Government Censorship would damage the atmosphere of the freedom to express ideas on the Internet; therefore, censorship should not be encouraged.
The internet is a world wide computer network, The U.S. government is now trying to pass bills to prevent “misuse” of the Net.
The problem that concerns most people is offensive materials such as pornography. One reaction to this inapplicability has been the “Censor the Net” approach (the censorship bill), but how does this affect the average user who is merely surfing the net for their own information seeking or pleasure? it is not fair to exclude the freedom and class everyone the same way, or even to force ones ideas on another in the vain hope that they are protecting the masses.
Most internet users are enjoying their freedom of speech on the Net, which is supposed to be protected by the First Amendment. Additionally, only a very small portion of the Net contains offensive material, most people do not use the Net for pornography. It must also be understood that censoring the Net is technically impossible. 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.
There are many alternative measures to government censorship which would prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as censorship. It is of course, very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children, and parents should have this responsibility and the parents alone.
An alternative to government censorship is the technological fix, which would prevent the so-called misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as government censorship, example’s of technological fixes are the “SurfWatch” software. And similar which are designed for parents to deceide exactly what their children are able to access during their surfing time. Also, there are commercial Internet service providers that allow parents to control what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to their children. Another technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate “proxy server” for their children’s web browser. There are no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material; only people can do this. 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. The combination of the installation of censoring software and the classification of materials is a much better solution than government censorship.
The Internet is a wonderful place of entertainment and education but like all places used by millions of people, it can be a hive of activity with many directions to travel.
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