  What are among the greatest and most threatening excesses of the Huxleyan Internet?

• Considering the traditional reasons given for serious protection of speech and press under the Madisonian First Amendment, is there disconnect between these reasons and the realities of the Huxleyan Internet?  In other words, can the constitutional and statutory protections accorded to the Internet’s shadow sides be justified in the name of the noble values of the Antiquated First Amendment, or are they more in keeping with a Modern First Amendment serving less ennobling values of an advanced capitalist and highly consumerist entertainment culture?

• What are the lessons – judicial, political, and cultural – that can be learned from looking at the Internet free speech culture as it is, rather than as we believe it could or should be?

Professor Skover suggests that we will express surprise at the stunning character of some of the most egregious instances of Internet abuses.  He suspects that few of us have any real idea as to the character of “popular talk” rampant on the Internet’s darker sides.

Skover is the Fredric C. Tausend Professor of Law at the Seattle University School of Law. He teaches, writes, and lectures in the fields of federal constitutional law, federal courts, free speech & the Internet, and mass communications theory. He is also a regionally acclaimed opera and musical theater singer. Skover graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Domestic Affairs at Princeton University. He received his law degree from Yale Law School.

Free speech is a hot topic. Come with your questions and thoughts for the Q & A and reception following the presentation. Tickets are $10 and available at Darvill’s Bookstore, online at www.orcascrossroads.org or at the door. Some complimentary tickets are available in advance at the Senior Center.