Internet Censorship Essay, Research Paper

The freedom of speech that was possible on the Internet could now be subjected to

governmental approvals. For example, China is attempting to restrict political expression,

in the name of security and social stability. It requires users of the Internet and electronic

mail (e-mail) to register, so that it may monitor their activities. In the United Kingdom,

state secrets and personal attacks are off limits on the Internet. Laws are strict and the

government is extremely interested in regulating the Intern et with respect to these

issues.10 Laws intended for other types of communication will not necessarily apply in

this medium. Through all the components of the Internet it becomes easy to transfer

material that particular governments might find objectionable. However, all of these

means of communicating on the Internet make up a large and vast system. For inspectors

to monitor every e-mail, every article in every Newsgroup, every Webpage, every IRC

channel, every Gopher site and every FTP site would be near impossible. Besides taking

an ext raordinary amount of money and time, attempts to censor the Internet violate

freedom of speech rights that are included in democratic constitutions and international

laws.11 It would be a breach of the First Amendment. The Constitution of the United

Stat es of America declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment

of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,

or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the

Government for a redr ess of grievances” 12

Therefore it would be unconstitutional for any sort of censorship to occur

on the Internet and affiliated services. Despite the illegality, restrictions on Internet

access and content are increasing worldwide under all forms of government. In France, a

co untry where the press generally has a large amount of freedom, the Internet has

recently been in the spotlight. A banned book on the health history of former French

president Francois Mitterrand was republished electronically on the World Wide Web

(WWW). Apparently, the electronic reproduction of Le Grand Secret by a third party

wasn’t banned by a court that ruled that the printed version of the book unlawfully

violated Mitterrand’s privacy. To enforce censorship of the Internet, free societies find

that they become more repressive and closed societies find new ways to crush political

expression and opposition.13 Vice – President Al Gore, while at an international

conference in Brussels about the Internet, in a keynote address said that “[Cyberspace] is

about protecting and enlarging freedom of expression for all our citizens … Ideas should

not be checked at the border”.14 Another person attending that conference was Ann

Breeson of the Ame rican Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to preserving

many things including free speech. She is quoted as saying, “Our big victory at Brussels

was that we pressured them enough so that Al Gore in his keynote address made a big

point of stre ssing the importance of free speech on the Internet.”15 Many other

organizations have fought against laws and have succeeded. A prime example of this is

the fight that various groups put on against the recent Communication Decency Act

(CDA) of the U.S. Se nate. The Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition on 26 February

1996 filed a historic lawsuit in Philadelphia against the U.S. Department of Justice and

Attorney General Janet Reno to make certain that the First Amendment of the U.S.A.

would not be compr omised by the CDA. The sheer range of plaintiffs alone, including

the American Booksellers Association, the Freedom to Read Foundation, Apple,

Microsoft, America Online, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Commercial

Internet eXchange Association , Wired, and HotWired, as well as thousands of netizens

(citizens of the Internet) shows the dedication that is felt by many different people and

groups to the cause of free speech on the Internet.16 “Words like *censored*, *censored*, piss, and tits.

Words of which our mothers (at least some of them) would no doubt disapprove, but

which by no means should be regulated by the government. But it’s not just about dirty

words. It’s also about words like AIDS, gay, a nd breasts. It’s about sexual content, and

politically controversial topics like drug addiction, euthanasia, and racism.”17 Just

recently in France, a high court has struck down a bill that promoted the censorship of the

Internet. Other countries have attempted similar moves. The Internet cannot be regulated

in the way of other mediums simply because it is not the same as anyt hing else that we

have. It is a totally new and unique form of communication and deserves to be given a

chance to prove itself. Laws of one country can not hold jurisdiction in another

country and holds true on the Internet because it has no borders.

Although North America (mainly the United States) has the largest share of

servers, the Internet is still a worldwide network. This means that domestic regulations

cannot oversee the rules of foreign countries. It would be just as easy for an American te

en to download (receive) pornographic material from England, as it would be from down

the street. One of the major problems is the lack of physical boundaries, making it

difficult to determine where violations of the law should be prosecuted. There is no one

place through which all information passes through. That was one of the key points that

was stressed during the original days of the Internet, then called ARPANET. It started out

as a defense project that would allow communication in the event of an e mergency such

as nuclear attack. Without a central authority, information would pass around until it got

where it was going.18 This was intended to be similar to the road system. It is not

necessary to take any specific route but rather anyone goes. In th e same way the

information on the Internet starts out and eventually gets to it’s destination. The Internet

is full of anonymity. Since text is the standard form of communication on the Internet it

becomes difficult to determine the identity and/or age of a specific person. Nothing is

known for certain about a person accessing content. There are no signatures or photo-ids

on the Internet therefore it is difficult to certify that illegal activities (regarding minors

accessing restricted data) are taking place. Take for example a conversation on IRC. Two

people could people talking to one another, bu t all that they see is text. It would be

extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the gender and/or age just from

communication of this sort. Then if the conversationalist lies about any points mentioned

above it would be extremely difficult t o know or prove otherwise. In this way

governments could not restrict access to certain sites on the basis of ages. A

thirteen-year-old boy in British Columbia could decide that he wanted to download

pornography from an adult site in the U.S. The site may have warnings and age

restrictions but they have no way of stopping him from receiving their material if he says

he is 19 years of age when prompted. The complexity in the way information is passed

around the Internet means that if information has been posted, deleting this material

becomes almost impossible. A good example of this is the junk mail that people refer to

as spam. These include e-mails ad vertising products, usenet articles that are open for

flames. Flames are heated letters that many times have no founding behind them. These

seem to float around for ages before dying out because they are perfect material for

flamewars. Flamewars are long, drawn out and highly heated discussions consisting of

flames, which often time, obscenely, slander one’s reputation and personae. Mostly these

are immature arguments that are totally pointless except to those involved. The millions

of people that partici pate on the Internet everyday have access to almost all of the data

present. As well it becomes easy to copy something that exists on the Internet with only a

click of a button. The relative ease of copying data means that the second information is

posted to the Internet it may be archived somewhere else. There are in fact many

sites on the Internet that are devoted to the archiving of information including:

ftp.cdrom.com (which archives an extraordinary amount of software among others),

www.archive.org ( which is working towards archiving as much of the WWW as

possible), and wuarchive.wustl.edu (which is dedicated towards archiving software,

publications, and many other types of data). It becomes hard to censor material that

might be duplicated or triplic ated within a matter of minutes. An example could be

the recent hacking of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Homepage and the hacking of the

Central Intelligence Agency’s Homepage. Someone illegally obtained access to the

computer on which these homepages were stored and modified them. It was done as a

prank; however, both of these agencies have since shut down their pages. 2600

(www.2600.com), a magazine devoted to hacking, has republished the hacked DoJ and

CIA homepages on their website. The magazine ei ther copied the data straight from the

hacked sites or the hacked site was submitted to the magazine. I don’t know which one is

true but it does show the ease that data can be copied and distributed, as well it shows the

difficulty in preventing material deemed inappropriate from appearing where it shouldn’t.

The Internet is much too complex a network for censorship to effectively occur. It is a

totally new and unique environment in which communications transpire. Existing laws

are not applicable to this medium. The lack of tangible boundaries causes confusion

as to where violations of law take place. The Internet is made up of nameless interaction

and anonymous communication. The intricacy of the Internet makes it near impossible to

delete data that has been publicized. No one country should be allowed to, or

could, regulate or censor the Internet.

563

Bradford, Bryan and Mark Krumholz. “Telecommunications and Decency: Big

Brother goes Digital.” Business Today Spring 1996 : 12-16.

Gates, Bill. “Searching for middle ground in online censorship.”

Microsoft Corporation.

http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/bill-g/column/1996essay/censorship.htm

(27 Mar. 1996).

Irwin, Heather. “Geeks Take to the Streets.” Hotwired.com.

http://www.hotwired.com/special/indecent/rally.html

Jefferson, Thomas. “Bill Of Rights.” The Constitution of the United

States.