Justifying Censorship

Many politicians tend to cite "in the interest of the children" as a reason to allow censorship to go on. However, in some cases this is not the real reason. Government tries to rationalize controls on people by blocking things "in the interest of the children." Many cases, blocks are placed in order to suppress resistance of the government so people don't question things. It's very sad how the children are used for justifying censorship. One of the most large-scale examples was Green Dam Youth Escort, which was a failed attempt by the People's Republic of China to mandate internet content-control for all children in the country (it had numerous failures and controversies).

Chinese Censorship of the Internet

In China, there are certain websites that are blocked because the government wants to keep control of the people and they do not want the people to incite a rebellion. These are the internet rules for china:

No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:

1. Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations;
2. Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
3. Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;
4. Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities;
5. Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;
6. Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder;
7. Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people;
8. Injuring the reputation of state organizations;
9. Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.

Positive Bannings

Certain things deserve to be banned because they have no positive value in society. For example, the game Postal 2 was banned in New Zeland and Australia. That game has no value to the world and is just offensive. There is extreme violence and gore, nudity and many other bad things. If you are interested, check out the wiki for Postal 2.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_2

Russia

Because of the Soviet Union, Russia still has a lot of censorship because of how strict the totalitarian communist government was. For instance, at least 50% of the news in Russia must be positive and the United States must be portrayed as an enemy.

If you wish to read more go to the link here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/world/europe/22iht-press.1.5388323.html

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union practiced censorship by getting rid of people who were executed as political enemies of Stalin by editing them out of photographs.

National Coalition Against Censorship

This organization is focused to trying to stop the spread of censorship and political correctness. It is made up of 50 not-for-profit organizations.  http://www.ncac.org/coalition

List of Banned Books

These books are all classics, yet at one point or another, they were banned in United States's schools.

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell

11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

38. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

66. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence

80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

Book Banning

Nazi party at a mass book burning.

         Ever since the invention of the printing press, the practice of burning books to censor literature became symbolic of censorship and information control. Forty years after the printing press was invented in Germany, the country's first official censorship office opened to suppress what religious authorities labeled "dangerous publications."

         In the United States, the first book ban happened in Springfield, Mass in 1650. Stranglely, it was done by the Puritans, who had fled England to escape religious persecution, yet they condemned and confiscated a religious text written by one of their own members and had it burned in a public demonstration in the center of town.

         Censorship and book bans were often supported at the national level in the United States. Federal laws, such as the Comstock Law of 1873, made it a crime to distribute "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail. The banning, and often burning, of books continued until the early 1920s when existing standards were challenged. The tide turned against national laws and judgments during the 1930s as Americans witnessed the disturbing activities in Nazi Germany surrounding censorship and mass book burnings.

Net Neutrality




The worst thing about censorship is blablabla.

             Vint Cerf, Google's head net-neutrality supporter says that we need an effective nationalization of the Internet, saying, "incentives could be provided that would render the Internet more like the public road system ... not owned by the private sector," so it becomes "essentially open to all."

           However, the internet right now, works much better, and it will improve much faster without government involvement.  With government involvement, all we would get is corruption and more government control over us. Not to mention that censorship will follow.

           Freedom of speech will give way to being politically correct. With government involvement, the internet will likely be subject to political manipulation and even if it was with good intentions, it may shut down our only real forum of free speech.

           Supporters of network neutrality won't admit to it. They will probably tell you that network neutrality will safeguard your freedoms. Funny enough, one of the ways they scare people is by using the idea that phone and cable companies may start blocking access to political Web sites. In reality though, in a world with a competitive market; where buyers can take their business elsewhere, this is very unlikely. However, in a goverment-run monoply, this is very possible.

Censorship in the United States

Is it wrong to say certain things?

Here in the United States, we enjoy little amounts of censorship. However, not all forms of speech are protected under U.S. law. Cultural, social, or religious expression have the highest value in the eyes of the law, and government has to give a really good reason to limit or censor these things. Political speech in particular can't be limited unless it tells people to do illegal things. However, government agencies can limit the publication of or access to material that could compromise national security.