Canada is in many ways a free country, particularly by world standards. It is also, however, a nation that has always tolerated a remarkable amount of censorship, and spawned dismaying numbers of self-appointed guardians of taste and morality.

Since governments almost always have an interest in controlling the free flow of information, official censorship is something that must be constantly guarded against. In our society, however, large corporations are a more common source of censorship than governments: Media outlets killing stories because they undermine corporate interests; advertisers using their financial clout to squelch negative reports; powerful businesses using the threat of expensive lawsuits to discourage legitimate investigations. The most frequent form of censorship is self-censorship: Journalists deciding n

-- The Internet is a vast mail system, like a post office. Would you favor a law that required postal authorities to open each piece of mail and evaluate its acceptability?

But, consider these possible analogies to the Internet:

In some parts of the world, the media are controlled by the government. This means that no one can broadcast or publish anything that the government considers to be immoral or harmful, or that threatens the country's stability (i.e., the government's own power base). This is what we usually think of when we hear the word censorship. Democratic countries, on the other hand, take pride in upholding the principle of freedom of speech. People are free to say and write whatever they wish, with some carefully defined exceptions. But there is another controlling power at work in a market economy - the power of money. For example, in North America most mainstream publications depend on two income sources: subscriptions and advertisers. Both influence decisions about content. Readers must find the content relevant, interesting, tasteful, and entertaining or they will drop their subscription. Advertisers will cancel their accounts if they consider the content to undermine or challenge their message about the product they sell. For instance, the tobacco industry has enormous advertising power in the U.S., with annual expenditures of over $5 billion (or $75 for every adult smoker). Since cigarette advertising was banned on radio and TV in 1970,

most of this money has been spent on expensive ads in the print media.

At first the use of filtering/blocking software may seem like a simple, reasonable solution, free from any threat to the freedom of expression of adults. Once one examines this proposal more thoroughly, serious problems arise when filtering/blocking software p

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Approximate Word count = 1220
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)