Censoring The Internet Essay, Research Paper

Censor the Internet?

The freedom of speech that was possible on the Internet could now be subjected to governmental approvals. For example, China is attempting to res5trict political expression, in the name of security and social stability. It requires users of the Internet and e-mail to register, so that they can monitor their activities (Gates). 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 Internet with respect to these issues (Gates). Laws intended for other types of communication will not necessarily apply in this group. Through all the components of the Internet it becomes easy to transfer material that particular governments might find objectionably. However, all of these ways 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 as extraordinary amount of time and money, attempts to censor the Internet violate freedom of speech, a right that is included in democratic constitutions and international laws (Silencing the Net?). It would be a breach of the First Amendment. The Constitution of the united States 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 asse3mble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (Constitution). Therefore it would be unconstitutional for any sort of censorship to occur on the Internet. Even though it is illegal, restrictions on Internet access and content are increasing worldwide under all forms of government.

In France, a country where the press generally has a large amount of freedom, the Internet has 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). To enforce censorship of the Internet, free societies find that they are becoming more closed, and closed societies find new ways to crush political expression and opposition (Silencing the Net?). Vice President Al Gore, while at an international conference in Brussels about the Internet, said that “Cyberspace is about protecting and enlarging freedom of expression for all our citizens? Ideas should not be checked at the border.”(McCullagh) Another person attending that conference was Ann Breeson of the American Civil Liberties Union. 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 stressing the importance of free speech on the Internet.”(McCullagh) 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. Senate. The Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition, on February 26, 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 no be compromised by the CDA. Just the range of plantiffs alone shows the dedication that is felt by many different people and groups to the cause of tree speech on the Internet (Silberman). “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 would be regulated by the government. Bet it’s not just about dirty words. It’s also it’s also about words like AIDS, gay, and breasts. It’s about sexual content, and politically controversial topics like drug addiction, euthanasia, and racism” (Irwin).

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 like other things can simply because it is not the same as anything 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 cannot be enforced in another country and this is true with the Internet because the Internet has no borders.

Although North America 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 teenager to download 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. That was one of the key points that was stressed during the original days of the Internet, then call ARPANET. It started out as a defense project that would allow communication in the event of an emergency such as nuclear attack. Without a central authority, information would pass around until it got where it was going (Sterling).

This was intended to be similar to the road system. It is not necessary to take any specific route but rather anyone goes. In the same way the information on the Internet starts out and eventually gets to its 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 are taking place. Take for example a conversation on IRC. Two people could be talking to one another, but all that they see is text. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine the sex and/or age just from the communication of this type. Then if the person lies about any points mentioned above it would be extremely difficult to know or prove otherwise. In this way governments could not restrict access to certain sites on the basis of age. A thirteen-year-old boy in Slovakia could decide that he wants 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 form receiving their material if he says he is nineteen years old when asked.

The complexity in the way information is passed around the Internet means that if it 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 advertising products or usenet articles that are open for flames. Flames are heated letters that many times have no meaning 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 lames, which often time are obscene, slander one’s reputation. Mostly these are immature arguments that are totally pointless except to those involved

The millions of people that participate on the Internet everyday have access to almost all of the data present. Also, it becomes easy to copy something that exists on the Internet with just a mere click of a button. The relative ease of copying stuff 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, www.archive.org, and wuarchive.wustl.edu. It becomes hard to censor material that might be copied two, three or more times in a matter of minutes. An example could be the 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, a magazine devoted to hacking, has republished the hacked DoJ and CIA homepages on their website. The magazine either copied the data straight from the hacked sites or the hacked site was submitted to the magazine. Whichever is true, is shows how easy it is for data to be copied and distributed, as well as how difficult it would be to prevent material deemed inappropriate from appearing where it should not.

The Internet is much too complex a network for censorship to effectively occur. It is a totally new and unique environment in which communication happens. Existing laws are not applicable. The lack of definite 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 damn near impossible to delete data that has been publicized. No country should be allowed to, or even could, regulate or censor the Internet.

Bibliography

Bradford, Bryan and Mark Krumhoz. “Telecommunications and Decency: Big Brother

Goes Digital.” Suncom Incorporated. June 3, 1998.

Gates, Bill. “Searching for Middle Ground in Online Censorship.” Microsoft

Corporation. June 3, 1998.

Irwin, Heather. “Geeks Take to the Street.” Hotwired.com. June 2, 1998.

McCullagh, Declan. “Plague of Freedom.” Internet Underground. June 3, 1998.

Silberman, Steve. “Defending the First Amendment.” Hotwired.com. June 2, 1998.

“Silencing the Net-The Threat to Freedom of Expression Online.” Human Rights

Watch. May 1996.

Sterling, Bruce. “Short History of the Internet.” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science

Fiction. September 1997.

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