… suitable material on the Net. In addition, Meleedy, a computer science graduate student at Harvard University, questions that if ‘the Internet makes democracy this accessible to the average citizen, is it any wonder Congress wants to censor it?’ (Meleedy 1) assert that, ‘the most significant new properties of the Internet media are the diversity of information sources and their ability to reach almost anywhere in the world. Authors range from major corporations such as IBM and Disney to school children’ (Allison and Baxter 3).
As predicted by Corn-Revere, ‘At the very least, the law will force content providers to make access more difficult, which will affect all users, not just the young’ (Corn-Revere 70). Censoring the Net is technically and politically impossible; it will damage the atmosphere of freedom and free idea expression on the Net; therefore, government should not encourage censorship. Most Internet users are enjoying their freedom of speech on the Net, which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment of the United States. According to Corn-Reverse, ‘it has been suggested that, ‘on-line systems give people far more genuinely free speech and free press than ever before in human history” (Corn-Reverse 71). Rheingold predicts that ‘Heavy-handed attempts to impose restrictions on the unruly but incredibly creative anarchy of the Net could kill the spirit of cooperative knowledge-sharing that makes the Net valuable to millions’ (Rheingold n.
p. ). The freedom of idea expression is what makes the Internet important and enjoyable, and it should not be waived for any reason. Additionally, only a very small portion of the Net contains offensive material, most people do not use the Net for pornography. Caragata from Maclean’s magazine observes that, ‘it is pornography that stirs the most controversy.
But while there is no doubt that pornography is popular, it amounts to a trickle compared with everything else available on the Net’ (Caragata 51). The Net is mostly being used for communication and information exchange, and only a tiny portion of the Net contains pornography and other offensive material. It must be understood that censoring the Net is technically impossible. According to Allison and Baxter, ‘in principle, it is impossible to monitor all material being transmitted on the Internet.
Considering the difficulties with international boundaries, a licensing system faces many obvious practical hurdles’ (Allison and Baxter 6). As described by Allison and Baxter, ‘Any good Computer Science graduate can create a completely secure encryption system for concealment purposes. The material can even be disguised, for example hidden ‘inside’ a perfectly innocuous picture’ (Allison and Baxter 6). Therefore, if a person wants to publish offensive material, he / she can design a formula to change the material with respect to a key, and secretly tell other users what the key is. In this way, they can retrieve the same material and pass through the government censorship. 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.
Therefore, it is inconsistent to ban the Internet equivalents. According to Rheingold, ‘Citizens should have the right to restrict the information-flow into their homes. They should be able to exclude from their home any subject matter that they do not want their children to see. But sooner or later, their children will be exposed to everything from which they have shielded them, and then they will have left to deal with these shocking sights and sound in the moral fiber they helped them cultivate’ (Rheingold n. p.
). The Internet is definitely not the only medium for teenagers to find inappropriate material. Even if the Net does not have any, teenagers could also be exposed to indecorous material in many other places. For example, Allison and Baxter say that, ‘most authors using electronic media do not produce material that is any ‘worse’ than that available from news agents, video shops, or mail-order sources’ (Allison and Baxter 8).
On that account, if the purpose of censoring is to prevent minors from being exposed to indecorous material, not only the Net has to be censored. Censoring the Net will only eliminate one single medium for minors to find irrelevant material. Government censorship is not the solution to the problem, and alternatives measures that have same effects as censorship can be practiced. There are many alternative measures to government censorship which would prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as censorship.
According to Hentoff, ‘there are ways to protect children without the Act’s intervention: blockage of certain areas, passwords, parental supervision. And adults-under protection of the First Amendment-can remain protected from government thought control. However, if the censorship bill is passed, the First Amendment may effectively be excluded from cyberspace’ (Hentoff 1). It is very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and parents should have this responsibility. Moral guidance is the foremost long-term solution to the problem. Rheingold believes that, ‘this technological shock (pornography on the Net) to Americans’ moral codes means that in the future, Americans are going to have to teach their children well.
The only protection that has a chance of working is to give their sons and daughters moral grounding and some common sense’ (Rheingold n. p. ). In America, minors can be exposed to sexual material in many media. Providing children with moral guidance is the foremost solution to the problem. However, at the same time that parents carry out moral guidance, Americans have to come out with some short term approaches to solve the problem in a more efficient way as well.
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. This involves the design of intelligent software to filter information. There is a rush to develop information filtering software and get it to market. One example of technological fix is the ‘Surf Watch’s oftware, as described by Allison and Baxter, ‘Surf Watch is a breakthrough software product which helps parents deal with the flood of sexual material on the Internet. By allowing parents to be responsible for blocking what is being received at any individual computer, children and others have less chance of accidentally or deliberately being exposed to unwanted material. Surf Watch is the first major advance in providing a technical solution to a difficult issue created by the explosion of technology.
Surf Watch strives to preserve Internet freedom by letting individuals choose what they see’ (Allison, Baxter 6). The Surf Watch vendor intends to provide monthly updates to cope with the fast changing Internet. Also, commercial Internet service providers, such as ‘America Online’, allow parents to control what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to their children (Cidley 59). Parental Control is a feature in many commercial Internet service providers, users can turn on the Parental Control function, and they will automatically be kept away from offensive words in IRC. In this way, children can be kept away from offensive material and adults can continue to enjoy their Internet freedom.
Another technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate ‘proxy server’ for their children’s web browser. A ‘proxy server’ is a program that disallows uses of some specified Internet sites or Usenet newsgroups. The parents need to actively select sites their proxy server can access. Parental control tools is a very possible solution to the problem, as stated in the ‘Communications Decency Act Issues Page’ by the Center for Democracy and Technology, ‘what will help parents control their children’s access to the Internet is Parental Control tools and features, such as those provided by several major online services and available as over-the-counter software’ (‘Stop the Communications… .’ n. p.
). Tools for controlling Internet access by children are widely available, and parents can already control their children’s access to the material on the Net. 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.
Nowadays, most Internet users classify their postings with standard categories, and leave signatures at the end of postings. According to Allison and Baxter, ‘items are signed with a secure digital signature that can be traced to a real person, company or organization’ (Allison, Baxter 4). The strengths of the material are often classified as ‘strong’ or ‘weak’, and attitudes of a given document towards a topic are often classified as ‘advocates’, ‘discusses’, ‘deplores’, or ‘does not discuss’. Additionally, in order to reduce the effort of classifying many individual items, particularly in the case of FTP and WWW, classifications are often attached to directories and inherited by subdirectories and documents. In this way, readers can make informed decisions regarding access of Internet material, and the programming of intelligent software will be much easier: just by recognizing a small number of terms of classification.
As a matter of fact, the classification of material has already been done on the Net for a period of time. Most Internet materials are well classified, and people will have an idea of what they are going to see beforehand. For instance, the articles in a particular Usenet newsgroup can be accurately predicted by the name of the group. For example, soc. culture.
hongkong. entertainment contains discussion of the entertainment industry of Hong Kong; alt. binaries. sex. pictures contains encoded binary files of dirty pictures. Internet users know what they are approaching beforehand, and minors know that they are not supposed to browse those alt.
sex. newsgroups. The combination of the installation of censoring software and the classification of material is a much better solution than government censorship. Hentoff mentions that ‘flexibility of interactive media… enables parents to control what content their kids have access to, and leaves the flow of information free for those adults who want it’ (Hentoff 1). This prevents unwanted material from reaching children and allows adults to continue enjoying their Internet freedom.
The problem of the Net is that it is easy for minors to obtain inappropriate materials. The American government came up with a proposal to censor the Net, but as proved earlier, the ‘Censor the Net’ approach is both technically and politically impossible. The foremost solution to the problem is for parents to provide moral guidance for their children. At the same time they are providing moral guidance for their children, Americans also need short term technical solution. Intelligent censoring software and proxy servers can let parents disallow their children access to certain sites. In this way, parents can keep their children from the offensive materials on the Net.
‘Like other dilemmas and unanswered questions of the digital age, traditional approaches (government censorship) simply won’t work. Americans are going to have to accept less intrusive, probably more exotic solutions, such as providing intelligent software filters to those who want a version of Internet Lite [sic]’ (Baker 65). For intelligent software and proxy servers to operate successfully, it is necessary to classify the information available on the Net, and the classification of materials has already been done by Internet users for years. Parents can then censor the Net for their children, and adults can continue to enjoy their Internet freedom. This will provide the same effect as government censorship, but will not damage the atmosphere of free idea expression and freedom on the Net. Moreover, indecorous materials are not only on the Net, minors can obtain such materials without accessing the Internet at all.
Internet censorship is not the solution to keeping minors away from sexual material. The real and foremost solution to preventing minors from viewing sexual material is for parents to take a stronger role in their children’s viewing. ‘This technological shock (pornography on the Net) to Americans’ moral codes means that in the future, Americans are going to have to teach their children well. The only protection that has a chance of working is to give their sons and daughters moral grounding and some common sense’ (Rheingold n. p. ).
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