Essay, Research Paper: Internet Censorship

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances .(http://www.freedomforum.org/first/welcome.asp) This means that the people of the United States have their right to speak freely and gather in masses as long as it is peaceful. Therefor, since the internet is not owned by anyone, it should not be censored.
Censorship is defined as The act, process, or practice of censoring.(http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=Censorship) The building of a world rating and filtering system for Internet content has been planned as another approch to the national act of regulating online speech(www.freedomforum.org/censorship/homenews.asp) . Conflicting with to their original purpose, These systems may actually assist governments with limits on Internet expression. This means that they would have control over what american people viewed on the net. These rating and filtering schemes may prevent individuals from discussing controversial or unpopular topics, impose burdensome compliance costs on speakers, distort the fundamental cultural diversity of the Internet, enable invisible "upstream" filtering, and eventually create a homogenized Internet dominated by large commercial interests. (www.freedomforum.org/censorship/homenews.asp)
In order for us to aviod the disagreeable effects of censorship and technical solutions that seek to block the free flow of information, differnt steps should be focused on. These steps could be educating adults to educate their kids about the dangers and the good things about the internet. To censor the internet would just primary harm it and destroy the quality which makes it most popular, its freedom! There are simply too many users of the internet to be able to ensure that one doesn't offend anyone. People on the Internet come from all sorts of backgrounds and traditions. The views or opinions they have and express may be perfectly normal and acceptable where they are, but yet completely a curse to many people they are involved in debate with.
Making commercial providers responsible for the activities of their customers is fundamentally unfair. If a customer is allowed use the internet then unless you watch and monitor every word or byte of data they send then it is very easy for them to do something unwanted. To try and carry out this form of control would make the entire internet unworkable.(http://www.cs.tcd.ie/courses.html) Theres a balance of rights between people who want to access certain materials and those who wish to avoid them and keep their children from them. The current situation properly protects the balance, only minor skilled changes are necessary to current practise.
In addition to being unconstitutional, the government's approch to censoring inappropriate material on the Internet is very hypocritical. The government punishes people for "obstruction of justice," or withholding vital information from an investigation.(http://www.connet.com/adam/netcensr.html) This could be considered as a type of censorship, because people who hold information are, censoring information about themselves which may be not liked to others and their causes. The government considers this type of censorship "dangerous".
In conclusion, offensive material on the Internet should not be censored. If the government is permitted to censor this material based on a few people's opinions, the censors would be in violation of the Constitution. The government's attempt to censor this material is hypocritical; they abuse censorship in a few cases, but later look to destroy material labeled "inappropriate" to enhance the image of the government. If censoring this distasteful material is allowed to be carried out in this manner, what will be next? Books? Television? Movies? There is no way to tell how far the government would go if given the opportunity. Censoring material on the Internet is unconstitutional and hypocritical, and the effects are irreversible. It must be stopped.(http://www.connet.com/adam/netcensr.html)