Censorship

5 Pages 1289 Words

To some people actually sitting down and writing a letter with pen and paper seems prehistoric. Email seems to be the only way to communicate in today’s world. It is so common and easy even children are using computers to talk to friends as well as pen pals from across the globe. With so easy access and so many people using the Internet there are bound to be all types of information. As a result, there is a great deal of information that has been deemed “indecent”. Congress has attempted to censor this information with the federal “Communications Decency Act of 1996 a controversial piece of legislation signed into law by President Clinton on February 8, 1996 (www.fmew.com/archive/censor). There are many advocates to pass this law censoring the internet, claiming that there is much information that is immoral and indecent for children as well as adults to view.
As with the saying that there are “two sides to every story”, and with this story there is also an opinion that the Internet should not be censored. The reasoning behind the opinion that the Internet should not be censored is because it is not Congress’s job to evaluate what is decent or immoral for what people; this is a personal individual decision. Also, censoring information on the Internet defeats the purpose for which it was created. To top it all off censoring the Internet is a violation of the First Amendment, which grants Freedom of Speech.
First of all, Congress is the legislative body of the United States, which prepares and enacts our laws. No where in the job description of a congressman (congresswoman) does it say to decide what is indecent and/or immoral from one person to the next. This is a personal choice, one person may think that talking about sex on the Internet is immoral while another may consider it necessary to teach their children about sex and the precautions they may need to take in the future. Helpful information like this c...