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Meaning of censorship in mass media
paper in internet censorship
risks for children online and possible consequences
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Censorship is defined as the act or practice of removing obscene, vulgar, and highly objectionable material from things we encounter every day. Whether it is on TV, in music, books, or on the Internet censorship is an inescapable part of our lives. Free expression is one of the basic roots that are country is based on, although this right is constantly challenged and contested. The Communications Decency Act was passed by congress on February 1st 1996. This act sent shockwaves throughout the Internet community.
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was an outright attempt to censor another form of media believed to "initiate the transmission of, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person." It is clear that its main purpose was to protect minors from indecent and potentially harmful material on the internet. The new law planned on imposing strict penalties for using indecent language, or discussing material deemed to be indecent on electronic bulletin boards or Internet chat rooms accessible to children. Section 502 of the Communications Decency Act states that, "Whoever ... uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs ... shall be fined under Title 1, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than two years...." That basically covers any of the over 13,000 discussion groups, as well as...
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... 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."
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...
"We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship." Even thought E. M. Forster lived over one hundred years before the Communications Decency Act was even proposed, he knew of the reason for its acceptance - fear. The Congress was afraid of the potential problems that could be caused by allowing Americans a new medium where animosity could be freely given. Rather than allowing this, lawmakers introduced a law that would handicap the freedom of speech. An internet provider could be punished for, in the words of the Communications Decency Act of 1996:
Definition of Censorship: the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.
Pornography on the Internet is available in different formats. These range from pictures and short animated movies, to sound files and stories. Most of this kind of pornographic content is available through World Wide Web pages. The Internet also makes it possible to discuss sex, see live sex acts, and arrange sexual activities from computer screens. There are also sex related discussions on the Internet Relay Chat channels where users in small groups or in private channels exchange messages and files.(Akdenis, 1997) There are millions of different pornographic sites on the internet, so there is almost no way of regulating every site unless there was some type of a universal censorship required for every site. Nearly every one of these millions and millions of sites is accessed daily. Men, women, and children of every age and race are on the Internet looking at inappropriate sites every day. Over 2/3 of Americans who have access to the Internet have accessed pornographic or other un-ethical sites, and the numbers are only growing.
The Constitutional issue that was addressed was whether the CDA violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech (Reno, 1997). The court found that the CDA did infringe upon the freedom of speech protection afforded in the First Amendment. The CDA was an effort to restrict inappropriate material from reaching children under the age of eighteen through the internet. However, the court found that the CDA’s language was too vague and because of that, it ...
The case that I chose to analyze is Reno v. ACLU. It is the first Internet related U.S. Supreme Court case ever to be decided. Seven of the justices found the argued provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) were unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The court found that the Internet is similar to a shopping mall or library not a broadcast medium as the government refered to it. The majority opinion for this case was that the Internet is a unique marketplace for ideas. The ruling states that while there is a large amount of pornographic material out there, it normally isn’t come across on accident. They stated that the CDA already holds back a good amount of speech that is alright for adult to adult conversations, which they do have a constitutional right to receive. While they recognize the CDA efforts to protect children from harmful speech and pornographic material, it still does not justify the unnecessarily broad suspension of speech. The final outcome was that they found that what the CDA was trying to do would violate speakers messages who are rightfully protected under the First Amendment.
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.
Depending on whether or not you're a net geek like me, you probably know either everything or nothing about Senate bill 314, the Communications Decency Act. (I'm a huge net geek: I've already received at least three copies of an on-line petition against it.) Senate bill 314, proposed by Senator Exon and currently under consideration in the Senate, would ban obscenity on-line, making it a federal crime to transmit or make available over the internet anything determined to be "obscene...regardless of whether the maker of such communication placed the call or initiated the communication." This ban includes all forms of electronic communication, from telephone calls to file transfer protocol sites (computers on the internet that contain files available to the public for copying) to private e-mail messages. In the original version of the bill, penalties also applied to internet service providers (including universities) whose facilities were used for "obscene" communications; however, after heavy lobbying by CompuServe, America On-Line, and other large internet services, those portions of the bill were stricken. Even in its weakened form, though, Senate bill 314 poses a significant threat to the continued growth of the internet and to constitutional rights.
Without the history of Censorship, what type of things would children be watching? Without the unique methods of Censorship, what kinds of films would be being released into the public? Throughout this essay I will be explaining the steps taken to achieve the level of Censorship, that we have now.
Exercising the freedom of speech has two sides: the speaker and the listener. Censorship is unfair to both sides. When it takes away the speaker’s Constitutional freedom of expression, it simultaneously revokes the listener’s right to develop an informed opinion based on unobstructed truth. This opinion has been supported by the courts. In 1982, an informal agreement between several broadcasters from major media outlets known as the Code of Broadcaster Conduct, which banned “depictions of sexual encounters, violence and drug use, as well as excessive advertising,” was nullified because it was a violation of First Amendment rights (“Broadcast Decency”). Excessive censorship is viewed as unnecessary by both the American public and by the government that endorses it.
McCarthy, M. (2005). THE CONTINUING SAGA OF INTERNET CENSORSHIP: THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT. Brigham Young University Education & Law Journal, (2), 83-101.
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 ...
Ever wondered the reason behind racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, children committing crime or violence? The main reason is that censorship is not properly imposed or there is a need of censorship in the society. Censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that certain people, individual, groups or government officials find it objectionable, offensive or dangerous on others. There are varieties of other definitions but all have in common the concept of withholding information and/or resources from those who seek it. Hence censorship is essential in society to eliminate discrimination on basis of race and sex, protect children, maintain stability and restore what censor sees as lost moral values. Censorship occurs when expressive materials like books, magazines, movies, videos, music or work of art are restricted to particular audiences based on their age or other characteristics. (http://www.ala.org/oif/intellectualfreedeomandcensorship.html)
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...
Censorship includes the examination and blocking of books, periodicals, plays, films, television and radio programs, news reports, and other communication media that is shown to, or available to the public. Media censorship is sometimes put into place because content is immoral or obscene, heretical or blasphemous, seditious or treasonable, or injurious to the national security. It is supposedly used for the protection of the family, the church, and the state. Additionally some religious groups, opposed to the violence shown in different types of media, say censorship works. Still more that believe in civil rights think that it is an unnecessary violation of the right to freedom of speech for all humans.