Censor the Internet
The freedom of speech that was possible on the Internet could now be subjected to governmental approvals. For example, China is attempting to res5trict political expression, in the name of security and social stability. It requires users of the Internet and e-mail to register, so that they can monitor their activities (Gates). In the United Kingdom, state secrets and personal attacks are off limits on the Internet. Laws are strict and the government is extremely interested in regulating the Internet with respect to these issues (Gates). Laws intended for other types of communication will not necessarily apply in this group. Through all the components of the Internet it becomes easy to transfer material that particular governments might find objectionably. However, all of these ways of communicating on the Internet make up a large and vast system. For inspectors to monitor every e-mail, every article in every Newsgroup, every webpage, every IRC channel, every Gopher site, and every FTP site would be near impossible.Besides taking as extraordinary amount of time and money, attempts to censor the Internet violate freedom of speech, a right that is included in democratic constitutions and internatio
The Internet is much too complex a network for censorship to effectively occur. It is a totally new and unique environment in which communication happens. Existing laws are not applicable. The lack of definite boundaries causes confusion as to where violations of law take place. The Internet is made up of nameless interaction and anonymous communication. The intricacy of the Internet makes it damn near impossible to delete data that has been publicized. No country should be allowed to, or even could, regulate or censor the Internet. Goes Digital." Suncom Incorporated. June 3, 1998. The millions of people that participate on the Internet everyday have access to almost all of the data present. Also, it becomes easy to copy something that exists on the Internet with just a mere click of a button. The relative ease of copying stuff means that the second information is posted to the Internet it may be archived somewhere else. There are in fact many sites on the Internet that are devoted to the archiving of information including ftp.cdrom.com, www.archive.org, and wuarchive.wustl.edu. It becomes hard to censor material that might be copied two, three or more times in a matter of minutes. An example could be the hacking of the U.S. Department of Justice's homepage and the hacking of the Central Intelligence Agency's homepage. Someone illegally obtained access to the computer on which these homepages were stored and modified them. It was done as a prank; however, both of these agencies have since shut down their pages. 2600, a magazine devoted to hacking, has republished the hacked DoJ and CIA homepages on their website. The magazine either copied the data straight from the hacked sites or the hacked site was submitted to the magazine. Whichever is true, is shows how easy it is for data to be copied and distributed, as well as how difficult it would be to prevent material deemed inappropriate from appearing where it should not.
Some common words found in the essay are:
North America, DoJ CIA, Declares Congress, Gates Laws, Silberman Words, Irwin France, Censor Internet, Al Gore, Intelligence Agency's, Wide Web, freedom speech, 3 1998, june 3 1998, censor internet, june 3, june 2 1998, al gore, extremely difficult, internet difficult, hotwiredcom june, and/or age, hotwiredcom june 2, near impossible,
Approximate Word count = 1687
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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