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.
The first benefit that would result from censoring the internet would be the protection of the mind. When children are doing homework online, they frequently get distracted by the presence of other websites. This often interferes with their progress. In cases of teenagers, the websites they are commonly sidetracked by are pornography websites. Pornography has negative effects on the brain because it makes people lose their innocence and promotes v...
... middle of paper ...
...e. "Internet Pornography Should Be Restricted." Free Speech. Ed. Scott Barbour. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Current Controversies. Rpt. from "Porn on the Internet: Is It Free Speech?" Family Voice (Mar. 1997). Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Leiner, Barry. "Internet." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2013
Lester Holt/Peter Alexander. "Censoring Internet Content". NBC Today Show. NBCUniversal Media, LLC. 01/06/2007. Accessed Sun Mar 18 2012 from NBC Learn
Snowball, David. "Propaganda and its Discontents." Journal of Communication 49.3 (2009): 165-71. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
Turner, John. "Don't believe propaganda: Libs were bad managers." Sydney Morning Herald [Sydney, Australia] 17 May 2013: 22. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
Pornography is considered by many to be an unwelcome and distasteful part of our society. However, I argue that it is necessary to voice the unpopular viewpoints, under the Constitution. This paper is a defense of pornography as a constitutional right of free expression, under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. In illustrating this argument, I will first define pornography as a concept, and then address central arguments in favor of pornography remaining legal and relatively unregulated – such as the development of the pornography debate throughout modern US law, and how activist groups address the censorship of adult entertainment.
Hummel, William and Huntress, Keith. The Analysis of Propaganda. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1949
Since the internet has been available in schools and libraries in this country, there has been a debate about what should be accessible to users, especially minors. The amount of information disseminated on the world wide web is vast, with some sources valuable for scholarly and personal research and entertainment, and some sources that contain material that is objectionable to some (ie. pornography, gambling, hate groups sites, violent materials). Some information potentially accessible on the internet such as child pornography and obscenity is strictly illegal and is not protected under the First Amendment. Some information available on the internet that may be valuable to some is at the same time perceived to be worthless or potentially harmful to some. For libraries serving the public, there has been controversy on the issue of providing the internet, free of censorship or filtering, to users. While some librarians and their professional associations align with ideals of free and unfiltered access to all information provided by the internet, some feel that filtering internet content to exclude possibly objectionable materials is a reasonable measure to prevent potential harm to minors.
McCarthy, M. (2005). THE CONTINUING SAGA OF INTERNET CENSORSHIP: THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT. Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, (2), 83-101.
The Internet is an enormous and complex network that allows innumerable devices across the world to communicate with each other. With merely a few keystrokes, one can use the Internet to find anything from cute cat videos to the news, and everything imaginable in between. However, one could also effortlessly, and sometimes unintentionally, find graphic content. The term graphic content encompasses many things including pornographic videos, violent movies, and explicit music. However, it can also encompass far viler things such as videos of rape, torture, murders, and other heinous acts. The omnipresence of both kinds of graphic content is relevant to Philosophy because it has led many people in the United States to believe that the Government
Censorship is Necessary to Protect Children from the Internet Do you want our future generations being exposed to violence, hate, sexuality, illegal substances, and false information, and then one day think it would be cool or alright to try these things? The internet is filled with dangerous information, that children should never have the freedom to access. Children learn from example, and if they search, watch, or read something on the web that could be potentially dangerous, they could be influenced or curious and think that it would be alright to imitate one day. If our children now are viewing these things, it could mean that future generations could grow to be more violent and our world could become more dangerous than it already is today. Censorship is necessary if we plan on having our kids grow up in the safest environment possible.
...e are matters that should never occur in a child’s life. While some people claim that censorship completely solves these issues, this is not the case. It is the parents’ job to make sure that their kid is not exposed to these kinds of websites. Besides, it is possible for them to use browsers that will edit out offensive and inappropriate material for young users. This is why cyberspace surveillance should start and end at home. Extensive censorship will not directly help stopping the acts; it will not help find the criminals. As a matter of fact, it makes it even harder for them to get caught. Indeed, often data contained in the content such as the IP address is crucial for establishing the identity of the offender. Blocking the content removes the possibility to use such information. Therefore, censorship makes the problem less visible but in no way less real.
Censorship on the Internet is a controversial issue. A lot of people agree that censoring violates the First Amendment of free speech. But many also believe that it is the government’s duty to censor to protect children and teenagers. The EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc.) is an organization against Internet censorship. The EFA’s goals are “to advocate the amendment of laws and regulations in Australia and elsewhere which restrict free speech...and to educate the community at large about the...liberties issues involved in the use of computer-based communications systems.” (President of EFA) The EFA shares similar goals with the USA’s EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation) these organizations believe that free speech is a right and it will be taken away by censoring the Internet. Does freedom of speech include pornography and “obscenity”? A lot of people argue that obsce...
In recent years, pornography has established itself as perhaps the most controversial topic arising out of the use of the Internet. The easy availability of this type of sexually explicit material has caused a panic among government officials, family groups, religious groups and law enforcement bodies and this panic has been perpetuated in the media.
Jones, Jeffrey P. "Fox News and the Performance of Ideology." Cinema Journal 51.4 (2012): 178-85. Print.
While Morgan states that by censoring the Internet we’ll be protecting ourselves and our children, Mr. Jeffrey Pollock, a Republican from Oregon who used to think the same, recently changed his mind when he found out that his own site had been blocked by an Internet filter. After the incident, Mr. Pollock expressed that “To mandate the federal government to legislate morality, I find abhorrent”(Schwartz). The disagreement on this issue continues and every person has a different opinion on what would be a satisfying solution to it. Even though I agree that it is not any parent’s desire for his/her children to have access to pornography or other potentially offensive material on the Internet, it is not worth jeopardizing our right to free speech in the name of morality.
Spending too much time on the internet isn’t the only problem that children can encounter. The content which children access on the internet can be harmful as well. There is no regulation of the content on the internet. Children can acces...
Fee, John. "Obscenity and the World Wide Web." Brigham Young University Law Review 2007.6 (2007): 1691-1720. Business Source Complete. Web. 22 Dec. 2013.
It just became apparent that pornography on the net not only encompasses controversies about pornography itself, but also all the other controversies and problems the internet already has. Sex has always been something which has intrigued people, and that is probably in essence how pornography became to be. As society developed in the 21st Century red-light districts flourished which centralized anything which had to do with sex in one geographic location. As sex and pornography became a more and more pertinent issue, the supreme court ruled in 1976 that cities could use their zoning powers to keep out sex-oriented businesses, and that more or less was the end of red-light districts in America. Nowadays with the Internet coming along as a more widespread medium the issue of pornography resurfaces and along with it, it carries many other disputes.
The dirty, evil side of the internet has become a magnet for pedophiles and hate crime activists. The problem is that due to freedom of speech there is not much control that I know about in regards to items being posted on the internet. This device is so easily usable that even kids in middle and high school are posting websites and chat lines in order to say what ever they like and send information to all corners of the world in a second, practically for free. There are some issues that have always concerned me in regards to the legal censorship over the internet that I would like to explore in my paper. The reason for my curiosity began a few weeks ago when my 8 year old cousin was playing on my computer....