Censorship v. Freedom of Speech on the Internet

A detailed Summary of Censorship v. Freedom of Speech on the Internet

The world of cyberspace is a fast developing new universe of information, this information can flow between two computers sitting next to each other just as easily as it can flow between countries or right around the world. In this world where the information kept on a disc can be more valuable to a company than the company itself, regulation and control of the flow of this information is very necessary.

The Internet soon after its creation became the world's central location for piracy, and it has an ever expanding amount of music, software, and documents that should not be there.

Another major area for regulation on the Internet is indecent material. There is currently a vast amount of pornography on the Internet; the major problem with the regulation of pictures is that they have no definite representation. Unlike a copyright document or a song, you can identify an infringement as the information in the document is exact, or you can hear when a song is a copy. However, what in a collection of pixels is considered indecent, and what is not. Different people, religions and countries have very different views on indecent material. In this world where physical boundaries are irrelevant, who should make the rules? The world of the

One of the current areas of major controversy is child pornography. At what stage does an innocent photo of a child become an indecent photo of a child. These kinds of debates will always exist, as it is purely a matter of opinion. There are a number of cases where parents have been arrested for taking photos of there own children, as the photos were considered to be pornographic.

Yet another more recent development on the net is the boom in online gambling. Gambling has been a controversial past time throughout a lot of the world for a long time, illegal in some places, regulated in others. Now on the physically liberated Internet how should the regulations be extended, and who should have control?

Where the concept of freedom of speech starts to fall apart is where people start to tell untruths about companies, or other persons.

I consider the 2 main problems with regulating the Internet to be firstly the lack of physical boundaries as already mentioned, and the second to be its size. If not already the Internet will certainly soon be the biggest database of information on earth. No one can be sure of exactly how much information is on the Internet; however, one thing we can be sure of is that the vastness of the net will continue to expand at a phenomenal rate for the foreseeable future. The question is what information can you trust, what is legal, and where do you draw the line.

Internet has no parallel elsewhere in our lives.

"This requires ISPs - and presumably portals to pull down libellous material after a warning. That sounds reasonable until you put yourself in the ISPs shoes. You get a call from someone who says he's the subject of a posting that is false and libellous. He tells you to take it down. What do you do? If you take it down without investigating and you're wrong, you've censored someone. What's more, when word gets out, dubious claims of having been libelled will be filed routinely by private censorship fans. You'll be in the censorship business for keeps. If you leave the posting up without investigating, you're liable under Demon. If you investigate, you loose your profit margin. I think the Demon case could be a big issue." Stewart Baker of Steptoe & Johnson

Here we have more arguments for censorship. The truth is that any parent, unless very liberal would not like the thought above quote. As a parent, having people you have never known or met, and people that have never been checked out by authorities communicating and influencing your children from a young age is a scary thought, however, the truth is the second your child is online, they are being influenced by a stranger, whether an honest internet site, or any other site. Very few of these people who post web pages have been through the checks and training of a teacher or TV presenter for instance.

At the time of the incident Demon had over 90,000 subscribers. They could not honestly be expected to keep track of all information that these users were placing on the Internet. However, I do agree with the outcome of the case. When Godfrey discovered t

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Approximate Word count = 2066
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous