Internet Censorship :: essays research papers

profit CensorshipFor centuries governments have tried to regular materials deemedinappropriate 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 death for these crimes. some 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 wide network that should not be regulated orcensored by any on country. It is a complex and limitless(prenominal) network which allowsboundless possibilities and would be realised negatively by the regulations andcensorship that some countries are intent on establishing. Laws that are meantfor other types of communication will not necessarily apply in this medium.There are no physical locations where communications take 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 illegal 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 Association (ALA) has a definition that statescensorship is the change in the access status of material, made by a governingauthority or its representatives. Such changes include exclusion, restriction,remove, or age/grade level changes. This definition, however, has a flaw inthat it only recognizes genius 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 another by means ofcomputers. It is also "information stored on millions of computers worldwide,accessible 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 position 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 staple fibre 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