Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Freedom of Speech in Cyberspace

Chapter five in A Gift of Fire talked about internet censorship. This topic has been around since the internet was released to the public. What should be done about it? The answer depends on who you are; and whether or not you agree. As a parent, you might not want your kid looking at political or religious speech, pornography, sexual or racial slurs, Nazi materials, abortion information, drugs, violence, and how to build a bomb. So how do you protect them? Maybe as a parent you put the computer in a place where you can watch your child surf the web; or even use internet filters. The problem is if you the parent are not home, how do you know what your child is looking at? There is really no way to tell what your child is looking at unless you view the history, because even with internet filters, they're ways to get around filters. The government for one is trying to put laws in place to help censor the internet, but it is a violation to the first amendment. If the United States censors certain websites, it doesn't mean that the whole world has to do the same thing. How can we stop people from spamming things on the web that is unwanted information?

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