when is it free and when is it obscene?
Censorship of information on the Internet has become a much publicized debate. There is a great controversy as to whether or not censorship is a necessity in order to maintain a particular moral standard. This question brings us back to the early weeks of class when we were discussing ethics. We never found a straight answer of “what is ethical and what is not?” I think many people would agree that there is no one moral standard. For example if someone posts a blog with explicit images, that blog is without a doubt violating someone’s moral standard. However if you tried to censor that blog, you would no doubt be violating another person’s moral standard. There has to be a middle ground, a compromise between censorship and free speech. This compromise however, would require some sort of regulation. Is this regulation even possible? Regulating the internet seems like an all or none situation. It does not seem possible to only regulate some things. The only way to keep all pornography off the internet would be to monitor all other websites, which would be an invasion of privacy for the innocent users.
1 comment:
I agree when she said that we did not have any truly, good answer for what are the moral standard. Before the internet was introduced in the world, things are easier. Most of the cases regarding the ethics are clear of what is right and what is wrong. The distinction between these two is somewhat clear. Apparently, with the internet in the world today, many ambiguous situations had occurred when regarding to values stated in the Constitution. We cannot let everyone be free to do anything they want without any limit because people can be bad. On the other hand, we cannot invade other people privacy in cyberspace in order to control people to do something bad. So, what is the solution? Yes, I agree that there should be some regulation; with balance of free and control. But, this would not guarantee that the invasion of privacy and the threat to free speech will not occur. The reality is, the world we live today is not perfect and because of that, we have to try our best to improve ways of handling this.
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