Should governments censor material on the internet? [ENDS 27/06/2010]

Should governments censor material on the internet?

Ends: 27/06/2010

The internet is THE tool of the 21st century. We cannot live without the internet, whether it is for leisure of work. Through the internet we can easily distribute large quantities of information for quite a minimal price. It is continuing to involve, providing us useful information and connecting with people from right across the world. Most countries do not censor any information, making it a true symbol of 'freedom'. Some argue that any form of censorship will remove this freedom, as turn into some sort of state controlled Socialistic regime. Also, nowadays ISP's are good at detecting such harmful content and getting it removed, thus some argue whether there is actually a need.

However, another argument is saying that governments need to step up and provide more control over content viewed within the internet. This is due to the fact that not all information that we find over the net is of use, in contrast, it is quite harmful. For example, we can find things such as child pornography or bomb making techniques. There is also a lot of truly offensive material floating around such as hardcore pornography and extreme racial hatred, which would have been simply unacceptable in other forms of the media such as books etc.

Now, onto the debate question of whether you think that government censorship of the internet would be a positive thing, in order to protect people from some of the harmful webpages out there.

obviously there should be censorship over child pornography and terrorism stuff, but sometimes it's not always serious and it's said in jest so it would be hard.

i think it was 2003 when the US surpreme court struck down the communications decency act which made pornography illegal cos they said it was against freedom of speech lol.

I think to an extent it should be yes.
Obviously they should be blocking child porn, terrorism groups, and I think 'shock sites' or whatever they're called. As there is alot of sick stuff on the internet, that people can't justify being there.
I don't think it would make sense for them to try and block all porn sites, as if I remember reading correctly, for every normal website there's like 10 porn sites lol.

I think they should, but not going crazy. Like cyber bullying, on facebook, bebo, myspace whatever you go on should be full of report buttons and instead of just reading the report and doing nothing, actually do something, like track the person down. Obviously only with proof that the person has done it. Child porn should be totally check up on and sites that are for adults, but what children easily get onto. Instead of just saying "if you're not ... then don't click on enter site". Kids are obviously going to enter the site, so they should sort that out somehow.

By going overboard, they shouldn't end up filtering every rude/bad rude you can think of. Just the obvious ones. I don't know, just not going too far? :S

No filters at all. Go after those that break the law.

I agree with child porn n bomb making, stuff that could actually cause a lot of damage, but stuff like extreme racial hatred (aslong as its just expressing their views, not plans :p) i dont. As much as i am against racism, i dont think it should be blocked. Its a freedom of speech and if they block that then they could just continue to block more and more as then the whole thing just becomes censored.

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Originally Posted by Hitman

No filters at all. Go after those that break the law.

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I agree.

The idea of somehow controlling the internet is just as delusional as the idea that governments can tackle drug usage and prostitution - the fact is they are uncontrollable and that money would be better spent elsewhere, such as tracking down the people who make these videos, harbour children and so forth. The videos are already made, thousands of people probably own them and for every site you close down, somebody can make another ten in a few hours. In short; no, governments should not censor the internet nor should they censor any opinion or view.

No, were in debt enough without having to spend more for people to start tackling it and eventually wasting time.

No; like alot of you have said - track down the people uploading videos like child pornography and other hideous things.

No, they shouldn't. Anything like porn or viruses is strictly down to the individual, if they do not like it then it is their problem, seeing as they can filter it themselves or take other precautions - targetting everyone is wrong :/ Child porn is already looked into anyway, seeing that's illegal :P

Not sure what to make on illegal downloading though - the supplier is wrong, but the one downloading may not neccesarily be evil, even though they have the choice :/

as other people have said, no, we shouldnt be censoring anything specifically on the web. obviously the internet is just a medium for spreading child porn and should be treated the same way as off the internet, we track down the people who made it instead of just blocking it and thinking the problem is gone.

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

Not sure what to make on illegal downloading though - the supplier is wrong, but the one downloading may not neccesarily be evil, even though they have the choice :/

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yeah this is a difficult issue. the problem is that our laws of capitalism aren't applicable to current times where a lot of our products are intellectual, nonphysical property which we assign arbitrary value. theres obviously illegal activities but its hard to point blame at anything other than the concept of the internet.

i see what a lot of people are saying where it's best to try track down the cretins who makes these disturbing videos and such, but don't you think there should at least be an effort to filter out such videos, otherwise they'll catch like wildfire? i'm not arguing or anything 'cos in principle i agree you attack the core, but surely one must attempt to tame the beast as well?

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Originally Posted by Cod

i see what a lot of people are saying where it's best to try track down the cretins who makes these disturbing videos and such, but don't you think there should at least be an effort to filter out such videos, otherwise they'll catch like wildfire? i'm not arguing or anything 'cos in principle i agree you attack the core, but surely one must attempt to tame the beast as well?

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The beast it the person/s making the video, the videos are probably copied thousands of times over and thus you can never eradicate them, as for spreading like wildfire, well if a pedophile wants to watch child porn - he will watch child porn. The rest of us I expect dont have that sort of thing within us, so its not likely for us to all of a sudden to become attracted to children being abused.

No.
I believe everyone in the world should be allowed to be thereselves.
What the governments SHOULD CENSOR, are pro-terrorism groups (groups that support terrorism), webpages that support Child Pornography, and torture of teenage human beings, and any other people.
All of the sites the government should censor, which are mentioned above, shouldn't be on the internet anyway, as children, such as me, a teenage boy at the age of 13, could be going onto these sites and become addicted to them, Child Pornography is disgusting, and anyone watching it should rot in prison just as much as the perverted males and females at that matter, who are sexually assulting those children.

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Originally Posted by -:Undertaker:-

The beast it the person/s making the video, the videos are probably copied thousands of times over and thus you can never eradicate them, as for spreading like wildfire, well if a pedophile wants to watch child porn - he will watch child porn. The rest of us I expect dont have that sort of thing within us, so its not likely for us to all of a sudden to become attracted to children being abused.

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it was a bloody metaphor! the person creating them created the beast, nevermind argh. it's like things such as /b/ on 4chan. a lot of people don't use that for child porn but are subjective to it, that's there the fight needs to start.

I dont think government should intervene with any internet goings on. from the recent digital economy act i remember a MP who voted for the act say something like an IP address is Intellectual Property address.

I strongly disagree that people should be sued by companies for illegal downloading. Companies should learn from illegal downloading and realise that the prices are too high for most people. mainly students who need money for food and stuff. they illegally download based on the fact its nearly £1 per song, £1 in student language is alot if you think about it, My old teacher said when he was in university he didnt have a job or any form of income because he was a full time student. he just scraped by each week.

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Originally Posted by RedStratocas

yeah this is a difficult issue. the problem is that our laws of capitalism aren't applicable to current times where a lot of our products are intellectual, nonphysical property which we assign arbitrary value. theres obviously illegal activities but its hard to point blame at anything other than the concept of the internet.

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The argument for many illegal downloaders is the price of these products. I suppose that may fit into your comment about our laws of capitalism aren't applicable to current times too, seeing as Photoshop is an impressive software suite, the price just isn't justifiable seeing as it isn't anything physical or touchable. Music is something like 79p a track, which to some is quite a when the only savings are made when you buy a whole album, and you can argue that it is unethical for a company to ask for you to buy a whole album to experience cheaper songs, when not everyone enjoys many tracks from the same artist, but just one or two songs. A film is something like £3.99 to download, yet that lasts for longer (when watched).

It's a tricky discussion as it verges on opinion, what matters is the opinion of the majority.

As far as I can tell, the people who perform these songs do not really mind, as they make more money out of concerts and shows than from music sales. The only ones moaning seem to be the music companies :/

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

The argument for many illegal downloaders is the price of these products. I suppose that may fit into your comment about our laws of capitalism aren't applicable to current times too, seeing as Photoshop is an impressive software suite, the price just isn't justifiable seeing as it isn't anything physical or touchable. Music is something like 79p a track, which to some is quite a when the only savings are made when you buy a whole album, and you can argue that it is unethical for a company to ask for you to buy a whole album to experience cheaper songs, when not everyone enjoys many tracks from the same artist, but just one or two songs. A film is something like £3.99 to download, yet that lasts for longer (when watched).

It's a tricky discussion as it verges on opinion, what matters is the opinion of the majority.

As far as I can tell, the people who perform these songs do not really mind, as they make more money out of concerts and shows than from music sales. The only ones moaning seem to be the music companies :/

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thats why those "anti-movie piracy" ads dont make sense; they say "you wouldnt steal a car, would you?!" but thats completely different. A car is physical property, and when you take it, it is no longer in someone elses possession. movies and music on the other hand, can be duplicated with no effort and passed to as many people as pleased with no cost to anyone. theres no guilt. except for the case of movies, unfortunately they do make the majority of their money at the theaters and that would severely undercut the industry if people downladed in the same quantities as they do music.

the music industry works opposite how it used to. bands used to make their money off albums, and record companies used to send the bands out on their dime to perform in order to support it. now, record companies get a percentage of their band's live show earnings, and bands barely make a nickle off their albums. which is why, like you said, bands (especially younger ones) dont care about album sales anymore.

that whole part about our laws of capitalism isnt supposed to make me seem like a communist, but progressing technology is giving us circumstances where our normal rules dont apply, and its only going to get worse with newspapers, television and books all going digital. we are going to have to figure out a way to make money and industry of products that only have intellectual value.

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Originally Posted by RedStratocas

thats why those "anti-movie piracy" ads dont make sense; they say "you wouldnt steal a car, would you?!" but thats completely different. A car is physical property, and when you take it, it is no longer in someone elses possession. movies and music on the other hand, can be duplicated with no effort and passed to as many people as pleased with no cost to anyone. theres no guilt. except for the case of movies, unfortunately they do make the majority of their money at the theaters and that would severely undercut the industry if people downladed in the same quantities as they do music.

the music industry works opposite how it used to. bands used to make their money off albums, and record companies used to send the bands out on their dime to perform in order to support it. now, record companies get a percentage of their band's live show earnings, and bands barely make a nickle off their albums. which is why, like you said, bands (especially younger ones) dont care about album sales anymore.

that whole part about our laws of capitalism isnt supposed to make me seem like a communist, but progressing technology is giving us circumstances where our normal rules dont apply, and its only going to get worse with newspapers, television and books all going digital. we are going to have to figure out a way to make money and industry of products that only have intellectual value.

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Indeed, it's quite shocking how easy it is to reproduce music. There is literally no effort and there never will be because it would be unfair of digital industries to tackle the problem by hijacking OS makers and getting them to cut off simple commands like copy and paste, which is all it takes to duplicate a file. It's why the old record players and vinyl discs used to be so useful, they couldn't be duplicated becase they were, in essense, physical property. Only you can have this one item and you cannot duplicate it as it would be impossible to. CDs and DVDs, were designed for convenience to make hard copies of our non-physical items like back-ups or converting video cassettes to DVD to preserve them for the future, it just has its dark side where you can copy over duplicated music or video files :P It's interesting how the future has changed in such a small amount of time, where the record/vinyl (whatever you want to call it) was the ultimate way to tackle piracy. The video cassette was part-way there, some videos could be copied but some couldn't, you had to buy a seperate item rather than use a PC like we do today :/

It's hard to point blame at someone. To a degree, the record companies are greedy, but then the individual is the baddie in all this when they start to download files. However, I know of a lot of people who will download a file without paying for it as a sort of tester, then they will either buy the album or take notice of the band, which isn't that bad as at least the band or artist has had some sort of coverage.

It also makes it difficult to distinguish a boundary - we all copy or music and some of us let friends have a copy if they cannot find it OR buy it. Finding music can be difficult. iTunes, though useful, has a lot of music which Amazon MP3, Tesco Digital, Play.com and so forth may not have, but some people want the choice to shop around. Take physical property, you can buy a car (keeping with the piracy adverts) from one official place, while you can also get them at other places keeping it competitive. You cannot really get that with music, possibly because there's quite a lot of it out there.

Good luck if they try.

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Originally Posted by Hitman

No filters at all. Go after those that break the law.

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I agree with this, although it would be fun sneaking behind the law to speak freely!

The government should have no role in interfering in what is intended to be a free platform unless the material puts people at risk. For example I don't think any of us believe that Child Pornography should be freely distributed or material that insights racial hatred. I do however believe that all but highly illegal material should not be filtered. The Internet has thrived as a community with no international boundaries, separate from the nation state, we should keep it that way otherwise it will be put at risk. I'd also like to note the difficulty in censoring the Internet, it's not as straightforward as people think and it can prove very costly. It is because by nature it is worldwide that it proves hard to censor, the primary way of dealing with it would be through a firewall (like the great firewall of China) however firewalls can be avoided by going through a proxy server. In China many people do just that and so have free access to the whole Internet. I therefore believe it is not only wrong to censor the Internet but logistically its virtually impossible anyway.

Is that not the job of some firewalls? Rather than censor material censor the website? My school has a very high firewall that blocks out innapropriate websites

Of course, censoring things would help with a lot of issues, I feel like the internet would feel too controlled and strict. I think the following should be censored;
Anything related to terrorism that can lead to an actual attack i.e 'terrorist communities'
Child Pornography
Illegal downloads (although I'm unsure about this because it would affect me too but then after all it is illegal)

But then again, it would be really hard to stop ALL activities like the ones above and people would still slip by. It would feel like such a breach of privacy too. A bit like how CCTV cameras can be used to protect you but there are so many, it feels like Big Brother on the high streets.

I think they should, although I don't see the point as they can still view inappropriate things in other ways and they couldn't possibly censor everything and some things could still be viewing one way or another.

No way. This will just waste money when we just managed to climb out of the recession.