Transcript 99-102 Project[1].ppt

Internet Censorship
Ann Lee, Gregory Fillios, Hugo Ponte, Kathryn Wells, Malcolm Greaves
•Control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of
information on the Internet.
•Examples:
-Parents or schools censoring certain websites from
children to prevent access to something that may contain
inappropriate material.
(Cybersitter)
•Highly controversial topic; some may agree with the idea of censoring
certain things, but other believe that freedom of access to the internet is
necessary
•No matter what the censors' reasons are, the end result is the same: They
block access to the Web pages they identify as undesirable.
•Internet censorship isn't just a parental or governmental tool. There are
several software products on the consumer market that can limit or block
access to specific Web sites.
•Censoring can happen within a household to a business or company.
•In a household it may be for the safety for children, whereas in a business
censorship may be used to increase productivity.
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?
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