Abstract: Freedom of expression is not an absolute right. Its exercise may be restricted in accordance with the general conditions set out in international and national legal instruments, when it harms any other rights and legitimate individual or collective interests, through speeches or messages that go beyond acceptable criticism and constitute slippages of its normal exercise. Hate speech is such a form of slippage and has particular features in the case of transmission and dissemination of messages or speeches that can be assigned to this form of abuse, on the Internet. This paper aims to identify difficulties in defining the concept of hate speech taking into consideration possible differences in its regulation at national level or lack of regulation, on the one hand and the specific way of transmitting a message or a speech having a defamatory or discriminatory content, which is displayed by a user in a certain place and made available simultaneously throughout the world or on the territory of a large number of states. An important issue of the analytical approach will be the change in the acceptance of the rule of territoriality in this particular case and its implications.

Keywords: Internet; hate speech; jurisdiction; principle of territoriality.