The Internet in the past 20 years has emerged as an information gateway with unlimited potential. While many have criticized the internet for its Wild West type infrastructure toward censorship because many websites are considered offensive to individuals. However, non-censorship is necessary because of research opportunities, pure recreation, and our freedom of speech.
The Internet of today has become more than anyone could have ever imagined 20 years ago becoming the only resource worth using because of its wide variety, speed, and relevancy making libraries a thing of the past. In our society we use the internet for everything from using search engines on the internet to look at pornography images to buying and trading stock in hopes to turn a profit all accessed by a mouse click away. The internet in a sense is the first amendment because of its freedom of speech. That isn’t to say all people have become accustomed to the internet and its free flowing infrastructure. Others who oppose the internet and say it should be censored argue that it poses as a security risk for young children who roam the internet unsupervised could result in a child view inappropriate material and fear for young children potentially communicating with sexual predators over the internet. Parents often have expressed their distaste with the internet infrastructure because internet filers are not always impeccable. Another argument is Cyberbullying emerging as a problem for young teens socializing on social media sites. Cyberbullying can hurt a person’s self-esteem emotionally and in some cases of Cyberbullying resulting in some teens committing suicide. Cyberbullying among teens and young adult groups has promoted violence, and bad behavior in youth as...
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—. How Copyright Industries Con Congress. 3 January 2012. Journal Article. 1 April 2014. .
Segal, Julian Sanchez and David. Blackout Protesting SOPA, PIPA Bills Makes Statement on Censorship. 19 Novemeber 2012. Journal Article. 25 Feburary 2014. .
Shirky, Clay. The political power of social media: technology, the public sphere, and political change. Feburary 2011. Journal Article. 25 Feburary 2014. .
The relationship between censorship, free speech and copyright in this bill is worth discussing. In SOPA, copyrights are enforced by censorship, but censorship at the same time violates free speech. Although SOPA’s online censorship of unauthorized online material is an effective method to protect internet copyrights, it resists innovation and compromises freedom of speech. SOPA aroused public attention from a wide range of protests, though it originally aimed to help online businesses damaged by piracy. On January 18, 2012, websites like Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia were all blackout and drew great public attention.
Kids now want to be more independent and have more freedom which might scare some if not most parents. A lot of parents look at the internet as a dangerous tool and not a tool where their kids can have some freedom. Although parents need to realize that they can’t protect their kids from all ...
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.
Gates, Bill. Searching for middle ground in online censorship. Microsoft Corporation. http://www.microsoft.com/corpinfo/bill-g/column/1996essay/censorship.htm (27 Mar. 1996).
Johnson, D. (1998). Internet filters: Censorship by any other name?. Emergency Librarian , 25 (5), 11-13.
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.
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.
Abstract: This paper examines the use of Internet technologies (specifically SafeWeb.com) to counteract invasions of personal privacy and censorship. The paper begins by exploring the methods by which governments, corporations, and commercial agents invade personal privacy. It also discusses Internet censorship on the corporate and governmental levels. It then proceeds to discuss SafeWeb.com, a technology that allows Internet users to surf the Web privately and view censored content. The paper finishes by exploring some of the ethical issues raised by Internet privacy and censorship in specific relation to SafeWeb, concluding that the application of SafeWeb in circumventing the authority of governments and corporations is inherently unethical.
Naik, Abhijit. “Internet Censorship Pros and Cons.” Buzzle. Buzzle, 25 Nov. 2010. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. .
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 has been one of the most influential technological advancements of the twenty-first century. It is in millions of homes, schools, and workplaces. The internet offers not only a way of communicating with people around the world, but also a link to information, shopping, chatting, searching, and maps. This freedom to be anyone and to "go" anywhere right from the comfort of home has become a cherished item. However, there is always a down side to every up. Because of the freedom to post anything and access anything on the internet, the issue of regulation has arisen; for example, what should and should not be allowed on the internet? Who has the right to regulate this space that we cherish for its freedom?
The political atmosphere has significantly changed over the years, along with the developments in the area of technology and mass media communication. The advances in this area have provided the opportunity for the civil society to get politically involved and the ability to engage in debate about the current issues. This will be discussed using Clay Shirky’s article The Political Power of Social Media – Technology, the Public Sphere and Political Change, as a lens to look at media communication and technology influence on a particular political movement of high current interest and importance, the gun control debate. However, this influence and impact is only possible when the population has complete freedom to use the Internet, which is not
Although, it is unfair to blame technology because of the content people put on it. Greenfield, Patricia, and Zheng Yan put it best when they say, “Just as we cannot ask whether a knife is inherently good or bad, we cannot ask whether the Internet is good or bad; we can simply document how it is used.” So, as much as some may blame the Internet for its problems, the real war is against the substance within the Internet (Greenfield, Patricia, and Zheng Yan 390-93). And thus comes the main argument against the Internet, is the composition of the Internet harmful to children?
There are two real issues at stake when looking at this controversial topic. The first issue is finding a way to protect our children from potentially damaging material. There are advocates to censoring the Internet and removing this type of material because it will help shelter our children from this type of content. On the other hand, Free Speech advocates believe that it is the individual citizens right to have access to this typ...
Many children have access to the internet and are able to search up anything on Google. As with any type of media, there are positive effects and negative effects. Some of the negative effects of the internet for children are that ,since, children and adolescents are more or less technologically savvy than their parents, they are able to search about just about anything and and talk to just about anyone on the internet, this can lead to some very dangerous situations. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, “89% of adolescents report using a computer, 61% report “surfing the net,” and 14% report seeing something that they do not want their parents to know about.” (Villani, 2001) 14% of adolescents reported seeing something that they did not want their parents to know about, this shows how unsupervised the internet is and shows how the internet can lead adolescents to become secretive and , maybe, even violent. Again, this leads to deviant behavior that the child learned from the internet. In addition, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, “... a profile of the recent school killers, noted that almost all were computer-savvy and frequented sites where they could obtain violent, anarchist-oriented material.” (Villani, 2001) This shows that websites that have violent material on the