Internet Censorship
In order of appearance:
Dmitriy Bespalov
Ilya Braude
Brian McBurney
Yaroslav Volkov
What is censorship?
Censorship - practice of examining in
order to suppress or delete anything
considered objectionable
Our concern:
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Material, harmful to some groups of people
Can they be protected from accessing?
What is the Internet?
Internet

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Set of computers connected in to one global
network
No one owns it nor can shut it down
Our concern:
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Information on the Internet (Web)
There is a lot of it!
What is the Internet?
Tools for Filtering
Web page text search
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Could filter appropriate content
Could allow inappropriate content
Manual classification
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Done by ISP (i.e. AOL)
Expensive to maintain
Not global
Waiver
Our discussion is based on the US laws
here
Waiver
Certain material should not appear on the
Internet at all
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Web sites that sell illegal substances
Child pornography
Current Attempts
Issues
Should filtering be done by government?
Or should this be up to each person to decide?
Communications Decency Act
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Prohibited posting "indecent" or "patently offensive"
materials on the Internet
Ruled unconstitutional by Supreme Court, 1997
Children’s Internet Protection Act
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Requires government - subsidized libraries use filtering
technology
Libraries need to deploy filters in 07/03 – 06/04
Poll
How many people think that:
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Government should impose filtering?
This should be up to each person to decide?
Government Controlled Censorship
A common standard needs to be
maintained

Government is able to set a global norm
The government is able to enact
enforceable measures of protection

Government laws are enforceable
Problems with Local Censorship
Parents’ inability to effectively limit access
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Parents’ technical deficiencies
Kids are a lot more computer savvy these days
Local protection programs can always be
circumvented
Current filtering techniques do not work
Government Involvement is Good
Government is able to work with ISPs
Large dataset with AI = good filtering software
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Advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques
Bayesian and Neural Networks
Cannot be circumvented easily
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Central management
Advanced computer and networking knowledge
required
Liability and Responsibility
Government can be held legally liable for
“over censoring”
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Government is under larger scrutiny from the
general public.
1st Amendment
Private companies are not as malleable

Will do as they like
Example: Bess
Bess Internet Filtering Products
Used in many schools
Make academic research nearly impossible
despite protests
Arguments Against Censorship
General Arguments Against
Censorship
John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle
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Which is a greater harm?
Censorship can lead to
suppression of art, literature, and
political thought
The lesser of two evils
The Growth of the Internet
Government censorship of content on the
Internet will hurt further growth
Internet’s success due to lack of control
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No national boundaries
No limits on expansion
Censorship Follies
Communications Decency Act’s two
analogies
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Internet is like broadcast media, allows strong
censorship
Internet is like “dial-a-porn” telephone
numbers, allows no censorship
A Double Edged Sword
Government censorship benefits
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People protected from inappropriate material
Government censorship harms
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Different opinions about what is inappropriate
Some material might be entirely inaccessible
Too much power for the government
Protecting Access
Parents choose how to protect their
children, not government
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Filtered ISPs
Family’s Choice Internet
FamilyInternet
FamilyOnline
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Blocking Software
Bess
Net Nanny
PC Time Cop
Internet Censorship: Summary
Once again: what’s in question?
Illegal is different from potentially
harmful to minors
Illegal content is out of question
Other things potentially subject to
censorship, such as art and political
content should remain free as guaranteed
by the First Amendment.
What needs to be done?
A way of controlling access
of minors to offending
content
Those who are legitimately
interested in this content
should be able to access it
How can this be done?
Ultimately, this should be done on clientside
“Censorware”
Currently available to users but not very
effective. Problems include:
- underblocking
- overblocking
Content labeling
Content labeling: theory
Publishers label their own content
Only explicit content has to be labeled
Enforced by law
Users set up their browsers to deal with
labeled sites as they see fit
No control over the content – just how
content is labeled
Content labeling:
implementation
Metadata
Current solution: meta tags
Better solution: Semantic Web
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Based on Resource Description Framework
(RDF)
Currently developed by a number of
researches led by W3C (www.w3c.org)
Internet Censorship
Q&A