FREE ESSAY ON GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP

GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP

Thesis: 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.). 
Bibliography 
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. Maclean's 22 May 1995: 50+. 
Cidley, Joe. Red light district. Maclean's 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
26
June 1995: A13. 
Philip, Elmer-Derwitt. Porn on the Internet. Time 3 July 1995: 38+. 
Rheingold, Howard. Rheingold's 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. CDT's Communications Decency Act Issues Page.
http://www.cdt.org/cda.html. 
UNIX. Microsoft Encarta. Vers. 95. Computer Software. Encyclopedia Software, 1995. MS
Windows 3.1, 0.6 GB, CD-ROM. 
Willmott, Don. Activities on the Internet. PC Magazine 10 October 1995: 106+.