Imagine a place where you have access to anything and everything one could want. Some would say that is only existent in a utopia, and some would say that describes the Internet. Many adults go on to the net and access pornographic material that would be unsuitable for children. This is called cyberporn. The controversy lies in the fact that children are accessing these materials also. Government, activist groups, and concerned parents are fighting to regulate obscene material found over the Internet to protect children. The first amendment is the only thing protecting adults from losing their rights to obtain pornographic or indecent material on the net. Under the first amendment the government must not regulate cyberporn. Online sex has been around since the first bulletin boards were available over the computer in the early 1980's. People would pay to down load pornographic pictures and talk dirty to each other. Usenet groups took control of porn after the Internet came about. They did not charge people to down load picture and to interact with others. In result, Internet porn grew (Rosen 16). Things have changed drastically since then with over a million different sites available to access porn. Now it is not just for adults. Children are accessing the obscene materials. This brings rise to issues of how to protect them from problems that can arise. The materials they view, could influence children. They could also be subjected to cybersex in a chat room full of people that could be three times their age. Worst of all pedophilias could influence children to meet with them outside of the computer. The government and the United States citizens must now figure out how to protect our children from the effects of cyberporn, and y... ... middle of paper ... ...ive. The main result off the government being able to censor cyberporn would be that government decided for everyone person what their values are. Government said that the materials you could access in cyberspace were not appropriate for you and your family. It is a known fact that people love and crave it so if they con not get it over the net, they will get it some how unless the government cracks down on that also. So far the victories over censorship of the net have been very promising that our constitutional rights will never be taken away from us. These victories are not just for cyberporn but for the future of free speech on the Internet, and quite possibly the future of free speech period. In order to preserve our constitutional rights the government must not censor cyberporn, not only for the immediate infringements and discrimination, but for the future.
Pornography is considered by many to be an unwelcome and distasteful part of our society. However, I argue that it is necessary to voice the unpopular viewpoints, under the Constitution. This paper is a defense of pornography as a constitutional right of free expression, under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. In illustrating this argument, I will first define pornography as a concept, and then address central arguments in favor of pornography remaining legal and relatively unregulated – such as the development of the pornography debate throughout modern US law, and how activist groups address the censorship of adult entertainment.
... good and safe concise decisions. Censoring laws on the internet now are important to protect kids most; and all others at risk. We need more laws enacted against exploitation and privacy against potential harm while using the internet. We are supposed to protect the weak. Therefore as a whole we can prosper in future generations hand in hand with our technological advancements.
Since their founding, computers and the Internet have become a tool that nearly every man, woman, and child in the World have been able to use. E-mail has become one of the Worlds fastest growing ways of communication and the Internet has become one, if not the largest source of information available today. You can find just about everything you wanted to know about anything with the stroke of a few keys on the keyboard. However, along with these positive aspects of the Internet, there lies much negativity surrounding the internet and its use. Access to teenage pornography, bestiality, brutal murder pictures, XXX stories, and other un-ethical sites is extremely easy. In fact, the pornography industry has grown 63% since the Internet was first available for use.(Bishop 91) It is one of the leading industries on the Internet and has become quite a controversy in the United States. Censorship of such sites has done very little due to the fact that most parents feel that these sites are not accessed by their children. We have currently found no solution that has worked and many government officials see the problem only getting worse. Pornography on the Internet though should not be banned, but rather better controlled and censored due to its availability and graphic nature.
First Amendment protections were upheld in the case of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (Reno, 1997). The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was found to violate the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech. In appealing the CDA, appellees were hoping that the court would determine that the CDA violated both First and Fifth Amendment rights. While the court agreed that the CDA violated First Amendment rights, they did not rule on the issue of Fifth Amendment rights violations. Both constitutional and criminal issues were being addressed in this appeal.
Tears begin to fall down a child’s face. Her body goes into shock out of fear. Her mother warned her about watching inappropriate content, and there it was, right on her computer screen. This could not have happened though. All she was doing was casually browsing the internet before a pop-up appeared. Although it may seem hard to believe, the major cause of events such as this is the lack of censorship on the internet. Internet censorship relates to the removal of offensive, inappropriate, or controversial content published online. The current problem with the internet is that there are few restrictions on what can be published or viewed. Several sites on the internet only offer a warning about inappropriate content that can easily be bypassed by agreeing to the terms. Other websites provide access to private or military information. More dreadfully, however, are websites that use their explicit content as a promotion. These factors bring the conclusion that anybody of any given age can view and publish inappropriate or dangerous content. The current problems with the internet serve for clarification as to why the United States should create a nonpartisan assembly to censor the internet in order to protect its citizens from the mental, emotional, and physical harms the internet creates.
When you bring your child to the public library to checkout a book, or to let them use the computers for a school project you do not want to have to worry about them accidentally seeing another person there looking at pornography or even worse, them accidentally pulling it up on their computer. Many libraries do not filter their internet and therefore leave children at risk of seeing these disturbing images. Those that oppose filtering the internet feel as if it imposes on their first amendment right and that these filters either filter too much or do not filter enough. Although it is important to protect people’s first amendment right, it is our moral obligation to protect our children from pornography and other disturbing images while they are in a public place, especially a library since it is used mostly for educational purposes. But, with filters comes controversy: whether it imposes on one’s first
... who want to safely enjoy the internet. This act is extremely unjust and fails to recognize the unique nature of the internet. I clearly understand the motivation for the Communications Decency Act, but feel that there was a terribly misguided effort to protect children from what some prosecutors consider offensive or indecent online material. I believe that this responsibility should be put on parents. Parents, not the Federal Government should determine for themselves and their children what material should come into their homes based on their own tastes and values. The Communication Decency Act simply goes to far in the attempt to "protect the children." I think that Vermont senator Patrick Leahy summed it up best by saying that, "Banning indecent material from the Internet is like using a meat cleaver to deal with the problems better addressed with a scalpel."
Since the internet has been available in schools and libraries in this country, there has been a debate about what should be accessible to users, especially minors. The amount of information disseminated on the world wide web is vast, with some sources valuable for scholarly and personal research and entertainment, and some sources that contain material that is objectionable to some (ie. pornography, gambling, hate groups sites, violent materials). Some information potentially accessible on the internet such as child pornography and obscenity is strictly illegal and is not protected under the First Amendment. Some information available on the internet that may be valuable to some is at the same time perceived to be worthless or potentially harmful to some. For libraries serving the public, there has been controversy on the issue of providing the internet, free of censorship or filtering, to users. While some librarians and their professional associations align with ideals of free and unfiltered access to all information provided by the internet, some feel that filtering internet content to exclude possibly objectionable materials is a reasonable measure to prevent potential harm to minors.
Censoring knowledge is unconstitutional. Censorship had been going on since the beginning of the written word. This means that is not hard to say that it has been used as a manipulation tactic since the first man, or woman, placed their coal to a piece of dried goat skin. So does this make it wrong?
You just finished a day's work, have arrived home, unlocked the door, step inside, and just as you are about to yell, "anyone home," you hear hooting and hollering coming from the family room. As you enter the room you see your children and their friends glued to the computer screen, which is covered with explicit images not intended for the eyes of children. According to an article written by P.J.Huffstutter, "Yahoo, MSN Criticized for Offering Easy Access to Pornography," (C1) these two large Internet companies, have made it possible for everyone of all ages to access these adult communities. They require no proof of age, making it far too easy for under-age children to freely view the pornographic pictures and videos of their choice While adults may find leaving a site easy if they are uncomfortable, trying to restrict children from accessing these sites is a different issue. To watch your kids every moment is unrealistic and would not please anyone. According to Net Nanny, "Kids need to learn Internet safety practices and differentiate between right and wrong, because their parents won't always be there." There must be some sort of compromise. We, being responsible adults, need to take charge of what our children are doing when online, since little effort is required to gain entry to pornography sites. I used Microsoft's MSN search facility to look for "porn," and the only warning I received was that I had entered a search term that was likely to return adult content. While that may be more warning than in the past, it still isn't enough to keep children away. Then I was directed to a related link entitled NightSurf, and within two minutes I was presented with images of nudity...
McCarthy, M. (2005). THE CONTINUING SAGA OF INTERNET CENSORSHIP: THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT. Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, (2), 83-101.
Imagine yourself to be a typical parent in this century. With very little time on your hands, your schedule is jammed tight: meals to fix, kids to get ready to school, getting yourself ready, a job to go to, pick up the kids, bills to pay, food to buy, etc. On one particular day, one of your children notifies you that once again they are going to the library to finish a school paper. No harm in that right? However, perhaps you would think differently if you knew your child wasn’t going to the library to merely finish his report, but to also look at pornography he had been introduced to on the internet. This is not only a reality at your local libraries, but also the topic of a long time debate in this country over responsible information access and censorship which has centered around the electronic access of documents. Society has proven intolerant of anything that hints of censorship due to the history of those who have tried to impose forms of extreme censorship–like Mcarthism, Hitler, and the like. The age of the 1960's and 1970's brought forth an era of liberation from restrictions and limitations within our own country.
Do you want our future generations being exposed to violence, hate, sex, illegal substances, and false information, and then one day think it would be cool or alright to try these things? The internet is filled with dangerous information, that children should never have the freedom to access. Children learn from example, and if they search, watch, or read something on the web that could be potentially dangerous, they could be influenced or curious and think that it would be alright to imitate one day. If our children now are viewing these things, it could mean that are future generations can grow to be more violent and our world could become more dangerous than it already is today. Censorship is necessary if we plan on having our kids grow up in the safest environment possible.
Free speech on the Internet is a very controversial subject and has been the key problem surrounding the Internet today. The attempt to regulate and govern the Internet is still pursued by government officials. This subject has been intensified due to terrorist attacks against the United States and around world within the past years. The government believes that by regulating the Internet, it will protect the general public from criminal actions and eliminate the exposure of children to pornography or vulgar language. Senator Jim Exon of ...
There are two real issues at stake when looking at this controversial topic. The first issue is finding a way to protect our children from potentially damaging material. There are advocates to censoring the Internet and removing this type of material because it will help shelter our children from this type of content. On the other hand, Free Speech advocates believe that it is the individual citizens right to have access to this typ...