| INTRODUCTION | REFERENCE | PERIODICAL ARTICLES | NON-PRINT |
| TOPIC ANALYSIS | BOOKS | INTERNET SOURCES | REVIEW |
"The best way to publicize a governmental or political action is to attempt
to hide it. -Mark B. Cohen "
from Simpson's Contemporary
Quotations. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company. 1988.
The focus of my research project concerns Internet Law and freedom of speech and censorship. It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The Constitution’s framers believed that freedom of inquiry and liberty of expression was the hallmarks of a democratic society. However, calls for censorship threaten to erode free speech.
The freedom of speech that was possible on the Internet could now be subjected to governmental approvals. The government of some countries are attempting to restrict political expression, in the name of security and social stability. It requires users of the Internet and electronic mail (email) to register, so that it may monitor their activities. And in many countries state secrets and personal attacks are off limits on the Internet. Laws are strict and the government is extremely interested in regulating the Internet with respect to these issues. Laws intended for other types of communication will not necessarily apply in this medium. Through all the components of the Internet it becomes easy to transfer material that particular governments might find objectionable. However, all of these means of communicating on the Internet make up a large and vast system. For inspectors to monitor every email, every article in every Newsgroup, every Webpage, every IRC channel, every Gopher site and every FTP site would be near impossible. Besides taking an extraordinary amount of money and time, attempts to censor the Internet violate freedom of speech rights that are included in democratic constitutions and international laws. It would be a breach of the First Amendment.
Therefore it would be unconstitutional for any sort of censorship to occur on the Internet and affiliated services. Despite the illegality, restrictions on Internet access and content are increasing worldwide under all forms of government. To enforce censorship of the Internet, free societies find that they become more repressive and closed societies find new ways to crush political expression and opposition. Many other organizations have fought against laws and have succeeded. The Internet cannot be regulated in the way of other mediums simply because it is not the same as anything else that we have. It is a totally new and unique form of communication and deserves to be given a chance to prove itself. Laws of one country can not hold jurisdiction in another country and holds true on the Internet because it has no borders. The Internet is much too complex a network for censorship to effectively occur. It is a totally new and unique environment in which communications transpire. Existing laws are not applicable to this medium. The lack of tangible boundaries causes confusion as to where violations of law take place. The Internet is made up of nameless interaction and anonymous communication. The intricacy of the Internet makes it near impossible to delete data that has been publicized. No one country should be allowed to, or could, regulate or censor the Internet.
They are devoted to preserving freedom of expression, to uphold the rights to digital free expression from political, legal and technical threats.
American Civial Liberties Union Washington
http://www.aclu-wa.org/index.html
The American Civil Liberties Union is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization devoted to protecting the basic civil liberties of all Americans, and extending them to groups that have traditionally been denied their basic civil rights.
Oxman, Jason. "The FCC and the Unregulation of the Internet." Counsel for Advanced
Communications Office of Plans and Policy July 1999: OPP Working Paper No. 31.
02 June 2000. <http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OPP/working_papers/oppwp31.txt.>
"Censorship." Encyclopedia of Social Issues. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1997.
Censorship, supervision and control of the information and ideas circulated within a society. In modern times, censorship refers to the examination of media including books, periodicals, plays, motion pictures, and television and radio programs for the purpose of altering or suppressing parts thought to be offensive. The offensive material may be considered immoral or obscene, heretical or blasphemous, seditious or treasonable, or injurious to the national security.
"Freedom of Speech." Encyclopedia of Social Issues. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1997.
The First Amendment is the cornerstone of our free and open democracy. However fear and ignorance assail the exercise of free speech in every new medium. The First Amendment exists precisely to protect the most offensive and controversial speech from government suppression. The best way to counter obnoxious speech is with more speech. Persuasion, not coercion, is the solution.
Morris, Dick. Vote.com/Dick Morris. Los Angeles: Renaissance, 1999.
Dick Morris is the President of Vote.com. He was President Clinton's chief strategist and advisor in the 1996 campaign. He has handled the campaigns of a large number of American politicians including Trent Lott, William Weld, Pete Wilson and more. He's now a commentator on the Fox News Channel and writes a weekly column in the New York Post. He has written three recent books: Behind the Oval Office, The New Prince, and Vote.com. The author of this book focuses on how big money lobbyists and the media are losing their influence, and the Internet is giving power back to the people. Its a book Morris wrote about how the Internet is taking over politics. It says that the Internet is taking the place of television in politics, that money will matter less and less because the Internet is free, and that special interests are losing their grip over Congress.
Hawke, Constance S. Computer and internet use on campus : a legal guide to issues of
intellectual property, free speech, and privacy. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, 2000.
Constance Hawke is an attorney and doctoral candidate, teaching education law in the educational administration program at Kent State University. The book covers intellectual property, free speech in cyberspace, privacy issues in electronic communications, fairness and dispute resolution.
Schrader, Alvin. "Internet censorship: Issues for teacher-librarians." Teacher-Librarian.
Iss. 5; May/June 1999: 8.
Alvin Schrader is the director, SLIS and past President of the University of Alberta Library. Schrader describes and critiques emerging issues regarding Internet access in schools and school libraries, considering products for filtering and rating Internet content. Despite quality assurances from many of these products, Internet filtering and rating technologies are theoretically unworkable.
Tremblay, Tony. "Internet censorship as "cybriety": Freud, McLuhan, and media pleasures."
Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature;
Iss. 1; March 1999: 167.
Dr. Tony Tremblay teaches at St. Thomas University. He is a specialist in media and communications, and has delivered communications training for the federal and provincial government over the past eight years. This article applies the lessons of literary and cultural history to reveal how early media were manifest and received as "pleasured" texts, and combines the theories of McLuhan, Bakhtin, and Mulvey to make sense of the Internet, the new media complex which daily appears more incomprehensible and beyond our control.
Lukianoff, Greg. "The Child Online Protection Act." Stanford Technology Law Review.
06 November 1998. 30 May 2000
<http://stlr.stanford.edu/STLR/Events/internet_speech/index.htm.>.
[vol., issue and pages not available].
Greg Lukianoff, Stanford Law School, Class of 2000 wrote "The Child Online Protection Act" article. Its detractors call it the Communications Decency Act II, Congress calls it the Child Online Protection Act, but whatever you call it H.R. 3783 promises to be at the center of a great deal of controversy. Once it passed into law on October 21, a wide coalition of on-line organizations led by the ACLU filed suit to oppose it. Why is this measure, designed to combat children's exposure to pornography on the Internet, so controversial? Is COPA a constitutionally viable law? Why hasn't Congress addressed the issue of pornography on the internet? This article covers these questions and gives a brief history of the first Internet Supreme Court Case, Reno v. ACLU and the original Communications Decency Act.
"Internet Censorship." Vicnet. 22 February 2000. 30 May 2000
<http://www.vicnet.net.au/issues/censorship.htm#top.>.
Vicnet is Victoria Canada's community network and began in 1994 (officially launched May 1995 by Premier Jeff Kennett) and has grown to become a well regarded member of the Internet industry. They are a business owned by the State Library of Victoria, and function as a unit of the State Library. Vicnet has worked hard to ensure that the public library network in Victoria is able to provide Internet access to the public. Vicnet offers a wide range of information related to Internet Censorship offering many hyperlinks "Empowering all Victorians in the information age with the capabilities to freely publish, share and find online information and to participate in virtual communities both locally and globally." Fifty years after the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its guarantee of free expression for all, the world's newest form of mass communication is under attack around the globe from laws, policies and police actions seeking to restrict content.
"Preserving Free Expression: Our Fundamental Rights of Freedom of Speech & Press."
Electronic Frontier Foundation. 30 May 2000 <http://www.eff.org/freespeech.html.>
Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF is a non-profit, non-partisan organization working in the public interest to protect fundamental civil liberties, including privacy and freedom of expression in the arena of computers and the Internet. EFF was founded in 1990, and is based in San Francisco, California, with a satellite office in Washington, DC. This site aims to help civilize the electronic frontier; to make it truly useful and beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do this in a way which is in keeping with our society's highest traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication. The new networked society has created a platform, which will allow every person to speak their mind and query the world to create their own point of view. Never before have we had the ability to have the breadth and scope of opinion and voice -- it's a gift of innovation to be cherished and protected. This site offers hyperlinks to various related sites and is an organization committed to preserving our freedom of speech.
Attorney General of the Untied States, et al. v. American Civil Liberties Union et al. No. 96-511.
Sup. Ct. 1997. 30 May 2000
<http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=96-511.>
Janet Reno is the first woman Attorney General of the United States of America. Nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993. She was again appointed in 1997 by President Clinton and remains Attorney General of the United States. The constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 as a zoning law hinges on the extent to which it substantially interferes with the First Amendment rights of adults. Because the rights of adults are infringed only by the display provision and by the indecency transmission and specific person provisions as applied to communications involving more than one adult, Reno would invalidate the CDA only to that extent. Insofar as the indecency transmission and specific person provisions prohibit the use of indecent speech in communications between an adult and one or more minors, however, they can and should be sustained.
There are many key terms I can use that work and many that do not. Among those which work are: Free Speech, Censorship, Internet, Internet Underground, The First Amendment, Silencing the Net, Bill of Rights, Freedom of Expression Online.
The nature of my topic relies heavily on a variety of sources, anywhere from the Encarta Encyclopedia CD-ROM to an academic library centering on the social sciences to articles written by various well-known people. This information will need to be recent information.
The WWW offers so many resource articles that it is an almost endless list. However, these aren't always reliable, so it is necessary to check on the reliability of sources.
The Internet is not a superhighway or even a highway; it is a network of networks. These form an information infrastructure based on optical fiber, cable, satellite and wireless. The importance of the Internet lies in the possibilities offered by it's infrastructure. All of the present communication media have the potential to be made available, inexpensively, on a global basis. This topic gives details of the Internet and what censorship is and how it can affect users. It provides readers with outside sources of reference and extended information.
Please send comments to Sondra Caruthers-Nunes