Should the Internet Be Censored?

Should the Internet be censored?

From colonial times to the present, the media in America has been subject to censorship challenges and regulations. The Internet has become a vast sea of opportunity. Everyone is seizing the moment. The good and the bad of society have reduced the meaning of the Internet. Menace threatens each onlooker, as people browse the many pages of Cyberspace. As the new technological advances help to shape our society, one cannot help but think of the dangers waiting to prey on anyone. The Internet should be censored, because there needs to be some protection against the criminal minds that dwell in society. If the problems concerning the Internet are not irradiated in its early stage now, it could fester into something cancerous. This cancer could easily turn something that should be in the best interest of society, into society's worst nightmare.

The part of society that is most opposed to censoring the Internet argue that placing restrictions on Internet usage is in direct violation of the First Amendment Rights of the Constitution. This right was established long before the Internet was even inkling in someone's imagination. By restricting web site content, society freedom of opinion and expression are oppressed (EFF, www.eff.org/freespeech.html July 1990). The Internet allows everyone in a group to have the same opportunities for engaging in and partaking of debates. Even people with disabilities, who are very often excluded from other media outlets, are able to access and contribute equally. The Internet is a radical new medium with many new outlets for debate and discussion. Censoring the Internet would fundamentally harm and destroy the quality that makes it most popular, which is freedom (Landier, 1997). The Internet has grown as an acceptable media of exchange around the globe. People enjoy the idea of logging on, talking to and or mailing hundreds of people across the world. If society felt their every action was monitored, the morale of the Cyber world as a whole would eventually dwindle away until ultimately, there was no more.

With the lack of censorship this means that, unlike any other form of communication available today, the Internet is open to abuse and misuse in a number of ways. With anyone using the World Wide Web, anyone can abuse it. Data can be transmitted anonymously and secretly. Sex rings have used the Internet to trade in pictures and to encourage their immoral and sick habits. There is no way of knowing someone's age on the internet so it is virtually impossible to stop juveniles using it to access pornography and various other types of data (EPIC, 1997). With the Internet being such a vast ocean of possibilities the Internet could "drown" in its own despair". Hiding behind the curtain of free speech could turn an Information Superhighway into a highway that is now "closed for construction".

The Communications Decency Act "attempts to ban the transmission of obscene or indecent material across the Internet (Communications Decency Act Main Page, 1997). The government must take control to prevent pornographers from using the Internet however they see fit. The Communications Decency Act is an attempt on part of the government to control the "free attitude" displayed in material over the Internet. To keep explicit material off home computers, the government must control information on the Internet, just as it controls obscenity through the mail or on the phone.

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