The government is proposing a new internet filter that claims to protect children from inappropriate content, and other content that is found on the internet. Today with all the advances with technology there is still no effective way to censor the internet. Internet censorship can also restrict other people's freedom. What would happen if the government said that they were going to block an opposition party website, or a website to a topic that they are opposed too. With this proposal to filter the internet politicians choose what they want to censor, not a judge! The resources that are being used for the internet filter are better spent elsewhere to protect children, as this proposal is a waste of money. This proposal will just liken the Australian Government to the governments of China, North Korea and Burma. Countries that are very restrictive with their information and their internet as well.
It is ineffective
The internet changes every day. New websites are created. Because of the changes in the internet this makes a filter ineffective. The internet filter proposed by the government only has 3205 websites blocked, in its blacklist. This will not protect children because new websites go up all the time. Also a huge amount of human labour is needed to maintain an internet filter. Human labour costs money and the money are coming from you, the taxpayer. A study has revealed that approximately 30 million web pages are unsuitable for children. That amount of web pages would be slow under a very large group. If automated blocking systems were put in place, this would increase the amount of false positives. This is just a waste of taxpayers’ money. Your money! The internet filter also has false positives, and this would cause ...
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...low compared to other international standards. Finally politicians make the decision on what websites are to be blocked, not a judge. Politicians often make wrong and unconstitutional decisions, while judges can still make wrong decisions, are independent from the government. This confines our right to free speech. An internet filter was attempted to be enforced in Australia but that failed. Any more internet filters will just be another non accomplishment.
If you think internet filtering is used to prevent illegal content, people get this by Usenet and peer-to-peer computer networks, not the world-wide web. Usenet and peer-to-peer networks are harder to police than the world wide web, and harder to filter as well. Usenet and peer-to-peer have some genuine reasons as well, but these illegitimate reasons are how unsuitable content is distributed around the internet.
The type of content usually censored is sexual or violent things but Ballaro states, “Some bans (and the filtering software used to enforce them) eliminated access not only to pornographic materials but also to legitimate health and medical information” (Ballaro 1). If someone were to become sick, looking up symptoms on the internet is not the most efficient way to go about finding out what sickness they have, or what kind of treatments there are. Going to a professional would ensure that they get the correct diagnosis and treatment. Everything on the internet can be changed and not knowing the accuracy of a source is going to make the search more or less accurate. Children are also a big part of why things are censored. In the same passage, it is explained,“Opponents of Internet Censorship argue that education, not censorship, represents the best means of protecting children…” (Ballaro 1). Telling someone not to do something will just make them want to do it more. Educating kids on the dangers of the internet will not stop them from going on the internet. Protection children from all scammers and hackers, not just to mention explicit material, would also be challenging considering the internet is changing rapidly each day. Why not just block websites that are bad so even if children are tempted, they can not go to
Murdoch, S. J., & Roberts, H. (2013). Internet Censorship and Control [Guest editors' introduction]. IEEE Internet Computing, 17(3), 6-9. doi:10.1109/MIC.2013.5
Since their founding, computers and the Internet have become a tool that nearly every man, woman, and child in the World have been able to use. E-mail has become one of the Worlds fastest growing ways of communication and the Internet has become one, if not the largest source of information available today. You can find just about everything you wanted to know about anything with the stroke of a few keys on the keyboard. However, along with these positive aspects of the Internet, there lies much negativity surrounding the internet and its use. Access to teenage pornography, bestiality, brutal murder pictures, XXX stories, and other un-ethical sites is extremely easy. In fact, the pornography industry has grown 63% since the Internet was first available for use.(Bishop 91) It is one of the leading industries on the Internet and has become quite a controversy in the United States. Censorship of such sites has done very little due to the fact that most parents feel that these sites are not accessed by their children. We have currently found no solution that has worked and many government officials see the problem only getting worse. Pornography on the Internet though should not be banned, but rather better controlled and censored due to its availability and graphic nature.
Tears begin to fall down a child’s face. Her body goes into shock out of fear. Her mother warned her about watching inappropriate content, and there it was, right on her computer screen. This could not have happened though. All she was doing was casually browsing the internet before a pop-up appeared. Although it may seem hard to believe, the major cause of events such as this is the lack of censorship on the internet. Internet censorship relates to the removal of offensive, inappropriate, or controversial content published online. The current problem with the internet is that there are few restrictions on what can be published or viewed. Several sites on the internet only offer a warning about inappropriate content that can easily be bypassed by agreeing to the terms. Other websites provide access to private or military information. More dreadfully, however, are websites that use their explicit content as a promotion. These factors bring the conclusion that anybody of any given age can view and publish inappropriate or dangerous content. The current problems with the internet serve for clarification as to why the United States should create a nonpartisan assembly to censor the internet in order to protect its citizens from the mental, emotional, and physical harms the internet creates.
that some of the material that is on the net needs to be filtered and regulated. The word censorship is defined as examining any material and prohibiting what is objectionable, according to Webster’s II dictionary. Censoring the internet is a violation of the first ammendment rights of every citizen in the United States. There are two general truths that some people feel are attitudes towards censoring the internet. The first is that very few people admit to favoring it. The second is that no matter who you are, in a matter of minutes spent surfing the net almost anyone can find something that they find to be offensive. In fact, some web surfers feel that the truly inappropriate things are inspired by one’s own religion. For example, the Nurenberg Files website showed pictures of mangled fetuses with the photograph, name, and address of some abortion clinic doctors.
The internet can be a very disturbing thing for many people. There are a lot of things on the internet that kids should not be able to view. But for some reasons kids are able to view these things. I believe that the government should step in and help with the censorship of the internet. People are but should not be able to view anything on the internet if they are under the recommended viewing age.
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.
For many people, using the Internet has become practically a new way of life, especially for college students and the like. Various types of information can be accessed at the touch of a button: anything from encyclopedias, to surveys and essays, to articles from magazines, and adult sites. Anyone who pays for their Internet service is usually offered space for his or her own web page, and even many free services provide space for personal web pages. All of this available space can be used for any number of reasons: posting newsletters for community groups, advertising for businesses, or just voicing one’s opinion. For those of us who know how to use this information, or at least how to find what we need out of it, it’s a very good thing. But what about children? If adults can access this information with such ease, what’s stopping kids from checking it out too? Who decides what’s appropriate for kids and what’s not when their parents aren’t constantly leaning over their shoulders? And what about posting things that may be offensive to other people, no matter what age they might be?
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) works diligently to overthrow every attempt at placing some sort of filter or censorship requirements on the internet. They believe that the things censored are protected by the constitution. The court case ALA v. Pataki (1997) held that internet users must be protected from, “inconsistent legislation that, taken to its most extreme, could paralyze development of the internet altogether” (ACLU, 2017). Our freedom of speech is not absolute, so restricting where people are able to get access to these materials does not affect one’s right to speak freely, rather where they speak
Internet is a powerful tool that allows users to collaborate and interact with others all over the world conveniently and relatively safely. It has allowed education and trade to be accessed easily and quickly, but all these benefits do not come without very taxing costs. This is especially true when dealing with the likes of the Internet. Countries in the European Union and Asia have realized this and have taken action against the threat of net neutrality to protect their citizens, even at the cost of online privacy. Internet censorship is required to protect us from our opinions and vices. Every country should adopt Internet censorship and regulation since it improves society by reducing pornography, racism/prejudice, and online identity theft.
Due to how accessible the internet is to everyone, some say the internet should be censored for everyone to keep them in a safe environment. 88 percent of Americans use the internet and many of which are minors (Aaron Smith). Even though some might run into bad materials, everything on the internet can be found in real life.
...for a service that restricts your free speech. The government chooses the websites that they don't want you to see. What would happen if the government blocked an opposition party website, because their views were different from theirs? The internet filter is capable of doing this. The internet in Australia is slow behind the world standards. Adding a filter will just make our internet more slower. The internet filter is just a waste of taxpayers money. The money should be spent on more effective educational campaigns, which should have been attempted in the first place. Parents do not put internet filters on their computer because of the lack of education and information about this. If they were educated, they would know how to put on one, and children can be taught about cyber safety in the curriculum as well. This is money well spent, unlike an internet filter.
The invention of the internet has been one of the major advances of the modern world. It has allowed people from all over the globe to communicate with each other and ideas to be shared. In addition to this it is a free platform. Unlike television and radio it doesn’t cost anything to put your idea on the internet, making it a base of personal expression. This freedom coupled with the global access attracts around a billion users worldwide. Unfortunately, just as easily as the information is produced it is abused. The internet, although mostly used appropriately does harbour all manner of illegal activities. These range from phishing scams, trying to steal someone’s personal details, viruses, malicious code that attacks a person’s computer and websites that are morally questionable or illegal under Australian law. To combat this, the Rudd government has started action to impose an internet service provider level internet filter. An internet service provider is any company that provides internet services to its customers. Most notable of these is Telstra which is one of the top internet service providers in Australia. This filter will prevent a list of websites, the blacklist, from being accessed in Australia. In theory this is an excellent plan, but in reality, once implemented it will have little effect on preventing the illegal activity which occurs on the internet. The major arguments against the proposed filter are, cost of the filter, the ineffectiveness of the filter to stop illegal activity and the possibility of the blacklist expanding to block anti-government websites.
Most of the Internet regulation is imposed by the Government in an effort to protect the best interest of the general public and is concerned with some form of censorship.
The Internet is an extremely educational and communicative tool. Everyone can access a tremendous amount of information and connect with people on the other end of the planet; it is capable of doing everything. Nowadays, the society is facing a variety of challenges and controversies which are mostly related to religion, morality, the economic crisis, etc., and the most talked-about issue in today’s world is “Internet censorship”. Although the Internet is very useful, many people are suggesting the idea of censoring the Internet; however, the government should not censor the Internet because a free and open Internet usage has many positive impacts on people’s lives.