Terms of Service as a Case of Legal Pluralism

While discussions involving free speech often revolve around individual rights against the government,recent developments in technologies related to the Internet raise questions regarding new forms ofcensorship practiced by private Internet service providers. Past experiences, such as the movie pictures private regulation by the Production Code, illustrate how private agreements and practices can shapethe level of free speech in certain realms. While obscenity and nudity became an obsession during thefirst regulatory efforts directed to the Internet, censoring legislation in this area often failed theconstitutionality testing, and censoring efforts were shifted to more opaque practices. Recent cases offeminist protests using their bodies as political instruments in Brazil are analyzed and put in perspective with algorithmic and manual control in online social networks.