Internet Censorship Essay Research Paper Luis Barahona129015th

Internet Censorship Essay, Research Paper

Luis Barahona

12-9-01

5th period

Internet censorship

Censorship is a big issue, which we seem to be confronted a lot with, especially in the school environment. We have tried to determine if certain books such as I know why the caged bird sings and the chocolate factory are appropriate for students to read. The challenge of deciding what we see has also gone to other mediums such as television, and music. But as we enter the new millennium, the new, and more widely used type of communication, which we see, is that of the Internet. The Internet, if used correctly is an information paradise. There are millions of ideas on the Internet one could learn from, or use to research information. Some thing as powerful as the Internet should not be censored. Actions like these are un-constitutional according to our first amendment rights, filtering programs which the government wants to use are inefficient, and limit the amount of information you can see, and lastly internet censorship does not let parents decide what their kids do and do not see on the internet.

Some parents believe that a lot of material that is on the Internet is inappropriate, and/or offensive to them, or their children, and believe that all the information should not be accessible. Pornographic material, and children is among one of the biggest concerns of these people. At a young age, and child can be emotionally disturbed from seeing such pornographic material, and parents do not want this to happen. Another argument for blocking certain information is to protect the ideas of individuals. On the Internet there are many forms to transfer files, such as source code to programs, and digital music, and school documents. Some argue that if this data is put on the Internet, it will be easier for individual’s to steal other’s work, and not give them credit. The most argued form of this transfer has been with the software program napster, which allowed users to transfer music files. But with every freedom comes a consequence. The price of freedom in this country is a higher crime rate than others, and the same idea goes with the Internet. Censorship on the net would not only jeopardize all the great information accessible on the Internet, but would not be constitutional.

The first amendment states? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress grievances.” This means that we are guaranteed the right of free speech, and freedom of expression of our ideas, but it does not say that these freedoms are limited to speech, and the printing press. It does not say anywhere that in the future, this amendment will not apply to new mediums of technology. For that reason Internet censorship is unconstitutional, and has been ruled to be un-constitutional in some cases. In 1995,the communication decency act was passed. This act was so the government could decide what was appropriate to view on the Internet, and what people could not access. Later in 1997, the Court decided that this act was unconstitutional. All channels of communication published on the Internet; print, broadcast, telephone, or mail deserves the highest level of protection, which before this court case was only given to the printing press. Not only is this un-constitutional, but it does not let parents do their job. The question of objectionable material, and what children should be able to view should be left to the decision of the children’s parents. The parents can talk with the children, and let them know what is on the Internet, and how they are expected to behave. Just as we don’t have government officials at school telling children how to act, what to do and not what to do, we should trust that parents know what is best for their children, and should let them do their job. Alternatives to the government censoring what you see are filters.

Filters are software programs designed to scan through the text, and source cod of a web page, and determine if it contains “bad words” or “bad ideas”. Also, the programs come with a list of web sites, which the company has seen, and believe the filter will not classify an in appropriate, but is. Such programs are designed for web pages, and e-mail. These programs will essentially do two things. The first is it will read your e-mail, and if there is any foul language it will either delete the e-mail, or clear the foul language. Another purpose for this software is that it will prevent kids from accessing adult web sites. The hope of these filters I that they will be 99.9% efficient, and that they will help, but the reality is they are about 13% efficient, and do us more harm that they do good. In essence, what these programs are doing is crippling the Internet, all the useful information that there is on the Internet for us to use. The idea behind filters is that they will scan a web page, and according to the words, block the page. But this is not efficient because a computer cannot think. It can see one word, and one word only. It cannot put a word into context, and see what message the string of text is trying to give. For this reason, filters may block certain pornographic sites, but they also block sites with use