There are many ways that governments can censor information and by censoring the internet governments can influence the media. One may resume that governments try to censor some aspects of the endless flow of information that travels on the internet for different reasons and in different ways.
One form of government cencorship is media regulation and therefore the censorship is written into law. In the United States the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the independent federal body that is responsible for regulating information that is broadcasted for an example by radio, television and satellite. The things that the FCC censors is what wsa considered to be profane, obscene and indecent.
The internet however is a bit of a challange when it comes to censorship. There are internet censorship laws all over the world and requests by states for search engines to limit information. In Chine filtering systems are in place to restrict access to what are considered to be offensive websites including anti-Chine websites, Western news sources and pornography. The government in Singapore decided to censor websites in 2007 that could threaten the sanctity of society. Google is regularly asked to remove websites by Western countries such as the UK, USA and Germany.
It is understandable for some websites to be deleted from the internet and it´s a known fact that all sorts of bad things are put online, some unexcusable offences are even among them. What is important however is that most likely all governments regulate, restrict and inhibit information and that some of it is even in the favour of the health and sanity of the society. But it´s a thin red line for the governments to travel on since it´s the right of the people to get information online, eventhough it´s not in favour of the government.
Ingibjörg Ýr
Ingibjörg Ýr
Your last line made me smile, just before I came to that line the thought popped into my head from your post that our discussion of the internet from this perspective is almost directly an extension of the principles of government in each country - simply magnified dues to the inconceivable amount of information now stored on the internet.
ReplyDeleteAs more and more information does become available and as it becomes easier for everyone to contribute to that store, the notion that a government could ever limit access to that information seems more and more obscene.
Yet how true is that? Is there such a thing as truly sensitive information, private information or even information that should be restricted based upon content alone. Just as illiberal democracies and authoritarian countries have to be held up against the liberal challenge, so in a different way do liberal democracies more and more have to consider just how free information should be. Just look at the response of governments to Wikileaks.