Internet Censorship

Internet Censorship

Introduction

Censorship had always been a subject of debate among those who want media to be censored and those who feel that censorship is a violation of the freedom of speech . The internet has not escaped the issue of censorship . The internet is an information highway and no other form of media is as pervasive and far reaching . Those who favor censoring the internet feels that there should be some form of protection for minors and all people from viewing offensive materials on the internet while those who are

against it believes that people should be given the right to choose what to view or not as stated in the first amendment . This discusses the arguments for the need to censor the internet and why it should not be censored

Background

With the observed prevalence of indecent language and obscene pictures in the internet , groups and organizations have called on for the censorship of the internet . The government 's response to this call was the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which was passed into law by the United States Congress the act would regulate the forms of speech in the internet (Wallace Mangan , 1996 . The law was seen by pro-censorship groups as a way of minimizing immoral content in the internet which might have contributed to the moral degeneration of our society (Qazi , 1996 . A year after , the Supreme Court ruled that the CDA was unconstitutional and in turn protected the first amendment (EPIC 2002 . The victory of the free speech proponents over the CDA was short lived , in 1998 the Child Online Protection Act was signed into law by President Clinton which in essence took after the CDA . The COPA mandated criminal penalties for commercially distributing materials harmful to minors including indecent speech (EPIC , 2004 . The enactment of COPA again resulted to heated debates and protests over the unconstitutionality of the law , and the free speech protesters were not disappointed . In 2004 , after a series of Supreme Court ruling against the COPA , it maintained the injunction on the enforcement of the law

Communications Decency Act of 1996

The President signed the Communications Decency Act into law in January 1996 the act criminalizes indecent speech on the internet . The act identifies that speech depicting sexual organs and acts , excretory organs and acts in a patently offensive fashion under contemporary community standards as indecent speech (Wallace Mangan , 1996 . The dubious and vague definition of indecency and the standards by which a word (pure text ) is judged to be obscene have made the act questionable In fact , the CDA was met with violent reactions because it proved to be too restrictive and did not account for situations wherein sexually explicit words have to be used but has scientific , literary , artistic or political values . The act also stated that indecency will be judged based on it being patently offensive , which in practice allows a jury to judge the material as indecent based on how they feel about it regardless of...