Freedom Of Speech Censorship On The Internet Essay
While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (freedom of speech censorship on the internet)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!
Introduction
With more and more frequency the newspapers are reporting instances of school children distributing disks of pornographic images which they have downloaded from the net and recently a university student was found to be operating such a site for material. On November 11, an Associated Press release (Phillips,1994) reported that Carnegie Mellon University had decided to block its users from accessing sexually explicit materials through the Internet: the university's president feared that the university could be prosecuted under state pornography laws if it did not control the access. Within the last week Towson State has prevented access to all of the alt.* groups on the Usenet which include alt.binaries.pictures.* which has sexually explicit pictures. Towson State has also included a warning on their home page that there may be pornographic material on the Internet. Pornographic material is not the only material to be found on the net which can raise questions of censorship and control: discussion of racial, political, religious and sexual topics all run the risk of offending someone, somewhere, leading to demands for control of the Internet. The question of censorship may also be raised in some unexpected places: one newsgroup is the rec.humor list, which is a collection of jokes submitted to subscribers. There are straightforwardly rude jokes but others are politically incorrect, focusing on sexual stereotypes, mothers-in-law, women and so on. It has been suggested (Interpersonal Computing and Technology, 1994) that discretionary warning labels could be attached to potentially offensive material. With warning labels like those on records this may serve to whet appetites. Warning labels involve some sort of judging and then the question is raised as to who shall be the judge. The Internet is world-wide so would the First Amendment apply in Germany? The material on the Internet which is grossly offensive by any standards, such as paedophile material, is extremely difficult to find because of its small amounts. Of the 976 obscenity cases handled between 1991 and 1993 only 11 involved computer files, while 0.3% of the obscene material seized by Customs staff in 1992-93 were computer items (Cornwall, 1994). This paper considers the question of censorship on the Internet - does it exist, in what form, should it exist and what should be censored?
The Internet
To understand many of the questions raised an understanding of how the Internet originated is important. The internet grew out of developments in packet switching and distributed computer networks designed to be secure in time of war: distributed computer networks are less susceptible to damage because transmissions can be routed around the damage. Standard protocols ensure that any platform can be connected to this network and this meant that local area networks(LANs) could be linked while retaining all the advantages of LANs, specifically the need not to rely on a single timesharing computer. These developments have continued through the 1970's and 1980's and now we are at the Internet as we know it. The Internet is an informal network of networks spanning the globe, with almost 4 million hosts, each of which may be serving anywhere between one and 2 million users. Theorists believe that by the year 2003 everyone in the world could be connected to the Internet (Treese, 1994). Alongside this growth that is aided by availability of low-cost computers, free software and inexpensive telecommunications, is the most important fact that the Internet is not controlled by any single authority. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a voluntary organization responsible for technical standards while the Internet Engineering Task Force (ITF) handles operational and technical problems, but no single body can be said to control the internet and what is distributed over it.
Quality and content
The previous fact leads to two related issues. First, there is no overall set of standards to apply to the quality of material available over the Internet, quality meaning factors like accuracy, currency, editing and updating policies. Right now quality control is only exercised by the people who make the documents and because of that the standards are sometimes low. There is also a problem of currency and revision as well as the accuracy of the original material and the most common complaint that out-of-date items are being re-found, sometimes after several years (Cockerill, 1994). Secondly, the anarchic nature means that there is little or no control over the content of documents posted over the Internet. National governments may try to apply legislation but it is very difficult to prevent a range of potentially offensive material from being distributed once that material has already been disseminated. Not only that but the USA could be protected by the First Amendment. Also, the offense usually is one of possession of material so once the material is distributed over the Internet it is out of the hands of the main offender. The Internet is international and it is not possible to stop material at the border in the same way that books and magazines can be stopped, therefore, it is left up to individual organizations like Carnegie Mellon. This is an example of how technical developments have overtaken the ability of the national governments to control the dissemination of information on a national scale. It is not certain whether legislation applying to, for example, obscene publications, can be applied to digitized material because the question that is asked is whether or not it is published. What may be legal in one country is illegal in another: German law prohibits claims that the Holocaust did not happen, but this does not stop white supremacists from the US or another country from transmitting this claim to their sympathizers in Germany. This is a complicated issue because usually there is a feature of different cultures, for example, codes for women's dress in Islamic counties. It would be very difficult to find a common denominator that everyone could agree upon that should be censored. Even at an individual level what is offensive to one person may not be offensive to another. This debate is not new, it is just a new medium that it is taking place over. Internet dissemination is fast, less agreeable to control by governments, it is almost global and the actual potential audience is huge. It is also less public: the same images can be sent to your terminal in your own room.
Material on the Internet: what should be censored?
What is the range of material on the Internet which could cause offense and generate demands for censorship? It is not possible to cover all the possibilities but a highly selective list would prove that censorship it not just about pornography. A look at the alt.* newsgoups would contain material offensive to some people and that is precisely the problem. The alt.* newsgroups are just the most visible groups. If there really were a list it would probably contain anything that caused debate, such as: religion, sex, drugs, politics, alternative lifestyles and astrology, just to name...
MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 25 May, 2012 from
<http://essaymania.com/56030/freedom-of-speech-censorship-on-the-internet>
More College Papers
Sexual Abuse essay
The impact of sexual abuse reaches all levels of a childs emotions. These emotions and the effects are listed below: Confusion: This is usually the initial reaction of the child. They will usually question, "What is going on?" and " Is this right or wrong?". For a young child these types of question
Sex Education in the Classroom essay
Ignorance of sex education has left our world suffering from a variety of venereal diseases, abortion, neglected children, and sadly enough, even death. This is a very serious problem not only for our children today but also for children of the future generations. Sources of education are availabl
Sexual Harassment essay
Over the years, many people have believed that the issue of sexual
harassment should not be discussed in public. Sexual harassment was to be
discussed behind closed doors. In spite of this, the social and political
systems have changed instantaneously. This social problem has affected men