Government Censorship
Government Censorship would damage the atmosphere of the freedom to
express
ideas on the Internet; therefore, government should not encourage
censorship.
Introduction I. In the Internet community, there is a large
volume of technical
terms. For this reason, it is first necessary to examine
the terminology
specific to Internet. 1.The internet is a world wide computer
network.
1.Electronic mail (email), which is one component of the
Internet, approximates
person to person letters, memoranda, notes and even
phone calls. 2.Another term
that is often used is electronic news
(enews/Usenet), enews is a broadcast, free
to the Internet medium. 3.The term
FTP is also frequently used. File transfer
protocol (FTP) started as an
Internet archival and retrieval medium, somewhat
analogous to traditional
libraries. 4.The world-wide web (WWW), which is another
component of the Net,
can be used to "publish" material that would
traditionally appear in
journals, magazines, posters, books, television and even
on film. 2.It is
also essential to give a brief history on the internet. 3.The
U.S.
government is now trying to pass bills to prevent misuse of the Net. II.
In
order to understand the need for the ever-growing body of legislation, it
is
important to explore the controversy, and the current problems involved
with the
Net as it exists must be introduced. 1.The problem that concerns
most people is
offensive materials such as pornography. 2.Another crucial
internet crime is the
stealing of credit card numbers. III. One reaction to
this inapplicability has
been the "Censor the Net" approach (the censorship
bill), we are now
to compare its advantages and disadvantages. 1.First, the
meaning of
"Censoring the Net" must be explained. 2.However, many experts
have
pointed out that government censorship is not possible. 1.First, it is
not fair
to exclude the freedom and damage the atmosphere of freely
expressing ideas just
for the safety of children. 2.Most internet users are
enjoying their freedom of
speech on the Net, which is supposed to be
protected by our First Amendment.
3.Additionally, only a very small
portion of the Net contains offensive
material, most people do not use the
Net for pornography. 4.It must be
understood that censoring the Net is
technically impossible. 5.While people are
concerned about Internet
pornography, it should be recognized that pornography
is sometimes legal; for
example, pornography is legal in video and magazines.
IV. There are many
alternative measures to government censorship which would
prevent misuse of
the Net and would have the same effects as censorship. 1.It is
very important
for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and
parents should
have this responsibility. 2.However, at the same time as we carry
out moral
guidance, we have to come out with some short term approaches to solve
the
problem in a more efficient way as well. 3.An alternative to
government
censorship is the technological fix, which would prevent misuse of
the Net and
would have the same effects as government censorship. 1.One
example of
technological fix is the "SurfWatch" software. 2.Also,
commercial
Internet service providers, such as "America Online", allow
parents to
control what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to
their children.
3.Another technological fix is for parents and guardians
to have a separate
"proxy server" for their children's web browser. 4.There
are no
computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material;
only people
can do it. As a result, while practicing technological fixes, the
classification
of the contents of the material when posting is very
important. 5.Nowadays, most
internet users classify their postings with
standard categories, and leave
signatures at the end of postings. 6.The
combination of the installation of
censoring software and the classification
of materials is a much better solution
than government censorship. Conclusion
Bibliography The Internet is a wonderful
place of entertainment and education
but like all places used by millions of
people, it has some murky corners
people would prefer children not to explore.
In the physical world
society as a whole conspires to protect children, but
there are no social or
physical constraints to Internet surfing. The Internet
Censorship Bill of
1995, also known as the Exon/Coats Communications Decency
Act, has been
introduced in the U.S. Congress. It would make it a criminal
offense to make
available to children anything that is indecent, or to send
anything indecent
with "intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass"
("Stop the Communications
..." n.p.). The goal of this bill as written
(though not as stated by its
proponents) is to try to make all public discourse
on the Internet suitable
for young children. The issue of whether is it
necessary to have censorship
on the Internet is being argued all over the world.
There are numerous
homepages on the World Wide Web discussing this issue, or
asking people to
sign the petition to stop government censorship. The Internet
was originally
a place for people to freely express their ideas worldwide. It is
also one of
America's most valuable types of technology; scientists use email
for quick
and easy communication. They post their current scientific discoveries
on the
Usenet newsgroups so other scientists in the same field of study all over
the
world can know in minutes. Ordinary people use the Net for
communication,
expressing their opinions in the newsgroups, obtaining
up-to-date information
from the WWW, acquiring files by using FTP, etc.
Censorship would damage the
atmosphere of the freedom to express ideas on the
Internet; therefore,
government should not encourage censorship. In the
Internet community, there is
a large volume of technical terms. For this
reason, it is first necessary to
examine the terminology specific to
Internet. The Internet is a world wide
computer network. The "Net" is
frequently used in place of Internet.
In the words of Allison and Baxter,
two experts on Internet Censorship at the
Monash University, "the
Internet is comprised of various digital media
subsuming many of the distinct
roles of traditional media" (Allison and
Baxter 3). Electronic mail
(email), which is one component of the Internet,
approximates person to
person letters, memoranda, notes and even phone calls.
Sound and pictures
are sometimes sent along with text. Email is mainly for
private
communication. Electronic mailing lists are rather like club newsletters
and
readers have to contract-in or subscribe to a list. Another term that
is
often used is electronic news (enews/Usenet), enews is a broadcast, free
to the
Internet medium. It has some properties of radio or television,
particularly
talk-back radio or television, in that the destination is
indiscriminate. The
term FTP is also frequently used. File transfer protocol
(FTP) started as an
Internet archival and retrieval medium, somewhat
analogous to traditional
libraries. Files can be retrieved from distant
computers using a traditional
text-based interface. The world-wide web (WWW),
which is another component of
the Net, can be used to "publish" material that
would traditionally
appear in journals, magazines, posters, books, television
and even on film. The
term UNIX, "a widely heard computer term, is a
multi-user, multitasking
operating system originally developed by Ken
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, at
AT&T Bell Laboratories, in 1969 for
use on minicomputers"
("UNIX" n.p.). To understand the background of the
controversy, it is
also necessary to give a brief history on the Internet.
The Internet was created
about twenty years ago in an attempt to connect a
U.S. Defense Department
network called the ARPAnet and various other radio
and satellite networks. The
ARPAnet was an experimental network designed
to support military research; in
particular, research about how to build
networks that could withstand partial
outages (such as bomb attacks) and
still function. At about the same time the
Internet was coming into
being, Ethernet local area networks ("LANs")
were developed. Most of these
workstations came with Berkeley UNIX, which
included IP (Internet Protocol)
networking software. This created a new demand:
rather than connecting to a
single large timesharing computer per site,
organizations wanted to connect
the ARPAnet to their entire local network. The
demand keeps growing today.
Now that most four-year colleges are connected to
the Net, people are trying
to get secondary and primary schools connected.
People who have graduated
from college where they have used the resources of the
Net in classes,
know what the Internet is good for, and talk their employers
into connecting
different corporations. All this activity points to continued
growth,
networking problems to solve, evolving technologies, and job security
for
networkers (Willmott 107). The Internet can also be compared to a church.
In
many ways the Internet is like a church: it has its council of elders,
every
member has an opinion about how things should work, and they can either
take
part or not. It's the choice of the user. The Internet has no president,
chief
operating officer, or Pope. The constituent networks may have
presidents and
CEO's, but that's a different issue; there is no single
authority figure for the
Internet as a whole. As stated by Frances
Hentoff, the staff writer for The
Village Voice and the author of First
Freedoms, "on an info superhighway
driven by individuals, there are no cops
preventing users from downloading"
(Hentoff 1). Internet users can broadcast
or express anything they want. The
fact that the Net has no single authority
figure sets forth a problem about what
kind of materials could be available
on the Net. The U.S. government is now
trying to pass bills to prevent misuse
of the Net. The Internet Censorship Bill
of 1995, which has already been
discuss earlier, was introduced to the U.S.
Congress. Under the
Censorship Bill, a person breaks the law if he/she puts a
purity test on a
web page without making sure children cannot access the page.
Also, if a
person verbally assaults someone on IRC, he/she breaks the law. If
a
university, where some students may be under 18 years old, carries the
alt.sex.*
newsgroups, which contains adult material, it breaks the law.
According to
George Melloan from the Wall Street Journal, a censorship
bill was passed by the
Senate 84-16 in July, and an anticensorship bill
was passed by the House 420-4
in August. There are now four different sets of
censorship and anticensorship
language in the House and Senate versions of
the Telecomm reform bill, which
contradict each other and will have to be
reconciled (Melloan, n.p.). In order
to understand the need for the
ever-growing body of legislation, it is important
to explore the controversy,
and the current problems involved with the Net as it
exists must be
introduced. The problem that concerns most people is offensive
material such
as pornography. As pointed out by Allison and Baxter,
"Possible (offensive)
topics are behavior (drugs, ... ), nudity,
political/economic/social opinion,
violence, racial/ethnic, religious, coarse
language, sexual/gender
orientation, [and] sexuality" (Allison and Baxter
3). Since the Internet
is open to everyone, children are very easily exposed to
such material.
According to Allison and Baxter, "the information provided
on the Internet,
particularly through the WWW, ranges across train time-tables,
university
lecture notes, books, art exhibits, film promotions, the wisdom and
ravings
of individuals and, yes, pornographic pictures" (Allison and Baxter
3).
Moreover, many high schools in the United States provide Internet access
to
students, which is very useful for looking up information, but if a
student
intends to look for inappropriate material, he/she is very likely to
find such
material simply by doing an Internet search. Another crucial
Internet crime is
the theft of credit card numbers. Companies do business on
the Net, and credit
card numbers are stored on their servers; everyone with
the necessary computer
knowledge could hack in and obtain such databases for
illegal purposes. To cite
an instance, the most infamous computer terrorist,
Kevin Mitnick, "waived
extradition and is now in jail in California, charged
with computer fraud and
illegal use of a telephone access device. The list of
allegations against him
include theft of many files and documents, including
twenty-thousand credit card
numbers from Netcom On-Line Services, which
provides thousands with access to
the Internet" (Warren 52). Americans have
to come up with a solution in
order to keep children away from inappropriate
material and to prevent misuses
of the Net. One reaction to this
inapplicability has been the "Censor the
Net" approach (the censorship
bill), which is being debated worldwide.
First, the meaning of "Censoring
the Net" must be explained. Simply,
it is the banning of offensive material.
To see if the government should censor
the Net, it is imperative to list the
advantages and disadvantages of the
"censor the Net" approach. The advantage
of government censorship is
that ideally, children and teenagers could be
kept away from unsuitable
material. However, many experts have pointed out
that government censorship is
not possible. Howard Rheingold, the editor of
the Whole World Review, observes
that, "the 'censor the Net' approach is not
just morally misguided. It's
becoming technically and politically impossible"
(Rheingold n.p.). First,
it is not fair to exclude the freedom and damage the
atmosphere of freely
expressing ideas just for the safety of children.
Corn-Revere, an expert on
Internet censorship at the Howgan & Harson
Law Firm, points out that
"the purpose of indecency regulation is to keep
adult material from falling
into the hands of kids. When he first introduced
a similar bill last year,
Senator Exon said he was concerned that the
Information Superhighway was in
danger of becoming an electronic 'red light
district' and that he wanted to bar
his granddaughter's access to unsuitable
information" (Corn-Revere 24). It
is clear that Senator Exon introduced the
bill to prevent minors from viewing
unsuitable material on the Net. In
addition, Meleedy, a computer science
graduate student at Harvard University,
questions that if "the Internet
makes democracy this accessible to the
average citizen, is it any wonder
Congress wants to censor it?" (Meleedy
1) Allison and Baxter assert that,
"the most significant new properties of
the Internet media are the
diversity of information sources and their ability
to reach almost anywhere in
the world. Authors range from major corporations
such as IBM and Disney to
school children" (Allison and Baxter 3). As
predicted by Corn-Revere,
"At the very least, the law will force content
providers to make access
more difficult, which will affect all users, not
just the young"
(Corn-Revere 70). Censoring the Net is technically and
politically impossible;
it will damage the atmosphere of freedom and free
idea expression on the Net;
therefore, government should not encourage
censorship. Most Internet users are
enjoying their freedom of speech on the
Net, which is supposed to be protected
by the First Amendment of the United
States. According to Corn-Reverse, "it
has been suggested that, 'on-line
systems give people far more genuinely free
speech and free press than ever
before in human history'" (Corn-Reverse
71). Rheingold predicts that
"Heavy-handed attempts to impose restrictions
on the unruly but incredibly
creative anarchy of the Net could kill the spirit
of cooperative
knowledge-sharing that makes the Net valuable to millions" (Rheingold
n.p.).
The freedom of idea expression is what makes the Internet important
and
enjoyable, and it should not be waived for any reason. Additionally, only
a very
small portion of the Net contains offensive material, most people do
not use the
Net for pornography. Caragata from Maclean's magazine
observes that, "it is
pornography that stirs the most controversy. But while
there is no doubt that
pornography is popular, it amounts to a trickle
compared with everything else
available on the Net" (Caragata 51). The Net is
mostly being used for
communication and information exchange, and only a tiny
portion of the Net
contains pornography and other offensive material. It must
be understood that
censoring the Net is technically impossible. According to
Allison and Baxter,
"in principle, it is impossible to monitor all material
being transmitted
on the Internet. Considering the difficulties with
international boundaries, a
licensing system faces many obvious practical
hurdles" (Allison and Baxter
6). As described by Allison and Baxter, "Any
good Computer Science graduate
can create a completely secure encryption
system for concealment purposes. The
material can even be disguised, for
example hidden 'inside' a perfectly
innocuous picture" (Allison and Baxter
6). Therefore, if a person wants to
publish offensive material, he/she can
design a formula to change the material
with respect to a key, and secretly
tell other users what the key is. In this
way, they can retrieve the same
material and pass through the government
censorship. While people are
concerned about Internet pornography, it should be
recognized that
pornography is sometimes legal; for example, pornography is
legal in video
and magazines. Therefore, it is inconsistent to ban the Internet
equivalents.
According to Rheingold, "Citizens should have the right to
restrict the
information-flow into their homes. They should be able to exclude
from their
home any subject matter that they do not want their children to see.
But
sooner or later, their children will be exposed to everything from which
they
have shielded them , and then they will have left to deal with these
shocking
sights and sound in the moral fiber they helped them cultivate"
(Rheingold
n.p.). The Internet is definitely not the only medium for
teenagers to find
inappropriate material. Even if the Net does not have any,
teenagers could also
be exposed to indecorous material in many other places.
For example, Allison and
Baxter say that, "most authors using electronic
media do not produce
material that is any 'worse' than that available from
news agents, video shops,
or mail-order sources" (Allison and Baxter 8). On
that account, if the
purpose of censoring is to prevent minors from being
exposed to indecorous
material, not only the Net has to be censored.
Censoring the Net will only
eliminate one single medium for minors to find
irrelevant material. Government
censorship is not the solution to the
problem, and alternatives measures that
have same effects as censorship can
be practiced. There are many alternative
measures to government censorship
which would prevent misuse of the Net and
would have the same effects as
censorship. According to Hentoff, "there are
ways to protect children without
the Act's intervention: blockage of certain
areas, passwords, parental
supervision. And adults--under protection of the
First Amendment--can
remain protected from government thought control. However,
if the censorship
bill is passed, the First Amendment may effectively be
excluded from
cyberspace" (Hentoff 1). It is very important for parents to
provide moral
guidance for their children, and parents should have this
responsibility.
Moral guidance is the foremost long-term solution to the
problem. Rheingold
believes that, "this technological shock (pornography on
the Net) to
Americans' moral codes means that in the future, Americans are going
to have
to teach their children well. The only protection that has a chance
of
working is to give their sons and daughters moral grounding and some
common
sense" (Rheingold n.p.). In America, minors can be exposed to
sexual
material in many media. Providing children with moral guidance is the
foremost
solution to the problem. However, at the same time that parents
carry out moral
guidance, Americans have to come out with some short term
approaches to solve
the problem in a more efficient way as well. An
alternative to government
censorship is the technological fix, which would
prevent misuse of the Net and
would have the same effects as government
censorship. This involves the design
of intelligent software to filter
information. There is a rush to develop
information filtering software and
get it to market. One example of
technological fix is the "SurfWatch"
software, as described by Allison
and Baxter, "SurfWatch is a breakthrough
software product which helps
parents deal with the flood of sexual material
on the Internet. By allowing
parents to be responsible for blocking what is
being received at any individual
computer, children and others have less
chance of accidentally or deliberately
being exposed to unwanted material.
SurfWatch is the first major advance in
providing a technical solution to a
difficult issue created by the explosion of
technology. SurfWatch strives to
preserve Internet freedom by letting
individuals choose what they see"
(Allison, Baxter 6). The SurfWatch vendor
intends to provide monthly updates
to cope with the fast changing Internet.
Also, commercial Internet
service providers, such as "America Online",
allow parents to control what
Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available
to their children (Cidley
59). Parental Control is a feature in many commercial
Internet service
providers, users can turn on the Parental Control function, and
they will
automatically be kept away from offensive words in IRC. In this way,
children
can be kept away from offensive material and adults can continue to
enjoy
their Internet freedom. Another technological fix is for parents
and
guardians to have a separate "proxy server" for their children's
web
browser. A "proxy server" is a program that disallows uses of
some
specified Internet sites or Usenet newsgroups. The parents need to
actively
select sites their proxy server can access. Parental control tools
is a very
possible solution to the problem, as stated in the "Communications
Decency
Act Issues Page" by the Center for Democracy and Technology,
"what
will help parents control their children's access to the Internet is
Parental
Control tools and features, such as those provided by several
major online
services and available as over-the-counter software" ("Stop
the
Communications ..." n.p.). Tools for controlling Internet access
by
children are widely available, and parents can already control their
children's
access to the material on the Net. There are no computer programs
to
automatically and reliably classify material; only people can do it. As
a
result, while practicing technological fixes, the classification of the
contents
of the material when posting is very important. Nowadays, most
Internet users
classify their postings with standard categories, and leave
signatures at the
end of postings. According to Allison and Baxter, "items
are signed with a
secure digital signature that can be traced to a real
person, company or
organization" (Allison, Baxter 4). The strengths of the
material are often
classified as "strong" or "weak", and attitudes of a
given
document towards a topic are often classified as
"advocates",
"discusses", "deplores", or "does not
discuss".
Additionally, in order to reduce the effort of classifying many
individual
items, particularly in the case of FTP and WWW, classifications
are often
attached to directories and inherited by subdirectories and
documents. In this
way, readers can make informed decisions regarding access
of Internet material,
and the programming of intelligent software will be
much easier: just by
recognizing a small number of terms of classification.
As a matter of fact, the
classification of material has already been done on
the Net for a period of
time. Most Internet materials are well classified,
and people will have an idea
of what they are going to see beforehand. For
instance, the articles in a
particular Usenet newsgroup can be accurately
predicted by the name of the
group. For example,
soc.culture.hongkong.entertainment contains discussion of
the entertainment
industry of Hong Kong; alt.binaries.sex.pictures contains
encoded binary
files of dirty pictures. Internet users know what they are
approaching
beforehand, and minors know that they are not supposed to browse
those
alt.sex.* newsgroups. The combination of the installation of
censoring
software and the classification of material is a much better
solution than
government censorship. Hentoff mentions that "flexibility of
interactive
media...enables parents to control what content their kids have
access to, and
leaves the flow of information free for those adults who want
it" (Hentoff
1). This prevents unwanted material from reaching children
and allows adults to
continue enjoying their Internet freedom. The problem of
the Net is that it is
easy for minors to obtain inappropriate materials. The
American government came
up with a proposal to censor the Net, but as proved
earlier, the "Censor
the Net" approach is both technically and politically
impossible. The
foremost solution to the problem is for parents to provide
moral guidance for
their children. At the same time they are providing moral
guidance for their
children, Americans also need short term technical
solution. Intelligent
censoring software and proxy servers can let parents
disallow their children
access to certain sites. In this way, parents can
keep their children from the
offensive materials on the Net. "Like other
dilemmas and unanswered
questions of the digital age, traditional approaches
(government censorship)
simply won't work. Americans are going to have to
accept less intrusive,
probably more exotic solutions, such as providing
intelligent software filters
to those who want a version of Internet Lite
[sic]" (Baker 65). For
intelligent software and proxy servers to operate
successfully, it is necessary
to classify the information available on the
Net, and the classification of
materials has already been done by Internet
users for years. Parents can then
censor the Net for their children, and
adults can continue to enjoy their
Internet freedom. This will provide
the same effect as government censorship,
but will not damage the atmosphere
of free idea expression and freedom on the
Net. Moreover, indecorous
materials are not only on the Net, minors can obtain
such materials without
accessing the Internet at all. Internet censorship is not
the solution to
keeping minors away from sexual material. The real and foremost
solution to
preventing minors from viewing sexual material is for parents to
take a
stronger role in their children's viewing. "This technological
shock
(pornography on the Net) to Americans' moral codes means that in the
future,
Americans are going to have to teach their children well. The
only protection
that has a chance of working is to give their sons and
daughters moral grounding
and some common sense" (Rheingold
n.p.).
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