Government Censorship would damage the atmosphere of the freedom to express
ideas on the Internet; therefore, government should not encourage censorship

Thesis: Government Censorship would damage the atmosphere of the freedom to
express ideas on the Internet; therefore, government should not encourage
censorship.

Introduction

I. In the Internet community, there is a large volume of technical terms.
For this reason, it is first necessary to examine the terminology specific to
Internet.

1. The internet is a world wide computer network.

1. Electronic mail (email), which is one component of the Internet, approximates
person to person letters, memoranda, notes and even phone calls.

2. Another term that is often used is electronic news (enews/Usenet), enews is a
broadcast, free to the Internet medium.

3. The term FTP is also frequently used. File transfer protocol (FTP) started as
an Internet archival and retrieval medium, somewhat analogous to traditional
libraries.

4. The world-wide web (WWW), which is another component of the Net, can be used
to "publish" material that would traditionally appear in journals, magazines,
posters, books, television and even on film.

2. It is also essential to give a brief history on the internet.

3.The U.S. government is now trying to pass bills to prevent misuse of the Net.

II. In order to understand the need for the ever-growing body of legislation,
it is important to explore the controversy, and the current problems involved
with the Net as it exists must be introduced.

1. The problem that concerns most people is offensive materials such as
pornography.

2. Another crucial internet crime is the stealing of credit card numbers.

III. One reaction to this inapplicability has been the "Censor the Net"
approach (the censorship bill), we are now to compare its advantages and
disadvantages.

1. First, the meaning of "Censoring the Net" must be explained.

2. However, many experts have pointed out that government censorship is not
possible.

1. First, it is not fair to exclude the freedom and damage the atmosphere of
freely expressing ideas just for the safety of children.

2. Most internet users are enjoying their freedom of speech on the Net, which is
supposed to be protected by our First Amendment.

3. Additionally, only a very small portion of the Net contains offensive
material, most people do not use the Net for pornography.

4. It must be understood that censoring the Net is technically impossible.

5. While people are concerned about Internet pornography, it should be
recognized that pornography is sometimes legal; for example, pornography is
legal in video and magazines.

IV. There are many alternative measures to government censorship which would
prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as censorship.

1. It is very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their
children, and parents should have this responsibility.

2. However, at the same time as we carry out moral guidance, we have to come out
with some short term approaches to solve the problem in a more efficient way as
well.

3. An alternative to government censorship is the technological fix, which would
prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as government
censorship.

1. One example of technological fix is the "SurfWatch" software.

2. Also, commercial Internet service providers, such as "America Online", allow
parents to control what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to
their children.

3. Another technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate
"proxy server" for their children’s web browser.

4. There are no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify
material; only people can do it. As a result, while practicing technological
fixes, the classification of the contents of the material when posting is very
important.

5. Nowadays, most internet users classify their postings with standard
categories, and leave signatures at the end of postings.

6. The combination of the installation of censoring software and the
classification of materials is a much better solution than government
censorship.

Conclusion

The Internet is a wonderful place of entertainment and education but like all
places used by millions of people, it has some murky corners people would
prefer children not to explore. In the physical world society as a whole
conspires to protect children, but there are no social or physical constraints
to Internet surfing.

The Internet Censorship Bill of 1995, also known as the Exon/Coats
Communications Decency Act, has been introduced in the U.S. Congress. It would
make it a criminal offense to make available to children anything that is
indecent, or to send anything indecent with "intent to annoy, abuse, threaten,
or harass" ("Stop the Communications ..." n.p.). The goal of this bill as
written (though not as stated by its proponents) is to try to make all public
discourse on the Internet suitable for young children. The issue of whether is
it necessary to have censorship on the Internet is being argued all over the
world. There are numerous homepages on the World Wide Web discussing this
issue, or asking people to sign the petition to stop government censorship.

The Internet was originally a place for people to freely express their ideas
worldwide. It is also one of America’s most valuable types of technology;
scientists use email for quick and easy communication. They post their current
scientific discoveries on the Usenet newsgroups so other scientists in the same
field of study all over the world can know in minutes. Ordinary people use the
Net for communication, expressing their opinions in the newsgroups, obtaining
up-to-date information from the WWW, acquiring files by using FTP, etc.
Censorship would damage the atmosphere of the freedom to express ideas on the
Internet; therefore, government should not encourage censorship.

In the Internet community, there is a large volume of technical terms. For this
reason, it is first necessary to examine the terminology specific to Internet.
The Internet is a world wide computer network. The "Net" is frequently used in
place of Internet. In the words of Allison and Baxter, two experts on Internet
Censorship at the Monash University, "the Internet is comprised of various
digital media subsuming many of the distinct roles of traditional media"
(Allison and Baxter 3).

Electronic mail (email), which is one component of the Internet, approximates
person to person letters, memoranda, notes and even phone calls. Sound and
pictures are sometimes sent along with text. Email is mainly for private
communication. Electronic mailing lists are rather like club newsletters and
readers have to contract-in or subscribe to a list.

Another term that is often used is electronic news (enews/Usenet), enews is a
broadcast, free to the Internet medium. It has some properties of radio or
television, particularly talk-back radio or television, in that the destination
is indiscriminate.

The term FTP is also frequently used. File transfer protocol (FTP) started as
an Internet archival and retrieval medium, somewhat analogous to traditional
libraries. Files can be retrieved from distant computers using a traditional
text-based interface.

The world-wide web (WWW), which is another component of the Net, can be used to
"publish" material that would traditionally appear in journals, magazines,
posters, books, television and even on film. The term UNIX, "a widely heard
computer term, is a multi-user, multitasking operating system originally
developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, at AT&T Bell Laboratories, in
1969 for use on minicomputers" ("UNIX" n.p.).

To understand the background of the controversy, it is also necessary to give a
brief history on the Internet. The Internet was created about twenty years ago
in an attempt to connect a U.S. Defense Department network called the ARPAnet
and various other radio and satellite networks. The ARPAnet was an experimental
network designed to support military research; in particular, research about
how to build networks that could withstand partial outages (such as bomb
attacks) and still function. At about the same time the Internet was coming
into being, Ethernet local area networks ("LANs") were developed. Most of these
workstations came with Berkeley UNIX, which included IP (Internet Protocol)
networking software. This created a new demand: rather than connecting to a
single large timesharing computer per site, organizations wanted to connect the
ARPAnet to their entire local network. The demand keeps growing today. Now that
most four-year colleges are connected to the Net, people are trying to get
secondary and primary schools connected. People who have graduated from college
where they have used the resources of the Net in classes, know what the
Internet is good for, and talk their employers into connecting different
corporations. All this activity points to continued growth, networking problems
to solve, evolving technologies, and job security for networkers (Willmott
107).

The Internet can also be compared to a church. In many ways the Internet is
like a church: it has its council of elders, every member has an opinion about
how things should work, and they can either take part or not. It’s the choice
of the user. The Internet has no president, chief operating officer, or Pope.
The constituent networks may have presidents and CEO’s, but that’s a different
issue; there is no single authority figure for the Internet as a whole. As
stated by Frances Hentoff, the staff writer for The Village Voice and the
author of First Freedoms, "on an info superhighway driven by individuals, there
are no cops preventing users from downloading" (Hentoff 1). Internet users can
broadcast or express anything they want. The fact that the Net has no single
authority figure sets forth a problem about what kind of materials could be
available on the Net.

The U.S. government is now trying to pass bills to prevent misuse of the Net.
The Internet Censorship Bill of 1995, which has already been discuss earlier,
was introduced to the U.S. Congress. Under the Censorship Bill, a person
breaks the law if he/she puts a purity test on a web page without making sure
children cannot access the page. Also, if a person verbally assaults someone on
IRC, he/she breaks the law. If a university, where some students may be under
18 years old, carries the alt.sex.* newsgroups, which contains adult material,
it breaks the law. According to George Melloan from the Wall Street Journal, a
censorship bill was passed by the Senate 84-16 in July, and an anticensorship
bill was passed by the House 420-4 in August. There are now four different sets
of censorship and anticensorship language in the House and Senate versions of
the Telecomm reform bill, which contradict each other and will have to be
reconciled (Melloan, n.p.).

In order to understand the need for the ever-growing body of legislation, it is
important to explore the controversy, and the current problems involved with
the Net as it exists must be introduced.

The problem that concerns most people is offensive material such as
pornography. As pointed out by Allison and Baxter, "Possible (offensive) topics
are behavior (drugs, ... ), nudity, political/economic/social opinion,
violence, racial/ethnic, religious, coarse language, sexual/gender orientation,
[and] sexuality" (Allison and Baxter 3). Since the Internet is open to
everyone, children are very easily exposed to such material. According to
Allison and Baxter, "the information provided on the Internet, particularly
through the WWW, ranges across train time-tables, university lecture notes,
books, art exhibits, film promotions, the wisdom and ravings of individuals
and, yes, pornographic pictures" (Allison and Baxter 3). Moreover, many high
schools in the United States provide Internet access to students, which is very
useful for looking up information, but if a student intends to look for
inappropriate material, he/she is very likely to find such material

simply by doing an Internet search.

Another crucial Internet crime is the theft of credit card numbers. Companies
do business on the Net, and credit card numbers are stored on their servers;
everyone with the necessary computer knowledge could hack in and obtain such
databases for illegal purposes. To cite an instance, the most infamous computer
terrorist, Kevin Mitnick, "waived extradition and is now in jail in California,
charged with computer fraud and illegal use of a telephone access device. The
list of allegations against him include theft of many files and documents,
including twenty-thousand credit card numbers from Netcom On-Line Services,
which provides thousands with access to the Internet" (Warren 52). Americans
have to come up with a solution in order to keep children away from
inappropriate material and to prevent misuses of the Net.

One reaction to this inapplicability has been the "Censor the Net" approach
(the censorship bill), which is being debated worldwide. First, the meaning of
"Censoring the Net" must be explained.

Simply, it is the banning of offensive material. To see if the government
should censor the Net, it is imperative to list the advantages and
disadvantages of the "censor the Net" approach. The advantage of government
censorship is that ideally, children and teenagers could be kept away from
unsuitable material.

However, many experts have pointed out that government censorship is not
possible. Howard Rheingold, the editor of the Whole World Review, observes
that, "the ‘censor the Net’ approach is not just morally misguided. It’s
becoming technically and politically impossible" (Rheingold n.p.).

First, it is not fair to exclude the freedom and damage the atmosphere of
freely expressing ideas just for the safety of children. Corn-Revere, an expert
on Internet censorship at the Howgan &

Harson Law Firm, points out that "the purpose of indecency regulation is to
keep adult material from falling into the hands of kids. When he first
introduced a similar bill last year, Senator Exon said he was concerned that
the Information Superhighway was in danger of becoming an electronic ‘red light
district’ and that he wanted to bar his granddaughter’s access to unsuitable
information"

(Corn-Revere 24). It is clear that Senator Exon introduced the bill to prevent
minors from viewing unsuitable material on the Net. In addition, Meleedy, a
computer science graduate student at Harvard University, questions that if "the
Internet makes democracy this accessible to the average citizen, is it any
wonder Congress wants to censor it?" (Meleedy 1) Allison and Baxter assert
that, "the most significant new properties of the Internet media are the
diversity of information sources and their ability to reach almost anywhere in
the world. Authors range from major corporations such as IBM and Disney to
school children" (Allison and Baxter 3). As predicted by Corn-Revere, "At the
very least, the law will force content providers to make access more difficult,
which will affect all users, not just the young" (Corn-Revere 70). Censoring
the Net is technically and politically impossible; it will damage the
atmosphere of freedom and free idea expression on the Net; therefore,
government should not encourage censorship.

Most Internet users are enjoying their freedom of speech on the Net, which is
supposed to be protected by the First Amendment of the United States. According
to Corn-Reverse, "it has been suggested that, ‘on-line systems give people far
more genuinely free speech and free press than ever before in human history’"
(Corn-Reverse 71). Rheingold predicts that "Heavy-handed attempts to impose
restrictions on the unruly but incredibly creative anarchy of the Net could
kill the spirit of cooperative knowledge-sharing that makes the Net valuable to
millions" (Rheingold n.p.). The freedom of idea expression is what makes the
Internet important and enjoyable, and it should not be waived for any reason.

Additionally, only a very small portion of the Net contains offensive material,
most people do not use the Net for pornography. Caragata from Maclean’s
magazine observes that, "it is pornography that stirs the most controversy. But
while there is no doubt that pornography is popular, it amounts to a trickle
compared with everything else available on the Net" (Caragata 51). The Net is
mostly being used for communication and information exchange, and only a tiny
portion of the Net contains pornography and other offensive material.

It must be understood that censoring the Net is technically impossible.
According to Allison and Baxter, "in principle, it is impossible to monitor all
material being transmitted on the Internet.

Considering the difficulties with international boundaries, a licensing system
faces many obvious practical hurdles" (Allison and Baxter 6). As described by
Allison and Baxter, "Any good

Computer Science graduate can create a completely secure encryption system for
concealment purposes. The material can even be disguised, for example hidden
‘inside’ a perfectly innocuous picture" (Allison and Baxter 6). Therefore, if a
person wants to publish offensive material, he/she can design a formula to
change the material with respect to a key, and secretly tell other users what
the key is. In this way, they can retrieve the same material and pass through
the government censorship.

While people are concerned about Internet pornography, it should be recognized
that pornography is sometimes legal; for example, pornography is legal in video
and magazines. Therefore, it is inconsistent to ban the Internet equivalents.
According to Rheingold, "Citizens should have the right to restrict the
information-flow into their homes. They should be able to exclude from their
home any subject matter that they do not want their children to see. But sooner
or later, their children will be exposed to everything from which they have
shielded them , and then they will have left to deal with these shocking sights
and sound in the moral fiber they helped them cultivate" (Rheingold n.p.). The
Internet is definitely not the only medium for teenagers to find inappropriate
material. Even if the Net does not have any, teenagers could also be exposed
to indecorous material in many other places. For example, Allison and Baxter
say that, "most authors using electronic media do not produce material that is
any ‘worse’ than that available from news agents, video shops, or mail-order
sources" (Allison and Baxter 8). On that account, if the purpose of censoring
is to prevent minors from being exposed to indecorous material, not only the
Net has to be censored. Censoring the Net will only eliminate one single
medium for minors to find irrelevant material. Government censorship is not
the solution to the problem, and alternatives measures that have same effects
as censorship can be practiced.

There are many alternative measures to government censorship which would
prevent misuse of the Net and would have the same effects as censorship.
According to Hentoff, "there are ways to protect children without the Act’s
intervention: blockage of certain areas, passwords, parental supervision. And
adults—under protection of the First Amendment—can remain protected from
government thought control. However, if the censorship bill is passed, the
First Amendment may effectively be excluded from cyberspace" (Hentoff 1).

It is very important for parents to provide moral guidance for their children,
and parents should have this responsibility. Moral guidance is the foremost
long-term solution to the problem. Rheingold believes that, "this
technological shock (pornography on the Net) to Americans’ moral codes means
that in the future, Americans are going to have to teach their children well.
The only protection that has a chance of working is to give their sons and
daughters moral grounding and some common sense" (Rheingold n.p.). In America,
minors can be exposed to sexual material in many media. Providing children with
moral guidance is the foremost solution to the problem.

However, at the same time that parents carry out moral guidance, Americans have
to come out

with some short term approaches to solve the problem in a more efficient way as
well. An

alternative to government censorship is the technological fix, which would
prevent misuse of the

Net and would have the same effects as government censorship. This involves the
design of

intelligent software to filter information. There is a rush to develop
information filtering software and

get it to market. One example of technological fix is the "SurfWatch" software,
as described by

Allison and Baxter, "SurfWatch is a breakthrough software product which helps
parents deal with

the flood of sexual material on the Internet. By allowing parents to be
responsible for blocking

what is being received at any individual computer, children and others have
less chance of

accidentally or deliberately being exposed to unwanted material. SurfWatch is
the first major

advance in providing a technical solution to a difficult issue created by the
explosion of technology.

SurfWatch strives to preserve Internet freedom by letting individuals choose
what they see" (Allison, Baxter 6). The SurfWatch vendor intends to provide
monthly updates to cope with the fast changing Internet. Also, commercial
Internet service providers, such as "America Online", allow parents to control
what Internet relay chat (IRC) sessions are available to their children (Cidley
59). Parental Control is a feature in many commercial Internet service
providers, users can turn on the Parental Control function, and they will
automatically be kept away from offensive words in IRC. In this way, children
can be kept away from offensive material and adults can continue to enjoy their
Internet freedom.

Another technological fix is for parents and guardians to have a separate
"proxy server" for their children’s web browser. A "proxy server" is a program
that disallows uses of some specified Internet sites or Usenet newsgroups. The
parents need to actively select sites their proxy server can access. Parental
control tools is a very possible solution to the problem, as stated in the
"Communications Decency Act Issues Page" by the Center for Democracy and
Technology, "what will help parents control their children’s access to the
Internet is Parental Control tools and features, such as those provided by
several major online services and available as over-the-counter software"
("Stop the Communications ..." n.p.). Tools for controlling Internet access by
children are widely available, and parents can already control their children’s
access to the material on the Net.

There are no computer programs to automatically and reliably classify material;
only people can do

it. As a result, while practicing technological fixes, the classification of
the contents of the material

when posting is very important. Nowadays, most Internet users classify their
postings with

standard categories, and leave signatures at the end of postings. According to
Allison and Baxter,

"items are signed with a secure digital signature that can be traced to a real
person, company or

organization" (Allison, Baxter 4). The strengths of the material are often
classified as "strong" or

"weak", and attitudes of a given document towards a topic are often classified
as "advocates",

"discusses", "deplores", or "does not discuss". Additionally, in order to
reduce the effort of

classifying many individual items, particularly in the case of FTP and WWW,
classifications are

often attached to directories and inherited by subdirectories and documents. In
this way, readers

can make informed decisions regarding access of Internet material, and the
programming of

intelligent software will be much easier: just by recognizing a small number of
terms of classification. As a matter of fact, the classification of material
has already been done on the Net for a period of time. Most Internet materials
are well classified, and people will have an idea of what they are going to see
beforehand. For instance, the articles in a particular Usenet newsgroup

can be accurately predicted by the name of the group. For example,

soc.culture.hongkong.entertainment contains discussion of the entertainment
industry of Hong

Kong; alt.binaries.sex.pictures contains encoded binary files of dirty
pictures. Internet users know what they are approaching beforehand, and minors
know that they are not supposed to browse those alt.sex.* newsgroups.

The combination of the installation of censoring software and the
classification of material is a much better solution than government
censorship. Hentoff mentions that "flexibility of interactive media...enables
parents to control what content their kids have access to, and leaves the flow
of information free for those adults who want it" (Hentoff 1). This prevents
unwanted material from reaching children and allows adults to continue enjoying
their Internet freedom.

The problem of the Net is that it is easy for minors to obtain inappropriate
materials. The American government came up with a proposal to censor the Net,
but as proved earlier, the "Censor the Net" approach is both technically and
politically impossible. The foremost solution to the problem is for parents to
provide moral guidance for their children. At the same time they are providing
moral guidance for their children, Americans also need short term technical
solution. Intelligent censoring software and proxy servers can let parents
disallow their children access to certain sites.

In this way, parents can keep their children from the offensive materials on
the Net. "Like other dilemmas and unanswered questions of the digital age,
traditional approaches (government censorship) simply won’t work. Americans are
going to have to accept less intrusive, probably

more exotic solutions, such as providing intelligent software filters to those
who want a version of Internet Lite [sic]" (Baker 65).

For intelligent software and proxy servers to operate successfully, it is
necessary to classify the information available on the Net, and the
classification of materials has already been done by Internet users for years.
Parents can then censor the Net for their children, and adults can continue to
enjoy their Internet freedom. This will provide the same effect as government
censorship, but will not damage the atmosphere of free idea expression and
freedom on the Net.

Moreover, indecorous materials are not only on the Net, minors can obtain such
materials without accessing the Internet at all. Internet censorship is not the
solution to keeping minors away from sexual material. The real and foremost
solution to preventing minors from viewing sexual material is for parents to
take a stronger role in their children’s viewing. "This technological shock
(pornography on the Net) to Americans’ moral codes means that in the future,
Americans are going to have to teach their children well. The only protection
that has a chance of working is to give their sons and daughters moral
grounding and some common sense" (Rheingold n.p.).

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Howgan & Hartson Law Firm, 1995.

Hentoff, Frances. "Indecent Proposal." Entertainment Weekly 31 March, 1995.

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Melloan, George. "Science Miracles Sprout From Creative Freedom." The Wall
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