Internet Censorship Essay Summary Example For Students

Internet Censorship Essay Summary Thesis: Government Censorship would damage the atmosphere of the freedom to express ideas onthe 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 firstnecessary 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, televisio n 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 toexplore the controversy, and the current problems involved with the Net as it exists must beintroduced. 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 censorshipbill), 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 ofthe Net and would have the same effects as censorship. 1.It is very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and parentsshould have this responsibility. 2.However, at the same time as we carry out moral guidance, we have to come out with someshort 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 preventmisuse 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 childrens web browser. 4.There are no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material; only peoplecan do it. As a result, while practicing technological fixes, the classification of the contents ofthe material when posting is very important. 5.Nowadays, most internet users classify their postings with standard categories, and leavesignatures at the end of postings. 6.The combination of the installation of censoring software and the classification of materials isa much better solution than government censorship. Conclusion BibliographyThe Internet is a wonde rful place of entertainment and education but like all places used by millionsof people, it has some murky corners people would prefer children not to explore. In the physicalworld society as a whole conspires to protect children, but there are no social or physicalconstraints to Internet surfing. The Internet Censorship Bill of 1995, also known as the Exon/Coats Communications DecencyAct, has been introduced in the U.S. Congress. It would make it a criminal offense to makeavailable 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 Internetsuitable for young children. The issue of whether is it necessary to have censorship on the Internetis being argued all over the world. There are numerous homepages on the World Wide Webdiscussing 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 oneof Americas most valuable types of technology; scientists use email for quick and easycommunication. They post their current scientific discoveries on the Usenet newsgroups so otherscientists in the same field of study all over the world can know in minutes. Ordinary people usethe Net for communication, expressing their opinions in the newsgroups, obtaining up-to-dateinformation from the WWW, acquiring files by using FTP, etc. Censorship would damage theatmosphere of the freedom to express ideas on the Internet; therefore, government should notencourage censorship. In the Internet community, there is a large volume of technical terms. For this reason, it is firstnecessary to examine the terminology specific to Internet. The Internet is a world wide computernetwork. The Net is frequently used in place of Internet. In the words of Allison a nd Baxter, twoexperts on Internet Censorship at the Monash University, the Internet is comprised of variousdigital 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 personletters, memoranda, notes and even phone calls. Sound and pictures are sometimes sent along withtext. Email is mainly for private communication. Electronic mailing lists are rather like clubnewsletters 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 tothe Internet medium. It has some properties of radio or television, particularly talk-back radio ortelevision, in that the destination is indiscriminate. The term FTP is also frequently used. File transfer protocol (FTP) started as an Internet archivaland 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 publishmaterial that would traditionally appear in journals, magazines, posters, books, television and evenon film. The term UNIX, a widely heard computer term, is a multi-user, multitasking operatingsystem originally developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, at ATT Bell Laboratories, in1969 for use on minicomputers (UNIX n.p.). To understand the background of the controversy, it is also necessary to give a brief history on theInternet. The Internet was created about twenty years ago in an attempt to connect a U.S. DefenseDepartment network called the ARPAnet and various other radio and satellite networks. TheARPAnet 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 Inte rnet was coming into being, Ethernet local areanetworks (LANs) were developed. Most of these workstations came with Berkeley UNIX,which included IP (Internet Protocol) networking software. This created a new demand: ratherthan connecting to a single large timesharing computer per site, organizations wanted to connectthe ARPAnet to their entire local network. The demand keeps growing today. Now that mostfour-year colleges are connected to the Net, people are trying to get secondary and primaryschools connected. People who have graduated from college where they have used the resourcesof the Net in classes, know what the Internet is good for, and talk their employers into connectingdifferent 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 itscouncil of elders, every member has an opinion about how things should work, and they can eithertake part or not. Its the choice of the user. The Internet has no president, chief operating officer,or Pope. The constituent networks may have presidents and CEOs, but thats a different issue;there is no single authority figure for the Internet as a whole. As stated by Frances Hentoff, thestaff writer for The Village Voice and the author of First Freedoms, on an info superhighwaydriven by individuals, there are no cops preventing users from downloading (Hentoff 1). Internetusers can broadcast or express anything they want. The fact that the Net has no single authorityfigure 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 InternetCensorship Bill of 1995, which has already been discuss earlier, was introduced to the U.S. Geology: A Science of Lies EssayCensoring 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 havesame effects as censorship can be practiced. There are many alternative measures to government censorship which would prevent misuse of theNet and would have the same effects as censorship. According to Hentoff, there are ways toprotect children without the Acts intervention: blockage of certain areas, passwords, parentalsupervision. And adultsunder protection of the First Amendmentcan remain protected fromgovernment thought control. However, if the censorship bill is passed, the First Amendment mayeffectively be excluded from cyberspace (Hentoff 1). It is very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and parents shouldhave 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 moralcodes means that in the future, Americans are going to have to teach their children well. The onlyprotection that has a chance of working is to give their sons and daughters moral grounding andsome common sense (Rheingold n.p.). In America, minors can be exposed to sexual material inmany 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 outwith some short term approaches to solve the problem in a more efficient way as well. Analternative to government censorship is the technological fix, which would prevent misuse of theNet and would have the same effects as government censorship. This involves the design ofintelligent software to filter information. There is a rush to develop information filtering software andget it to market. One example of technological fix is the Su rfWatch software, as described byAllison and Baxter, SurfWatch is a breakthrough software product which helps parents deal withthe flood of sexual material on the Internet. By allowing parents to be responsible for blockingwhat is being received at any individual computer, children and others have less chance ofaccidentally or deliberately being exposed to unwanted material. SurfWatch is the first majoradvance 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 thefast 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 canturn on the Parental Control function, and they will automatically be kept away from offensivewords in IRC. In this way, children can be kept away from offensive material and adults cancontinue to enjoy their Internet freedom. Another technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate proxy server for theirchildrens web browser. A proxy server is a program that disallows uses of some specifiedInternet sites or Usenet newsgroups. The parents need to actively select sites their proxy servercan access. Parental control tools is a very possible solution to the problem, as stated in theCommunications Decency Act Issues Page by the Center for Democracy and Technology, whatwill help parents control their childrens access to the Internet is Parental Control tools andfeatures, such as those provided by several major online services and available asover-the-counter software (Stop the Communications n.p.). Tools for controlling Internetaccess by children are widely available, and parents can already control their childrens access tothe material on the Net. There are no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material; only people can doit. As a result, while practicing technological fixes, the classification of the contents of the materialwhen posting is very important. Nowadays, most Internet users classify their postings withstandard categories, and leave signatures at the end of postings. According to Allison and Baxter,items are signed with a secure digital signature that ca n be traced to a real person, company ororganization (Allison, Baxter 4). The strengths of the material are often classified as strong orweak, 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 ofclassifying many individual items, particularly in the case of FTP and WWW, classifications areoften attached to directories and inherited by subdirectories and documents. In this way, readerscan make informed decisions regarding access of Internet material, and the programming ofintelligent software will be much easier: just by recognizing a small number of terms ofclassification. As a matter of fact, the classification of material has already been done on the Netfor a period of time. Most Internet materials are well classified, and people will have an idea ofwhat they are going to see beforehand. For instance, the articles in a particular Usenet newsgroupcan be accurately predicted by the name of the group. For example,soc.culture.hongkong.entertainment contains discussion of the entertainment industry of HongKong; alt.binaries.sex.pictures contains encoded binary files of dirty pictures. Internet users knowwhat they are approaching beforehand, and minors know that they are not supposed to browsethose alt.sex.* newsgroups. The combination of the installation of censoring software and the classification of material is a muchbetter solution than government censorship. Hentoff mentions that flexibility of interactivemediaenables parents to control what content their kids have access to, and leaves the flow ofinformation free for those adults who want it (Hentoff 1). This prevents unwanted material fromreaching 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 Americangovernment came up with a proposal to censor the Net, but as proved earlie r, the Censor theNet approach is both technically and politically impossible. The foremost solution to the problemis for parents to provide moral guidance for their children. At the same time they are providingmoral guidance for their children, Americans also need short term technical solution. Intelligentcensoring 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 otherdilemmas and unanswered questions of the digital age, traditional approaches (governmentcensorship) simply wont work. Americans are going to have to accept less intrusive, probablymore exotic solutions, such as providing intelligent software filters to those who want a version ofInternet Lite sic (Baker 65). For intelligent software and proxy servers to operate successfully, it is necessary to classify theinformation available on the Net, and the classification of materials has already been done byInternet users for years. Parents can then censor the Net for their children, and adults can continueto enjoy their Internet freedom. This will provide the same effect as government censorship, butwill 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 withoutaccessing the Internet at a ll. Internet censorship is not the solution to keeping minors away fromsexual material. The real and foremost solution to preventing minors from viewing sexual material isfor parents to take a stronger role in their childrens viewing. This technological shock(pornography on the Net) to Americans moral codes means that in the future, Americans aregoing to have to teach their children well. The only protection that has a chance of working is togive their sons and daughters moral grounding and some common sense (Rheingold n.p.). WORKS CITED Allison, L., and R. Baxter. Protecting Our Innocents. http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/lloyd/tilde/InterNet/Innocent/1995.224.html. Caragata, Warren. Crime in the Cyberspace. Macleans 22 May 1995: 50+. Cidley, Joe. Red light district. Macleans 22 May 1995: 58+. Corn-Revere. New Age Comstockery: Exan vs the Internet Policy Analysis No. 232. Diss. Howgan Hartson Law Firm, 1995. Hentoff, Frances. Indecent Proposal. Entertainment Weekly 31 March, 1995. Meleedy, David. Internet Censorship. Diss. Harvard University, 1995. Melloan, George. Science Miracles Sprout From Creative Freedom. The Wall Street Journal 26June 1995: A13. Philip, Elmer-Derwitt. Porn on the Internet. Time 3 July 1995: 38+. Rheingold, Howard. Rheingolds Tomorrow: Why Censoring Cyberspace is Dangerous Futile. http://www.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/tomorrowcensor.html. Sanchez, Robert. A Wired Education. Internet World 4 October 1995: 71+. Stop the Communications Decency Act. CDTs Communications Decency Act Issues Page. http://www.cdt.org/cda.html. UNIX. Microsoft Encarta. Vers. 95. Computer Software. Encyclopedia Software, 1995. MSWindows 3.1, 0.6 GB, CD-ROM. Willmott, Don. Activities on the Internet. PC Magazine 10 October 1995: 106+. Words/ Pages : 4,431 / 24