Author's Note: I wrote a paper on why the internet should not be censored, and here it is. I have the sources included, and if any feedback please leave it in comments. Thank You!
For over a decade, we as one world have worked hard to put together a gathering with everything we want to know. This amazingly large gathering, for all Americans, is the information highway. The internet has been America’s way for many years and has been working out well. There is no reason for change and there should be no change. So far, there have not been large problems due to the internet that cannot be controlled and the government should avoid making one now. Censorship is just another excuse for people who want to be dictators to have an option, and when done under the name of “National Security” it cannot be justified. America is not, and should not, be shown as a dictating- hungry country. Censorship will be doing this. Nothing good really comes from this widespread controversy. Censorship of the internet will only lead to a lack of open knowledge, denial of citizen rights and disruption of privacy which can be easily proved.
A major disadvantage due to censorship would be no more free information available to the public. However, if a site was able to stay up and have the information available, it would have to pass through many checks; and if it was allowed there would be many regulations. All posters would have to agree with contracts for free use of information and there would be regulations “including legal regulations on content, technical filtering and blocking websites, self- censorship, the vibrancy/ diversity of online news media, and the use of ICTs for civic mobilization.” (Kelly) Even though that seems like a lot, it all means that no site would be able to have posts that mentioned any other site, person, video, or any form of addressing available to the public; and that is much bigger than it sounds. “From censorship of the Internet, sites which people use everyday will be banned. Free info sites that are open to the public will be cut off from all access. If the Internet is censored, due to copyrights, information sites that have no rule against copyrighting will be banned.” (Ockerbloom) All sites that others can post on will be deleted. Wiki, being a public posting site, would delete due to copyright infringements. Yahoo and public response websites, such as Ask, would be blocked. If the internetwas censored, every word posted would have to go through tests to allow posting. “Some sensitive phrases could not be posted at all.” (MacKinnon) Even though most rude comments and abuses would be filtered, there no longer would be quick responses. Most people depend on these quick responses for questions and censorship takes this away from the public. Over 50 percent of Americans use Yahoo, Wiki, and similar sites for answers. Not only would response site be blocked, online dictionaries would be censored, too. Online dictionaries are sometimes public and can have the public add comments and posts to them. For this reason, they would result in blockage since according to law all resources MUST be stated. Censoring would cause “infractual and economic barriers to access, legal ownership control over internet service providers (ISPs), and independence of regulatory bodies.” (Kelly) Almost all educational things be blocked, but entertainment too would be censored.
Entertainment used without permission is illegal. Almost all music will be blocked, if the censorship bill becomes law, due to songs are only allowed to be on broadcast websites with user copyrights. However, user copyrights do not apply to public broadcasting. Music video sounds would be filtered off unless there is direct permission from the writer, producer, or singer. It takes a matter of weeks to get permission for non- granted uses. Occasionally, songs would be allowed to be used for education or similar purposes but, only if they were less than a 30 seconds long. However, since most people are not willing to post only 30 seconds worth of songs, many songs would no longer be available to the public indirectly. This means social broadcast sites like You Tube and Hulu would all be filtered. Over 35 percent of content off every broadcast site would be deleted. Anyone using or uploading “illegal” posts without direct permissions, could be fined. Actions such as these would not help us but rather hurt us; they would just lead to a poorer economy and that is the last thing we need. Not only does music copyrights apply to private uses but to the public. And, the public was promised no law destroying open rights and freedom.
The internet is public; the people made it for the people. Citizen rights are denied with censorship by the government. “We need to understand conflicts of intellectual freedom, not as something negative or practiced by those less enlightened than ourselves, but as a process in which we are all participants playing various roles based on age, family background, societal position, religious beliefs, and profession.” (Vandergrift) The people worked to make the internet and now should be allowed to use it as they wish. Not only does censorship deny country- wide public uses but also private uses.
People through the U.S. are guaranteed their privacy and their control of what happens to them personally. If censoring was legalized their no longer be the guarantee of the free net. Parents, who are given full responsibility of their children, no longer have complete control. The parents of children are told that what they think is right is most likely the best for the child; with censorship, the government would do most of the thinking and controlling. It is the parent’s personal responsibility to what their kids can have on the web and not the ENTIRE NATION’S. The internet is a free “gathering of knowledge” given to the public. It is a right to everyone and not a privilege. Americans are promised rights to everything that will not harm others or themselves; with censorship, this is exactly what is happening.
The government is harming the people by taking away what is theirs. Censorship partly denies “freedom of speech.” If the citizens are no longer to talk about what they want for themselves, nobody will be able to. Social sites and broadcasts sites are often used to send messages out to everyone and music in background or even singing of copyrighted songs can have posts deleted. These sites allow people to raise public awareness about problems. People, who depend on these sites, really would prefer a world without censoring. In reality, not many people want censorship at all. Only 2 in 30 people in the United States agree with censorship. Not only that, only 16 out of 100 senators were for censorship during voting. In addition, the biggest effect, the President even disagrees with censoring.
Mr. President disagreeing is a lawful thing since censorship is even against the Constitution. The first amendment clearly states that there should be no law prohibiting free exercise.
“Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
This breaks the U.S.’s own law that has worked for everyone for the last few decades. If the people who made it break the Constitution, it would result in major news spreading quickly. There could be an arousal of possible protests or problems in the future. China is a perfect example of what could happen; China had protests after it was censored. In addition, Australia had protests to after censorship of the internet. The people of this nation rarely stand for abrupt changes. There may be results in unfortunate relations with the government. If censorship is allowed, there may be outbreaks and protests across the nation. United States is also filled with opinionated people and a protest in in the U.S. in much more likely to occur versus than any other country. Honestly, this could lead to a slight rebellion just as it did in previous countries. Even though censorship may sound all bad, there are a few legitimate reasons.
The idea of censoring the internet first came up when PIPA (Protect IP Act) and SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act), two bills, were first passed to the government. While the Obama administration has come out against SOPA and has put SOPA to a halt for time being, the very similar PIPA bill is still alive and well. Both PIPA and SOPA wanted to have the internet censored for one of two main reasons: to avoid identity theft/ avoid intrusion of privacy. However, PIPA’s plan was tried and failed miserably. Even though SOPA no longer positions a hurdle, PIPA still is a threat to the nation’s freedom. PIPA not only wants the government to censor but the entertainment industry to have power also.
The PIPA idea was tested and resulted in a 12-year old boy sued for music use. In addition, many uploads have been attempted to be brought down due to music playing in the background. The first MP3 Player’s were shelved – in back storage- for some time because the entertainment industry was upset about people enjoying their music without directly buying it from them and risking a loss of money. Is this the type of industry we want to control our rights? That is why we now all buy music directly or through music industry branches and have a user agreement contract to all these sites. The profits from music feed the entertainment industry’s mouth and keep it quiet. The SOPA and PIPA bills would also allow rights to holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. Meaning any other companies doing business with sites by ads would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed. But even this would not be helpful.
The reason that blocking a domain name is not effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if “lifehacker.com” became blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to render completely this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. The domain name reason has been used to attempt censoring of the internet previously many times, but to our luck, it never was successful. However, there is another reason that both PIPA and SOPA hold.
The other major reason that there is the idea of internet censorship is that copyrights are being broken daily. However, there are punishments for such actions. Sometime, fines are placed and depending on the severity of the copyright, fines can reach over $600. Community Service is also a very popular punishment for plagiarism. Not only are adults punished, there are many lists of possible student punishments. Students, who are offenders, can receive detentions. Teachers often fail students for plagiarism. Moreover, some schools are very serious and plagiarism in schools like these result in expelling. After consequences, students do realize severity of plagiarism and rarely commit it again. Plagiarism is not as widespread as it as it is told to be, often occurring in elementary, middle, and occasionally high school. It is rarely committed at a severe level, however. In addition, as stated before, there are many punishments for it. Seventy percent of people admit to plagiarism but plagiarism does not go unnoticed. After consequences, only about 1 out of 75 students attempt to plagiarize again. Even though plagiarism is illegal and censoring could prevent this, what do we have betting that this “censoring the internet” plan will actually work out. Analyzing says that the bill will not follow through, if it becomes law, and will become very inefficient for the future. Unfortunately, the government and some of Congress are blind to this.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn released a letter to Congress, saying that if the bills passed, they would have to monitor constantly their content for copyright infringement, before it goes up, or face litigation. Some of these groups even “censored” their logos as a protest against the bills. Even though all this effort was put in, there still were Congress members that could not realize what the outcome of censoring could be. Many sites would shut down because whatever is posted becomes is the responsibility of the site it is posted on. Continues monitoring of every public site would take much time up and could possibly result in sites shutting down. Some sites, that are unable to monitor properly, would be sued and shut down. Links on sites could cause suing or law cases. Links and site names would be taken off, messing with the basic layout of the internet causing weakened privacy for anyone on the web.
Meddling with the main workings of the internet would mean most online private firewalls would be corrupted, making sites prone to viruses and other sites- virus magnets. Any information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, and usernames can be hacked and followed. Every movement on the web could fall into the hands of the wrong person. When the internet becomes censored, not only will it affect just the internet, but it will too affect our lives. Every moment of people will be tracked and spied. What we do today will really be with us forever, and those “privacy promises” sites promise, will no longer exist. Many do not understand what censorship will do beyond “blocking” sites, what they do expect though, is censorship is going to happen and we will be safer. However, unfortunately, this is not true.
These people who want censorship do not see how it could affect the world. “The purpose of these bills are to make it harder for sites — especially those located outside the United States — to sell or distribute pirated copyrighted material such as movies and music as well as physical goods such as counterfeit purses and watches.”(Magid) This would lead to a slightly better economy, but if anyone looks back at the very similar past, drug dealings weren’t stopped, illegal immigrants weren’t stopped, oversea thefts weren’t stopped and chances are counterfeit items sold to other nations will not be stopped either. The bill, if passed, would require every site to refrain links to any other sites that are “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” It would also prevent companies from adding advertisements or links on the sites and block payment companies like Visa, MasterCard and PayPal from transmitting funds to the site. The problem with this is that the entire site would be affected, not just that portion that is promoting the distribution of illegal material or merchandise. The bill would also cut off funding by prohibiting payment services from cooperating with infringing sites. Many things would be put to play with censoring “including (complete) surveillance, (intrusion of) privacy, and repercussions for online activity such as imprisonment, extra legal harassment, or cyber attacks.” (Kelly) “Just because law states that good should happen, does not mean good will happen. Over half of the internet will be filtered and erased.”(Walske) “The Internet is a crucial medium through which people can express themselves and share ideas and has become an increasingly important tool through which democracy and human rights activists and all Americans mobilize and advocate for political, social, and economic reform.” All people need something for communication and the internet is what this communication is.
We as Americans hold our right to have a say in a nationwide decisions. To avoid major controversy, the idea of censoring the internet should be dropped. Everyday sites are shutting down to spread awareness of our very possible and near future. One day we will all wake up and find our favorite sites like YouTube, Face Book, Wiki, and Twitter filtered, blocked, or deleted FOREVER. There aren’t many advantages to censoring the internet and only a few really agree with censorship. It is the right of the people to correct the government as needed; it has been done before and there is nothing stopping it from happening again.
Works Cited
Aley, Micheal. "Do not censor the Internet." Student Life. N.p., 17 Jan. 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2012. <www.studlife.com/forum/staff-editorials/2011/11/17/don%e2%80%99t-censor-the-internet/#comment-22709>.
Atkins, Robert, and Svetlana Mintcheva. "Bad To Worse: Outcomes." Censoring culture: contemporary threats to free expression. New York: New Press, 2006. 75. Print.
Gilmore, John. Interview by James Dean. Personal interview. 3 Aug. 2000.
Hughes, Chris. Interview by Zoe Fox. Personal interview. 19 Aug. 2011.
Herumin, Wendy. "Conflictions." Censorship on the Internet: from filters to freedom of speech. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2004. 73. Print.
Kelly, Sanja. "Freedom on the Net." Freedom House. New York: Freedom House, 2000. 12. Print. including (complete) surveillance
Kelly, Sanja. "Freedom on the Net." Freedom House. New York: Freedom House, 2000. 13. Print. including legal regulations on content
Kelly, Sanja. "Freedom on the Net." Freedom House. New York: Freedom House, 2000. 14. Print. infractual and economic barriers
Kolbert, Kathryn, and Zak Mettger. "But There Is More." Censoring the Web. New York: New Press, 2001. 34. Print.
MacKinnon, Rebecca. "Public Posting." "Race to the bottom": corporate complicity in Internet censorship.. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2006. 11. Print. Some sensitive phrases could
Magid, Larry. "What Are SOPA and PIPA And Why All The Fuss? - Forbes." Information for the World's Business Leaders - Forbes.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/01/18/what-are-sopa-and-pipa-and-why-all-the-fuss/>. The purpose of these
Marzilli, Alan. "It is True." Policing the Internet. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005. 93. Print.
Morozov, Evgeny. "Internet Freedoms and Their Consequences." The net delusion: the dark side of Internet freedom. New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2011. 253. Print.
Nunziato, Dawn C.. "When Private Becomes Public." Virtual freedom: net neutrality and free speech in the Internet age. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Law Books, 2009. 92. Print.
Nunziato, Dawn C.. "A Place To Speak Your Mind." Virtual freedom: net neutrality and free speech in the Internet age. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Law Books, 2009. 75. Print.
Ockerbloom, John. "Banned." The online books page. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Library., 2008. 26. Print. From censorship of the Internet
Pillai, Prabhakar. "Pros and Cons of Censorship." Buzzle Web Portal: Intelligent Life on the Web. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2012. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-censorship.html>.
Pzai, Derik "Popular Privacy and Anti-Censorship Tool Sees Surge in Traffic as Egyptians Struggle to Stay Connected Online." Market Wire 8 Feb. 2011: 87. Print.
Vandergrift, Kay E.. "Censorship, the Internet, Intellectual Freedom, and Youth." Time Magazine 5 May 1997: 15. Print. We need to understand conflicts
Walker, Christopher. "Internet Freedom." Freedom House. New York: Freedom House, 2000. 17. Print.
Walske, Christine. "Possible Outcomes." Internet censorship: protecting citizens or trampling freedom?. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2010. 94. Print. Just because law
Zuchora- Walske, Christine. "What We Say." Internet censorship protecting citizens or trampling freedom?. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2010. 9. Print.
