Internet Censorship Essay, Research Paper

As we move on into the 21st century new questions will arise that we could never even have imagined. The speed of life has increased dramatically in the past years. With the age of the Internet already here questions like, Should the Internet be censored? What should be censored, and how could it be censored? are being asked more and more often. Some people might say that the American dream would be hurt because of a violation in our first amendment right, however if the Internet were censored, it is blatantly obvious what should be censored. Although there are some reasons why the Internet should not be censored it is clear that the Internet should be censored in certain places.

Like every other media form, the Internet sometimes gives too much of an insight into the real world. Everyday, all over the country, kids have access to the Internet at their schools, and thus can look at whatever they want. The ability for kids to gain information as easily as a stroke of a key is invaluable. They can find information for a research paper using sites like UMI Proquest and CQ Researcher. Use search engines like Yahoo or Excite. Kids can learn about their religion and heritage. You can now buy things online through site like Ebay and Amazon. Maybe there is too much information available to them. In a school where it is suppose to be a safe, contained environment, children could be connecting themselves to hate groups, pornography, and bomb making sites. This is harmful to all children. With incidents, such as the Columbine shooting, parents are realizing the material that can be found on the Internet. The Trench Coat Mafia created and posted a web site. The web site had material on how to make bombs. The site is now talks about other school shooting. It even claims that Littleton was just a copycat of the Columbine incident. After the Columbine incident a bill called the Feinstein Amendment want to ban all bomb making instructions from the internet was proposed, but it did not pass because it was a violation of our free speech (Internet Censorship). The most appalling of all these sites is www.whitehouse.com. If someone was looking for the White House s homepage, they could easily stumble upon this site. Too their surprise they will find out the site is a pornography site. The page that they were really looking for is www.whitehouse.gov. The one good thing about the site it that it gives you information on filtering software that will block sites with adult content. In the newest spending bill, Congress set aside money for filtering software so that all schools and libraries could block unwanted Internet content, allowing students to have no access to this material at school (Niccolai). This new proposal has been named the Communications Decency Act II. On November 11, 1994 an Associated Press release reported that Carnegie Mellon University had decided to block its users from accessing sexually explicit materials through the Internet. This was definitely a step in the right direction for Internet censorship.

The range of material on the Internet, which could offend users and generate demands for censorship is enormous. Newsgroups would contain material offensive to some people and that is precisely the problem. People become offend by the minor things very easily. In life people are affected by changes. Every year I go down to St Thomas. Since I have been going I have met a lot of friends, but none quite like Ronaldo. We met at the Blue Moon Caf in 1997. Over the years we have became good friends staying in contact though e-mail and an occasional phone call. Ronaldo worked very hard and had a dream to become a chef on the islands. This year his dream was becoming a reality. He was accepted at the Peter Kumps Cooking School in New York. He started classes in September. He was doing very well in school and was having an incredible time. On February 14, 2000 Ronaldo was stabbed by his roommate to death in their apartment. The roommate did not like something Ronaldo said when they were fighting over the remote to the television. A great man died for no reason. This was a clear example of taking it to the extreme. There was no reason for him to die, and to die over words. I arrived in St Thomas and went to see Ronaldo s family. I payed my respects and felt the pain of a close death. I miss his presence, his energy. I will wake up every morning for a long time waiting for him. Remembering Ronaldo, smiling, laughing, and cooking. People need to lighten up and start living life to its fullest because they get offend to easily. Someone also might stumble upon something offensive simply by following links that did not raise any questions.

Another question of censorship can be raised too: what about subjects that people feel are a waste of valuable Internet resources? One must wonder if it is possible to agree on what should be censored and if we, the Internet users agree that censorship should be exercised at all?

The actions of Towson State and other universities can be explained as conformity with local legislation, shifting the responsibility for censorship to the state, which introduces various laws, which limit what we can see and read or say and write (towson). Censorship may be applied to material which governments judge as damaging to some or all of society or to preserve state security. One of the Internet’s most popular and visited sites is Yahoo, a huge index of Internet sites that 1.4 million people use per week as a reference center to guide them around the vast Internet. Yahoo tracks and categorizes about 50,000 different sites around the Internet, ranging from home pages of computer companies to on-line catalogs to news sources. Two hundred seventeen of those 50,000 sites are listed under the category of sex which is 0.4 percent of the total. Many of the sites under the heading relate to the discussion of health issues. Many others are commercial sites like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler magazines. In other words big companies like Yahoo are not promoting sex on the Internet, in fact they don t show much more other than the commercial names. Yahoo’s co-founder acknowledges that the sites his index tracks are a fraction of the “millions” of places people can travel on the Internet but he said it is a good representative sample (Yahoo Information).

Due to the lack of a controlling body and the Internet’s anarchic nature, who could act as a censor of the material stored and distributed over the Internet? I mean the Internet is the World Wide Wed after all. How could the first amendment apply on web sites uploaded from France or Japan? (Banks 2000). This is an, extremely important issue because the censor or censors would have an enormous amount of power. Right now, it is not possible for any group to take on that role and, it is most likely not going to be taken care of individual organizations. As I said the Internet is a world wide information medium. No group could take control like, Towson State, to limit what can be received. Also, who could be held responsible for what is distributed over the various sections of the Internet, there are so many divisions, like: private email, public databases and bulletin boards, plus sites maintained in both the public and private sector. The President of the Internet Society has indicated that the ISOC has came up with guidelines for behavior on the Internet but this will probably not include racist or hate groups because it is a form of free speech. As the Internet becomes even more commercial, the larger sites will probably have less forms of offensive material because these large corporations will censor anything that may offend. Like broadcasting stations that don t allow profanity, big companies will not want the headache associated with offensive material.

Material from the Internet is much more difficult to control because of the nature of the Internet. It is for this reason that governments will have to fall back on legislation, rather than distribution. The one solution, right now, is for companies to license sites and then have the servers use their power to have control over the content or the space. If there were a violation in the licenses it would be withdrawn as a means of punishment or censorship. Network Solutions is a server that doesn t allow sexual material on any pages that they are hosting (network solutions). House Speaker Newt Gingrich has spoken out against a proposed government ban on sexually explicit material on the Internet, calling it “clearly a violation of free speech and a violation of the rights of adults to communicate with each other.” Even with Gingrich’s support for free speech there was an overwhelming vote in early June, the Senate amended a telecommunications bill to make it a criminal offense to place “indecent” material on-line anywhere children might view it. After the Oklahoma City bombing, a prominent Jewish group called for the monitoring of hate groups on the Internet (youth.org). Now, such a move is strongly opposed by almost all the Internet users because that would ruin the whole nature of the Internet, where information can be exchanged easily and freely. A major consideration should be the balance of freedom of expression and information.

After reading all different types of information I have created two different solutions that could be implemented to censor the internet for who ever wanted it to be censored. The first solution would take care of pornography. If you created a domain (.com .net .org) for pornography sites then it would be easier to track and block access to these sites. In Schools and other places of learning filtering software should be installed so you can not access material that could be harmful or offensive. In the United Kingdom the is a agency call the Internet Watch Foundation. They have created a rating system, like the one we have for our televisions. This rating system makes it easier to block access to content. You have the choice of what you want to block on your own computer. A new web browser has been developed just for kids. It is called AT Kids Browser. It is said to be a safe and easy way for kids to learn and have some fun on the Internet. There are so many internet filtering products out in the market now. The censorship of the Internet should be left up to the people not the government. In government funned areas the government can control the information that is being passed in and out. Therefore my solution of censorship up to the individual and to the government in governmental funded buildings, there is no violation of our rights as United States Citizens.