Internet Censorship :: essays research papers

Internet CensorshipFor centuries governments have tried to regular materials deemed conflicting or offensive. The history of western censorship was said to havebegun when Socrates was accused "firstly, of denying the gods recognized by theState and introducing new divinities, and secondly of corrupting the young." Hewas sentenced to remnant for these crimes. Many modern governments are attemptingto control access to the Internet. They are passing regulations that restrictthe freedom people once took for granted.     The Internet is a world replete(p) network that should non be regulated orcensored by any on country. It is a complex and limitless network which allowsboundless possibilities and would be effected negatively by the regulations andcensorship that some countries are intent on establishing. Laws that are meantfor other(a) types of communication will not necessarily gift in this medium.There are no physical locations where communications tak e place, making itdifficult to determine where violations of the law should be prosecuted. Thereis anonymity on the Internet and so ages and identities are not known this makesit hard to determine if il court-ordered activities are taking place in regards to peopleunder the legal age. As well, it is difficult to completely delete speech onceit has been posted, Meaning that distributing materials that are obscene arebanned becomes easy     The American Library joining (ALA) has a definition that statescensorship is the change in the access status of material, made by a governingauthority or its representatives. Such changes allow in exclusion, restriction,remove, or age/grade level changes. This definition, however, has a flaw inthat it only recognizes one form of censorship-governmental censorship.     Cyberspace, a common name for the Net, has been defined by one author asbeing "made up of millions of people who communicate with one ano ther throughcomputers. It is also "information stored on millions of computers worldwide, kind to others through telephone lines and other communication channels"that" make up what is known as cyberspace." The same author went on to say "term itself is elusive, since it is not so much a physical entity as adescription of an intangible."     The complexity of the Internet is demonstrated through its manycomponents. The most readily identifiable part is the World Wide Web (WWW).This consists of web pages that can be accessed through the use of a web browser.Web pages are created using a basic programming language. Another easilyidentified section of the Internet is e-mail. Once again it is a relativelyuser-friendly communication device. Some other less publicized sections of theInternet include Internet Relay Chat (IRC), which allows real time chatting to