Dialectis on Internet censorchip Essay Example For Students

Dialectis on Internet censorchip Essay In mid March of 1998, a scientific break through occurred for the engineers at NASA. The space probe that they sent to Mars came back and, for the first time, contained readable and usable photographs of the planets landscape. Full of pride over their latest achievement, NASA posted the information on the Internet. This allowed astronomy enthusiasts, students, and other interested individuals to take a first hand look at the, never before seen, Martian Landscape. (NASA)One month later, two men in New Jersey were arrested for posting inappropriate information on the Internet. They had been caught displaying pornographic images of children as young as seven years old. These men were promptly prosecuted and sentenced to jail time and over $600,000 worth of fines. (Business Week)Most recently the Supreme Court had to decide whether it was fair or not for music fans to download their favorite songs free of any royalties to the artists. The program, design by two college students, is named Napster and its designed to allow the sharing of mp3 music files over the Internet. Currently, the program is still available and operating with much support from its users. Support is something the Internet is not lacking. The examples listed are a fragment of the cases brought before our judicial system concerning the content on the information super highway. Not only are these examples pulled out of a pool of many, but also its also quite evident that the content is rather vast itself.Justice Stevens of the Supreme Court was quoted as saying Internet content is as diverse as human thought. Herb Brody from Technology Review describes the Net as the ultimate intellectual jumblewhere brainy discussions of physics coexist with sophomoric essays, where sites that present satellite weather images are only a few mouse-clicks away from pornographic pictures (Brody). The information available is vast because the World Wide Web is just that, worldwide. A media form this powerful that has wrapped itself around our planet has also made available communication resources never conceived of before. Because of the global nature of the Internet, it would be difficult for any group or company to restrict access to certain sites without outside help. Previously to any regulation, most sites containing adult material had warning labels on them to reveal its inappropriate material in order to deter under age viewers. The obvious problem is that there is no way to tell if those under age individuals would use their go back button.This poses the most highly debated issue that makes up a great deal of the controversial Internet censorship legislation. That particular issue is pornography on the information superhighway. Moreover, will this initial censorship start a slide that cant be stopped? Despite a statement made by Andrew Kantor, senior editor of Internet World, that pornography represents less then 1% of the Internet (Lloyd), there is a problem with coming across unwanted adult material while browsing. The fact is that downloadable pornographic images are in existence on the Internet and have become rather popular. It doesnt take a magnifying gl ass to find hard-core pornography on the Internetand since many youngsters can navigate circles around their elders, some adults are in near panic (Diamond). There is no argument that any reasonable person would want to keep adult material out of the hands of children. The question is, by what means should our society accomplish these goals?To address this issue it is necessary to examine the argument on three major battlefields: 1) legality, 2) technical issues, and 3) societal affects. Legally, this controversy revolves around the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the steps taken by pro-censor advocates to alter the amendment enough to stop the transmission of pornographic material. Those proposed alterations were compiled in the 1993 Communications Decency Act and presented in front of Congress. The Act as a whole was voted down, but a few of the articles pertaining to punishment for offenders of censorship laws already in place were sent for revision. These r ewritten sections were put in front of President Clinton and passed on February 8th, 1996 as the CDA II. According to this bill, anyone posting content containing indecent language or content would serve a minimum of a one-year jail sentence. As defined in the text itself, this provision was designed to designate it a crime knowingly to transmit obscenity or knowingly to send or display indecent material to children (B.R.C.). The CDA came under fire by anti-censor groups immediately after it was introduced. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced this bill as an attempt by the government to restrict the First Amendments guarantee to freedom of speech (ACLU). The ACLU also contends that since the bill restricts indecent material, the term indecent must be defined. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues, It is clear that Congress could not constitutionally grant the FCC the power to tell The New Yorker not to print profane languageeven though children may come across a copyit is equally clear that Congress cannot grant the FCC authority to dictate how providers (of Internet service) like Netcom and CompuServe handle content that contains such language (Citation). Cathy Cleaver, director of legal studies at the Family research Center a pro-censor activists, says that in every other form of media we have government regulation of obscenity, yet we have not heard the screams of censorship in those areas. She mentions further that the CDA attempts to do nothing more than regulate obscenity and prohibit adults from giving it to children. Democrat Senator James Exon of Nebraska and CDA sponsor comments that it is necessary to make sure our children are safe from the negative aspects of technology (B.R.C.). Adding to Senator Exons argument, Dr. Jennifer Lewis states, It comes down to this: who is going to protect the children? If they are indeed our future, it is everyones responsibility to make sure they grow up in a safe environment. This means an environment without pornography. Marketing Environment of Mcdonalds EssayThe government has already defined child pornography harmful to youths and therefore outlawed by the Supreme Court, and some feminist activists are pushing for the same ban of pornography of women. Feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin have stated that pornography constitutes discrimination and violence towards women. In addition, Sut Jhalleys video Dreamworld claims to clearly show the obvious link between negative images of women and violence, using examples from film and video. These feminists and pro-censors gained more ammunition for their fight when a University of Michigan student was arrested for a story on a newsgroup describing an encounter of a female student. His story was a violent narrative of rape and torture and later emailed a friend that just thinking about it doesnt do the trick anymore (Diamond). It is in light of such incidents that lobbyists are pushing for a ban on pornography. The problem anti-censors are having with this feminist argument is their definition of pornography, which is any expression that demeans women. Once again it is the vague terminology that is questioned. Censorship opponents are concerned that under this definition a great deal of educational and informative information would be removed from the Internet. Their argument also conjures up an interesting paradox within the feminist community. Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU and also a feminist, stated that the MacKinnon and Dworkin idea of pornography goes against what the feminist movement is supposed to represent. They make women out to be helpless and in need of protection from men who oppress them (Strossen). Addressing the claim that our societies openness towards sex is the reason for our problems with pregnancy and illegitimacy, anti-censors turn to a book entitled Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. In this book, the author gives multiple statistics opposing that claim, one of which being that one-third of pregnancies in colonial America were out of wedlock. Maria Pally, president of the Feminists for Free Expression said, Blaming new-fangled technology for social ills is merely an effort to feel involved in the problem (Internet Society). The same antagonists of censoring the Internet are also concerned with the social ramification that such regulatory actions would have. Dean Harris of Wired Magazine posses the questions, What is the future of societys belief that everyone has the right to the freedom of speech? Does the censorship of the Internet represent the first steps towards setting standards on what is acceptable thinking and what is not? Do the benefits of being able to inform outweigh the dangers of antisocial groups having access to send their messages to our youths? (Wired)These argumentative topics, obviously pertaining to censorship of the Internet, also contain a continual underlying theme. That underlying theme is protection. Whether its protection of women, children, or society in general, nearly all of the pro-censor squabbles involve the sheltering of individuals from Internet content. It would seem that censorship lobbyists feel the need for a filter between the American public and mass media. This scenario in such context would give the impression of the suppression of Constitutional rights. Looking at the dispute as a whole, relating the aforementioned 3 battlefields, the pro-censors are struggling to keep their heads above water with reoccurring cries of morality. Legally, the attempted amendments were described as unconstitutional and overbearing. Technically, the incomprehensible amount of transferred information would be nearly impossible to monitor, not to mention the infringement of international law. From a social stand point, the question boils down to whether or not inappropriate material in the media is to blame for the faults of the American public. That question has been answered time and time again in multiple courtrooms across the country, and that answer was a definitive NO. Marc Rothenburg, a writer for the computer magazine Wired, summed up the situation quite nicely. He said, The Internet doesnt need thought police and went on to say that such legislation would turn the information super highway into a childrens reading room (Internet Society). A childrens reading room is exactly where a child should be. If they are not and such controversial material is made available, then something besides the information is at blame. As Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, stated so succinctly, too man parents are looking to the so-called village to care for their children instead of meeting this precious responsibility themselves (Diamond). This statement is a wake up call to those who are blaming media for humanitys discontent. It is blatantly obvious that we are responsible for our actions as individuals in the legal structure that surrounds our culture. It needs to become equally obvious that we are responsible as parents and as a community fo r the growth and development of the next generation. Bibliography: