Internet Censorship Threatens Freedom of Speech
Internet Censorship Threatens Freedom of SpeechThesis: The vast cyber-frontier is being threatend with censorship from the government. Internet censorship should be left up to the individual not the governments discretion. E. Strike to free expresson on Compuserve. B. Congress and other's opinions. After threatening the Communications Decency Act with a vetos of the past versions, President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on February 8, 1996.1 Before hand, congress approved the largest change of the nation's communications laws in 62 years. One of the largest controversial topics included in the bill is the censorship of pornography, which now is a strenuously enforced crime of distributing knowingly to children under 18. The congress overwhelmingly passed the bill with a landslide 414-16 House vote and a 91-5 Senate vote.2 It seems now t
"Background Information." Editorial On File, Vol 26, Number 12, June 16-30, 1995, p. 728.In a seven week period the Smithsonian Institution's web site gathered a total of 1.9 million visits, and in a seven day time during June, Playboy took in 4.7 million visits.21 Most of the pictures available on the Internet were at some point in time scanned from a magazine or other places which photos as such are found. Many private BBSs do business in taking free photos to scan for people then keep a copy of the picture for their site. Pornographic images only represent about 3% of all messages on the Usenet newsgroups although Carnegie Mellon found that 83.5% of Usenet newsgroup pictures were pornographic.22 Nebraskan Democrat James Exon, put together an informational binder known as the Blue Book to show the Senate about the goings on within the Internet.7 Along the pages of the Blue Book were pictures of people bound and being burned by cigarettes, people pierced with swords and people involved in sexual activities with animals.8 The Senate, acknowledging their ignorance of the Internet, passed Exon's proposal after seeing the pictures in the Blue Book.9 Along with distribution of pornography, a person carries the chance of two years in prison and a $250,000 fine which is a good reason to restrict much of the flow.10 The July 3 report, "On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn,"[Time] was based on a Carnegie Mellon University study. Led by student Martin Rimm, researchers said they found more then 900,000 sexually explicit images and text files online, but neglected to point out that most came from privately owned adult bulletin boards with no connection to the Internet.[School Library Journal, October, 1995, EBSCO-CD] Barlow, John, "Thinking Locally, Acting Glabally." Time, January 15, 1996, EBSCO-CD.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Joyce's Ulysses, Carnegie Mellon, Bulletin-Board SystemsBBSs, Cyber Patrol, Bill Clinton, Journal October, Blue Book9, Ronald Backwalter, EOF June, 1995 ebsco-cd, background information, october 1995, july 3, information editorial, editorial file, october 1995 ebsco-cd, information editorial file, background information editorial, 3 1995 ebsco-cd, 16-30 1995, journal october 1995, 1-15 1996, june 16-30, carnegie mellon,
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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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