As I sat at my computer reading
For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, unless their care were equal to regulate all other things of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour: to shut and fortify one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open.
I am writing something that in a few minutes will be available for anyone with internet access to read. How do we limit what is posted on the internet? Should the government monitor every site and every bit of information? We all know that the internet can be a good thing as well as a bad thing, so should the bad things simply be deleted or prohibited? As
In 1998, a law was passed called the Child Online Protective Act (COPA). This law made making any communication for commercial purposes that could be considered harmful to minors a crime, unless there was a legitimate business reason to communicate. The penalty for violating this law was up to $50,000 a day. Immediately after it was passed, the law was contested on grounds of violating the First Amendment. The law never went into effect, and ten years after being passed was finally declared unconstitutional. There are still debates about whether the internet should have certain standards and censors, and it is obviously a difficult question to answer since it took 10 years to settle the constitutionality of this one law.
Since the internet is a fairly new invention, it is still continually changing and progressing. Just as
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
I believe that, although Milton's argument for liberty of expressed opinion is a valuable reference point for analyzing our constitutional right to freedom of speech, the case that Milton is presenting is not as analogous to our own as it may seem. The difference that cannot be overlooked is the power of the internet that cannot be found in books. Both have the power to convey expression, but the internet has the power of direct action. Unlike the books that Milton was fighting to protect, the internet itself can be a medium of vice and crime, and should thus not be exempt from legal scrutiny. Therefore, the conclusion I reach is that our freedom of speech as far as the internet is concerned should extend to the point of expression that is conveyable in other mediums (if that makes any sense).
ReplyDeleteI suppose it is the admin of a website that is and should be ultimately in charge of what is allowed on a web site it is their space for free speech and anyone can find a place on the internet where they are able to express what they want. We can't censor the internet in a way that would contradict the first amendment, but we can't have the internet as a place where illegal activity is rampant. Information does move a lot faster through the internet than it does in books and a lot more can be done with it, so it is a lot harder to keep track of what is going on. Illegal is still illegal though, so crimes need to be punished wherever they are committed just a free speech is free speech no matter where it is expressed and should be left alone.
ReplyDeleteThe First Amendment does not protect every utterance made in the country. This selective blindness centers itself around the issue of obscenity. In legal terms the word obscenity refers to classifying a distinction between socially permitted material and discussions that the public can access versus those that should be denied. The question that frequently surfaces is who should define what is obscene.
ReplyDeleteThe United States Obscenity laws bases itself on the 1868 English Common Law case Hicklin v. Regina. The ruling stated that any material could "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences" was able to be banned or censored. Supreme Court rulings used this prior case in holdings concerning Roth vs. United States which stated that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment and defined it as “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.” The next prudent case, Miller v. California, expanded the Roth v. United States ruling by saying “Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law; and that, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
The apparent issue I see with this is what are the “contemporary community standards”? As a Christian in a sinful society, I would hope that my standards are higher than the standards. The bible makes it very clear what is immoral and sinful, and as a Christian I hold these things to be obscene. Unfortunately, today things that are considered obscene are found on only the extremes of society’s spectrum, not the biblical narrow biblical scale. For example, recently Jurors in Florida were required to watch several hours of “extreme pornography” in order to determine if it was obscene. Shouldn’t all pornography be considered to be so? In the age of the Internet it is almost impossible to determine what is obscene simply because of the volume of material available.
If there is going to be any restriction of free speech it should be well defined by law and not subject to the already questionable morals of the community. I believe that some material on the internet should be censored if only because it is blatantly immoral or even criminal. At same time, to allow any type of censorship gives bias to censor anything.
The Internet dramatically increases problems for any censorship issues. Granted, parents can purchase filters to limit the sites their children see, just as they can limit access to television programs. Yet as the chidren grow older, they can subvert the efforts of their parents. Consider the censorship problems facing print media. "According to a recent Publishers Weekly article, commercial publishers released 276,649 new titles in 2007. In addition, on-demand publishers released 134,773 titles, an increase of 39 percent from 2006.:" Additionally, the number of periodicals published in 2006 totalled 19,419, not including the number of e-zines to which we have access. And according to About.com, world-wide we sent an average of 210 billion e-mails per day. How does one begin to manage that. Even as I type those words, I remember the current book I am reading, Numerati, which describes the efforts of data gathering agencies to gather information from blogs and e-mails as well as the more customary sources (cookies, credit cards) and covert them to mathematical symbols. Then, with sophisticated algorithms, they can profile people and groups. Could such a system lead ultimately to censorship? We might think that Minority Report is only a fantasy, but we thought that Nemo's submarine (Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) was a fantasy as well.
ReplyDeleteIf you were to assign me to a political party it would be the Libertarian Party so you alreay know where I'm going to go with this. Make no mistake, Big Brother is getting bigger all the time. The Patriot Act allows the government to access our emails and spy on our phone conversations. (I love how the name of this law suggests allowing the government to spy on you is patriotic.) The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) subjects any phone call we make to or receive from another country to government monitoring. This is an Orwellian nightmare! Gone are the days of warrants, due process, and probable cause. Clearly, our 4th amendment rights are in jeopardy. If the government doesn't respect our right to privacy, I doubt it will respect our right to freedom of expression. Censoring the Internet is unconstitutional, not to mention nearly impossible. However, I'm sure the government will give it a try if it hasn't already.
ReplyDelete