Internet Censorship
Ann Lee, Gregory Fillios, Hugo Ponte, Kathryn
Wells, Malcolm Greaves
Description
• Internet censorship is control or suppression of the publishing or
accessing of information on the Internet.
• Each Nation sets their own laws on censorship of the internet. Some
Nations are more strict than others.
• For example, The People's Republic of China is in ONI's pervasive
category and is on RSF's internet enemy list. China blocks or filters
Internet content relating to Tibetan independence, Taiwan
independence, police brutality, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989,
freedom of speech, pornography, certain religious movements, and
many blogging websites.
• However, a nation like Mexico does not have any internet censorship
laws or filters.
1958: Internet is created
1996: US criminalizes the transmission of “indecent” materials to minors
1997: US rules internet as a print source
1998: Digital Millenium Copyright Act && Child Online Protection Act
2006: Save the Internet Campaign
2009
Censored
Countries
Criticisms of
Censorship
•
By limiting the available free information, free though it limited as well.
And, as free thinking is limited, progress is limited.
•
•
•
Galileo and the Church.
Censoring the internet––the greatest source of information––seriously
hampers the flow of creative, original, free thought.
Censorship directly inhibits some kinds of ideas from being created.
•
[Thought Experiment] If no one discusses democracy in China
because all internet queries related to democracy are
censored, then how can the Chinese learn more about
democracy?
Counterarguments Against
Censorship
•Inhibits freedom of speech, freedom
of expression
Prohibits creativity
An intrusion of privacy
Can eliminate outside opinions and
further propaganda
•
•
•
Opinion on
Censorship
•
•
No good can ever come from censoring any information: censorship allows
people to (unknowingly) think and act with filtered, incomplete information.
Censorship is morally wrong.
“Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all
subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”
William O. Douglas
•
“Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial
regions, which waft away the elements of disease, and bring new elements of
health; and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes
fast.” Henry Ward Beecher