| The introduction of the World Wide Web in 1990 has catalyzed the expansion of the Internet, which is still growing today at an unprecedented rate. The recent growth of the Internet has resulted not only in an increase in the amount of available knowledge, but also in an increase in the problems inherent to its usage and distribution. It has become clear that traditional rules of conduct are not always applicable to this new medium, so new ethical codes are now being developed. Ethics, in the classical sense, refers to the rules and standards governing the conduct of an individual with others. As technology and computers become more and more a part of our everyday lives, we must understand that the problems that have always plagued business and conduct will continue to be a problem. In fact, a new medium can provide even more difficult questions of judgment. In other words, since the introduction of the World Wide Web, the definition of ethics has evolved, too. A new type of ethics known as computer ethics has emerged. Computer ethics is concerned with standards of conduct as they pertain to computers.
Perhaps the most evident of the various ethical issues investigated and debated today is the one concerning censorship of the Internet. While this one issue is debated to no end, it is also very delicate and must be advocated by many different perspectives in order to achieve a fair and accurate ruling as to whether or not Internet censorship is both legally and morally just.
With any new media, be it the printing press, the television, or the computer, comes a new way of presenting information to the public. The Internet has brought information to those who never could have accessed it before (or would not have thought to access it). Because of the Internet, medical information is more widely available, people all over the world can communicate in a matter of minutes, and families can research their heritage from the comfort of home. Information is a powerful tool, indeed.
Despite valiant efforts, America Online (AOL), a popular Internet service provider, has been plagued by its efforts to censor its services for its family oriented clientele. The company has drawn business by offering options to help parents censor what their kids see online for almost four years now. "This feature has been very successful, helping AOL stock soar and overcoming severe access problems in the mid-nineties. Still, in an effort to monitor services more closely, AOL prevented users from speaking Spanish in a forum - a bulletin board like area where subscribers may publicly post messages or reply to others. AOL accepts responsibility for everything that appears in its forums and monitors them via volunteer support staff (often, volunteers are rewarded by free hours)." Since AOL had few volunteers who could speak Spanish and monitor the boards, they simply deleted any message containing Spanish. When subscribers posted messages, in English, to rally support against AOL in a civil liberties suit, these notes were also erased. AOL reversed this decision about a week later and Spanish is now allowed in forums.
Similarly, when AOL attempted to crack down on obscene chat rooms and bulletin boards, they simply deleted all groups containing certain words. Of these words was the term "breast". Unfortunately, while this may have filtered out groups that discussed the more obscene parts of the female and male anatomy, it also deleted a long-standing group of breast cancer survivors, many of whom used the list to cope and for medical information.
So, outside of America Online, what has been done to monitor the Internet? Attempts have been made to censor the Internet. In 1995, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), attempting to impose penalties on those that published obscene pages on the Internet where they are available to the general public. This act included many provisions, some of which covered telecommunications company buy-outs and anti-trust laws. Only five senators opposed the CDA. One of them, Senator Patrick Leahy of VT (D), objected that "...we have not upheld our adherence to the First Amendment with the proposed restrictions on the Internet."
The two greatest flaws in the Communications Decency Act that will make any and all legislation designed to censor the Internet impractical and impossible, are as follows: First of all, the World Wide Web is just that - World Wide. While the US, or China, or Belize may pass as many laws as they like restricting information available on the internet, they cannot enforce them on a global level. Still, right now, most countries hold that you must follow the obscenity laws of the country within which you reside - or, as Lorrie Faith Cranor of the Association for Computing Machinery put it, "Citizens of cyberspace who find their physical feet resting firmly on American soil are not immune to the long arm of U.S. law." Secondly, the Internet is a vast, decentralized collaboration of many personal and corporate web pages. These pages are almost always changing. The decentralized nature of the Internet makes it very difficult to censor because it is difficult to shift through in any organized way. The state of flux that the web is in makes it impractical to censor because there will always be a new web page. Old web pages change, as well. A pornography site recently purchased a small feminist web magazine’s domain. That would certainly have been unblocked before - is it now?
The Center for Democracy and Technology believes "that individual choice and individual control of access to information are the key to protecting the First Amendment online." The CDT says that the most effective weapon available to censor the Internet is not legislation, but programs like "NetNanny". These programs allow parents to restrict their children's Internet access by blocking certain web pages deemed inappropriate and monitor where a child has been. Being on a list of unacceptable sites, not being on a list of acceptable sites, or containing words that have been deemed obscene, may block these pages.
Currently, legal battles are being fought over many aspects of the Internet and how closely it should be monitored. One debate right now centers on public and school libraries. Many libraries now have monitoring programs, such as NetNanny, installed on their individual computers and networks. Some people believe that this a necessary protection - just as books like Playboy Collections are banned from libraries, so should some web pages. Others, however, feel that just as books such as Huckleberry Finn and Catcher In the Rye have been banned from libraries, some web pages may unjustly be too. Congress is even considering a law (Children’s Internet Protection Act) concerning the use of these filtering programs.
Computers present us not only with vast new potential in technology, but also in ethics. Morality must catch-up to technology that has "leap-frogged" ahead. Without a knowledge of computer ethics, you will not be fully equipped to enter the new world of online society - and you will need to enter that world, whether you choose a career in art, programming, business, or anything else. The issue of censorship and the Internet will definitely be an issue that can be both debated and advocated to no conceivable end. The present generation as well as the future generation must consider all perspectives when constructing a ruling on such issues. It is equally important to consider and uphold our constitutional rights on which this country was born in respect for the founding fathers of this country and their ideas that they painstakingly fought for. I thoroughly believe that censorship of the Internet is not legally just, it clearly violates the 1st amendment of the United States Constitution—the very foundation of this country. If we destroy or ignore such basic rights, other rights will follow and the average citizens of the United States will soon find themselves with little to no fundamental rights left! Preservation of such essential rights is an obligation!
Bibliography
PRO-CDA
http://www.enough.org
http://pageturners.com/cda
ANTI-CDA
http://www.cdt.org
http://hotwired.lycos.com/special/lawsuit/index.html
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