The Government Should NOT Censor Internet Pornography

Governments generally argue for the use of censorship for the purpose of discouraging and disallowing the access to inappropriate material and other harmful practices, but further extend their censorship’s reach to affect many other facets of the internet; including politically sensitive material and discussions. There are several techniques which may be used to restrict the content deemed offensive by a government. This means that the authority in a given country can effectively restrict access to any material which they deem to be offensive. This is almost unavoidable for the citizens affected and so the resources which their internet holds are quite limited by these restrictions. As the internet has become such a valuable resource, people are not happy about its restriction.

Acting as if a day without an online connection will ruin our civilization would corrupt the child’s mind, thus making them think the Internet is the most vital object. Of course, there are dangers when one allows a child onto the web. Without proper education on the dangers in the online world, children may fall into a trap and become potential victims. In order to have a well-rounded youth, parents must express healthy role modeling by teaching them how to identify dangerous interactions and carefully monitoring the web history to protect children from online threats.

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... ... middle of paper ... ...nt and Civil Liberties groups, no one seems to be making much headway in determining where the line should be drawn when it comes to pornography. The positive is that child pornography is being acknowledged as a real problem, but law enforcement officials are still having a great deal of difficulty fighting it.

But, is pornography really that harmful? There are many reasons why the government is having trouble putting restrictions on pornography. As Cynthia Stark states in Social Theory and Practice," just because some find certain materials offensive is not a sufficient reason for restricting those materials." There has to be proper grounds for making such laws to prevent pornography distribution because either way you look at it, it goes against the free speech laws of the first amendment. Nadine Strossen of the ACLU had a good point when she said "the First Amendment contains no exception for sexual speech.

Censorship of the Internet is Wrong The Internet can be a very disturbing and adult medium. There are parts of the Internet that should not be viewed by children. Explicit information can be found which is intended for an adult audience but children who have access to the Internet have become exposed to this material. The question at hand is who is responsible for preventing these children from viewing this material. Censoring the entire Internet would be one capable option.

This rise in juvenile violence can be attributed to the extreme amount of violence in modern media. While video games are not the only source of violence influencing the children of our society, other forms of violence in movies and television programs are well enough regulated. Although video games can help children release stress and anger virtually, the government should regulate further regulate them, because of the major psychological, social, and health concerns. There are some people who do not agree with this position concerning the further regulation of videogames. The opposition believes that playing violent videogames is a right protected by the First Amendment; “…The court applied the first amendment to invalidate a federal statute that broadly prohibited the sale of videos displaying the illegal killing, maiming, torturing, or wounding of animals”(Game over for 1).

The internet can be a very disturbing thing for many people. There are a lot of things on the internet that kids should not be able to view. But for some reasons kids are able to view these things. I believe that the government should step in and help with the censorship of the internet. People are but should not be able to view anything on the internet if they are under the recommended viewing age.

The survey participants from the sources included American and Chinese and this causes a limitation to this research. The reason is that these two types of individuals may have behaved differently online since they should have different cultures and education. So, further research should focus on only one type of participants. Once teenagers get educated in the dangers of being online, cyber bullying incidents would be reduced and eventually minimized, which would a superior social network would be established.

However there are different ways to protect children without censoring the internet of everyone. Internet Censorship is a problem because it goes against our constitutional right of the First Amendment; and as much as the government tries to put regulations on the internet, the internet is too massive to try to control. Instead of trying to control the internet by cohesion and fear, we should look into the many solutions that can be used to protect this country and its children. Free Speech vs Online Speech What is the difference between free... ... middle of paper ... ...wn home. Net Nannies are a parental control system that distinguishes good and bad web pages within a site it also can flag dangerous IM conversations, as well as provide detailed activity reports.

The media is loaded with many sexist, racist, violent material, and most of it is not considered pornography. The issue of violence and oppression is much deeper than pornography. Most people are not in favor of pornography; however, the public should not be in favor of censoring pornography. Freedom of speech is more logical than censorship because of the lack of a definition of pornography, individual rights and the claim that pornography causes violence against women. First of all, in order to censor something you need to define it.