Internet Censorship

17 Pages 4229 Words

freely expressing ideas just for the safety of children.

2.Most internet users are enjoying their freedom of speech on the Net, which is supposed to be protected by our First Amendment.

3.Additionally, only a very small portion of the Net contains offensive material, most people do not use the Net for pornography.

4.It must be understood that censoring the Net is technically impossible.

5.While people are concerned about Internet pornography, it should be recognized that pornography is sometimes legal; for example, pornography is legal in video and magazines.

IV. There are many alternative measures to government censorship which would prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as censorship.

1.It is very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and parents should have this responsibility.

2.However, at the same time as we carry out moral guidance, we have to come out with some short term approaches to solve the problem in a more efficient way as well.

3.An alternative to government censorship is the technological fix, which would prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as government censorship.

1.One example of technological fix is the "SurfWatch" software.

2.Also, commercial Internet service providers, such as "America Online", allow parents to control what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to their children.

3.Another technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate "proxy server" for their children's web browser.

4.There are no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material; only people can do it. As a result, while practicing technological fixes, the classification of the contents of the material when posting is very important.

5.Nowadays, most internet users classify their postings with standard categories, and leave signatures at the end of postings.

6.The combinati...