Internet Censorship
The internet is the most resent large-scale communications medium that impress two-way communication. It provides an opportunity to people to say or create something and transmit to millions of people around the globe. Many people around the world believe that the internet should provide a platform where information follows freely and easily. However, since the first existence of the internet there have been efforts to censor it, that is, to control or suppress information published and accessed by the internet users. In other words, the internet, the ultimate source of information, has led to new opportunity for censors who prefer that nothing should not be said or done on a given specific ‘sensitive’ matters. In essence, some people and government believe that not all information should be allowed to follow freely. They argue that given pieces of information secret and confidential. In bid to rest the debate that revolves around internet censorship, this paper will give reasons why censorship is widely spread among governments of most countries and within some people.
There are many reasons why different countries practice censorship. However, these reasons can be broken down into three categories: political, social and security.
Notably, among the three categories of censorship, political is the most controversial. It gives rise most discussion both international arena and local arena. Usually, this has happens in countries that that do not impress democracy and the rulers are trying to remain in power for a long time. Therefore, it becomes important for the rulers to hide some information from the people. Mostly, the governments in question regulate website assess of those that contradicts the government and minority groups. One classical example is the Chinese regime, where scholars as Whyte (2010) observe that the Chinese government place emphasis in maintaining stability (76) however, Perry and Elizabeth (2002) states that the same government desires to limit collective action through social ties that can be termed as interment censorship (213).Currently, the materials are censored in the internet if they tend to criticize China state party andpolicies or advocate collective political action (Marolt & Peter 60). The main aim of this censorship is to make sure that information, which threatens those in power, does not leak to the people.
Secondly, internet censorship aims to protect a society’s social norms. The premise of this reason is that there are pieces of information that may be harmful to given group of people, for example children, but important or useful for others (for example adults). Mostly, this form of censorship gets prevalent backing for example through formulation of laws. For instance, most countries have censors laws against hate speech and child pornography. To be more specific, the United States of America in 1998 approved the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) to protect the children from pornography. Essentially, the act intended to protect the children from accessing erotic "teaser" pictures available free of charge at commercial pornography sites in the internet. Principally, the law dictates that commercial pornography sellers to take a identifications of the users for example credit card or adult PIN or access number in order to lock out visiting children or teenagers. This law has a punishment of up to six months in jail and a $50,000 fine for each violation. However, with the interest safeguarding the interest of the society, government censorship may go to extremes that have little agreement for example homosexuality. There are countries that block out sites that tend to promote homosexuality; in such a case, this kind of censorships is bad because it touches the rights of other individuals. While other countries with given predominant religion that block certain religious sites. Censorship to guard societal interestsis diverse and varies from one country to another (Grimmer & Gary 2645)
The third reason why the internet is bound to be censoredis due to security reasons. Some government and countries block websites belonging to some extremist group and terrorist groups. This extends most of the time, to ensuring that a sensitive piece of information is not availed to the public. This form of censorship widely supported by most governments, however, to different degree.
Clearly, most form of censorship practiced may fall in more than one category discussed above. This is one of the problems facing those arguing against censorship. Most, if not all, relevant authorities capitalize the act that a give issues fall in a given category to extend their influence oncensorship. People may, sometimes-well support given forms of censorship however there is usually a possibility of extending the censorship boundary beyond thenovel intention. For instance, the United States rule that was initially intended to curb terrorist websites. This rule has been extended to gambling business, consequently shutting down some gambling sites. Clearly, if this is the case for acountry, which takes great pride in protecting its law and people, certainly censorship extension can happen practically anywhere in the world.
In conclusion, it is clear that different countries have different forms of censorship in practice. Their reasons are diverseand can be justified. However, in my opinion any form of censorship is wrong whether based on valid reasons or not. The people, I mean the adults, should have access any kind of information in the internet. I believe a country that gives its citizen freedom to access to any kind of information empowers them to make informed decisions and is one that believes in freedom and democracy that is “a government for the people and by the people.”
Work cited
Grimmer, Justin, and Gary, King. “General purposecomputer-assisted clustering and conceptualization.”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (7): 2643–50.http://gking.harvard.edu/files/abs/discovabs.shtml.
Marolt, Peter. Grassroots Agency in a Civil Sphere? Rethinking InternetControl in China.In Online Society in China:Creating, Celebrating, and Instrumentalising the Online Carnival, eds. DavidHerold and Peter Marolt. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Perry, Elizabeth. Permanent Revolution? Continuities and Discontinuities in Chinese Protest.InPopular Protest in China,ed. Kevin O’Brien. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008, Print.
Whyte, Martin. Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions ofInequality and Distributive Injustice in Contemporary China .Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Print.
