Internet Censorship
Does censorship violate the first amendment? This is one of the largest questions in Congress at the moment: whether or not to require blocking software in schools and libraries that receive government funding, cutting their funds if they do not. By law, all printed materials are protected from censorship due to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but does this include the Internet? Yes, it does and, therefore, blocking software companies, such as Solid Oak (makers of CYBERsitter) and N2H2 (makers of BESS), have been abusing their power and should not be used to control Internet access. Keyword blocking filters incoming html documents and web sites for certain key words that these companies have decided are not acceptable for minors. This does not allow access to those documents and sites that contain these words. This method prevents access to such sites as the Breast Cancer Legislation and The Vatican. In a study of average error rates due to keyword blocking done by Peacefire.org, the conditions of the study were as follows: Using "zone files" from Network Solutions (which list all .com domains in existence), we obtained a list of the first 1,000 active .com domains on the Internet as of June 14
Such programs also give parents near-complete control over what their children can and can't read. Traditionally, kids have been able to browse the stacks of a library away from parental supervision. But when the library is online, access can be completely controlled by censorware. Pity the closeted gay son of homophobic parents, prevented by CYBERsitter from accessing soc.support.youth.lesbian-gay-bi (Change). Lindsay, Greg. "CYBERsitter Decides to Take a Time Out." TIME Digital 8 Aug. 1997, TIME Magazine. 28 Nov. 2000. , 2000. We tested this list of 1,000 domains using five popular blocking programs: Cyber Patrol, SurfWatch, Bess, AOL Parental Controls, and SafeServer, to see how many sites each program blocked as "pornography", and of those sites, how many were actually pornographic (Error). Encrypted blacklists prevent parents and librarians from seeing what sites are being blocked. TIME Magazine reporter, Declan McCullagh, wrote: Wired News wrote, "She says her account received more than 800 emails from support@solidoak.com, quoting her letter with the subject line 're: your crap' and a message 'Do not send us any more e-mail!'" (Emailbombed). This is simply uncalled for. TIME magazine wrote about the gay and lesbian access online: Haselton, Bennett. "Study of Average Error Rates for Censorware Programs." Peacefire. 15 Nov. 2000. This abuse of power is unnecessary and should not be allowed. I have one major objection to all of the software filters currently on the market: Consumers have no way of knowing what's being blocked. Without knowing what's on the filter list, parents can't know what Junior will or won't be seeing. When reporters who try to reveal that information are faced with potential criminal investigations, the press's ability to shed light on these companies is threatened (Change).
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1258
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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