Is Internet Censorship Necessary or Must Be Avoided?

Introduction

In today’s world, it has become impossible to imagine our world without the internet. Even the simple activity such as communication and entertainment relies on the internet heavily. Internet has gone beyond the context of connecting just computers and users. The internet provides a diverse range of data and information to different sections of the society. Different types of organisations find the information quite reliable. In addition to these, the business sector also gets benefit out the internet. It offers the reliable platform for carrying out the marketing. They use the digital marketing platforms for promoting their products and services. The extent of this censorship varies across the globe. In most of the democratic countries, the implication of internet censorship is moderate while in many other countries it gets limited to access of information.

Discussion

Concerns in politics

The most prominent cause for internet censorship is the suppression of the use of internet, which has now become an active political tool that is chiefly used to spread messages on social, religious contexts. This lies in contrast to the different policies of the state. For instance, there can be restrictions in having an online presence for the minority communities or exile group of people and many other sites, which may try to throw the ruling party.

Moral and communal issue

The internet censorship also interrupts in the sensitive topics such as moral and values that lies within the society. This has created a positive impact by prohibiting the pornography regarding the child protection and significant reduction in the sexual criminality in the society.

Issues related to the security

Due to several ongoing conflicts across the globe, the organisation and businesspersons are taking precautions for avoiding and protecting themselves from cyber threats or phishing. In this sense, it has led to a positive result in protecting against the hate speech used by extremists, which has reduced their negative influence and propaganda.

Arguments in support of internet censorship

For instance, if the child is browsing the internet, it is quite probable that people might find something violent or abusive, which can harm the mental state of the child. Thanks to internet censorship, this has prevented the offensive materials reaching the intended targets. The rate of drug and alcohol abuse has increased drastically in the past few years. Without the censorship of the internet, this rate will continue to rise. The censorship limits the access to the dark areas of the internet by putting a resistance to the contents and limits the opportunities, which people can create to keep out of reach of the new victims.

There are many cases where the accounts of people are blocked and removed from the social media platforms. The conformist or the bigoted people have illustrated a stringent mindset that is evident in terms of politics outbursts the hate speeches. However, in reality, people supporting censorship do not care about the freedom they only want to see opinions not to be removed for some dishonest reasons. As far as the security issues are concerned, censorship on the internet puts restrictions and penalties if violated. This could eventually reduce the number of hacking activities occurring. Thus, a positive influence on the national security and prevent probable alleged actions such as the incident that occurred during the election of the US president in 2016.

The internet censorship helps to avoid and block violent, dangerous and abusive contents. This in turn protects the child and other sections of the society from viewing contents, which can be harmful to them such as murder, or depressing videos, which have been popping up in the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and so on.

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Refutation

Lack of proper observer

Internet censorship if maintained ethically and supervised directly, there are certain people who are responsible for deciding what is acceptable in society and what is not right to watch online. At some point, there would be lack of proper authority who would report to some other appropriate authorities regarding the censorship decisions. Thus with such power in hand, the individual can influence the society in the way he wants to without knowing the post consequences.

Stops information and costly process

Through the internet censorship, fake as well as real and reliable information can be restricted. There have been cases where about 27% of the internet users hav4e been arrested for sharing contents, videos or putting a simple like on Facebook. There are about 38 countries who have arrested people based on the posts shared on social media. The application of censorship over the internet has shut down billions in majority of the organisations. Cutting down censorship of internet is too costly process and the taxpayers of the respective countries will abide this cost.

Limitation in the entrepreneurial opportunities

The innovative ideas of the entrepreneurs are bound to go through an approval of the boards or individuals instead of implementing their ideas solely on their own. Thus, it is quite probable that businesses operating in the same industry and has enough wealth can restrict the entrepreneurs from accomplishing the opportunity. Thus, it would lead to a restriction in the innovations in various business sectors.

Arguments to support internet censorship is not necessary

For instance, if considered that the government is dictating on the restriction of the contents, which are to be viewed by the individuals, then it can be concluded that the people of the society are not responsible for taking decisions. The entire process of taking and making of decisions is ceded over to the government. Also ceding such control makes it easier for the government to go on with more control over the responsibility. Thus, the entire process involves shifting of the responsibilities to the places where it would have lied. In addition to these, a free usage of internet enables individual to share their views, thoughts over it. There are laws that exist which would provide proper protection of laws for people who share such abusive contents. Applying additional restrictions would foster a higher level of bureaucracy.

The blockage of the business websites due to lack of meeting up with the standard of goodness is critical illustration of lack of systematic use of power and authorities. Thus giving the power to the government for deciding the goodness and badness of the entity can have a fatal consequence on the economy of the business. The lack of promotion of online selling and purchasing of goods can place business in a disadvantageous state in comparison to the competitors in the market. Thus there will be people who will take advantage of the powers they possess. Thus authorities knows that they can engage such illegal actions without the fear that such evidence could get posted online.

Internet censorship is an evil to the society and should be avoided in the rates wherever needed. Child pornography is an extreme case and for this, there is already appropriate legislation for individuals who attempted such spreading of illegal contents. There are certain forms of speech, which are quite harmful and offensive to the society. However, these can be dealt by being exposed to such disruption and combating them. The censorship will have a negative impact on the communication, study of the citizens. Internet filtering can help in reducing such effects to a certain extent.

Conclusion

The internet has been the most cherishing inventions in human history. Many people use it for destructive purposes that have affected many individuals in this process. The control power lies on both sides regarding which content can be accessed. Many countries are banning abusive and violent content on the internet. The advantages and benefits provided by the internet is limitless but there are many countries who are working on the internet censorship that is to limit the access contents that are published, viewed or enacted over it. It is seen that there are certain tools, which are used by the government to restrict the use of internet access while the people who support it are trying to overcome the different barriers caused by it. The internet censorship must be regulated in a balanced way, as absolute censorship would not be a solution. Thus, internet censorship is required but the type of implementation should be done by proper methods, which would be beneficial for the people.

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