Censored Cyberspace

The recent bill PROTECT IP, also known as US Senate Bill S.968 and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is circulating congress about the censoring of the web for the American people. The news declares that the government is censoring our lives or is planning to sensor it. The question is does this violate our rights as American citizens? In my opinion, I believe censoring the Internet is defying Americans rights. This seems like a first step to becoming a censored society. This bill breaks the American peoples’ rights to read and access any public information they please. As a matter of fact, it eliminates the idea that all information is open to the public. Basically, our government will then choose what they deem appropriate for Americans to know. Banning parts of the Internet is like banning specific books. If we will not ban books then why should we ban a different way for people to develop new theories and ideas? I would like to think that most of us agree that the banning of books is outdated, unnecessary and outrageous.

Every once in a while we hear about the idea of taking the N word out of books like Tom Sawyer or other classics. By doing this aren’t we trying to bury a piece of history? In today’s society the N word is not politically correct or just plain nice, but to make an attempt to remove it from documentations of our history is wrong. When we finish reimaging books to be politically correct while erasing history are we going to then start the Internet and bleep something out every time someone is offend by something in history? I am not saying we should be using foul or offensive language, but we should not try to remove it from our history and better yet teach our youth about the offensive meanings behind these words and why they should not use it. There is no full proof system behind making sure little Tommy doesn’t use it, but rather than erase history, wouldn’t it be wiser to teach Tommy why this part of history is crucial and should never be repeated. This isn’t to say that by deleting the N word from books it might lead to trying to delete bigger issues like World War II, but such actions could be a stepping-stone leading to us toward a similar actions. In other words, where will they stop?

We are an Internet based society. Google has become part of our daily vocabularies. Google, one of the largest search engines on the web, has shown its concern by putting up a special bulletin on their website for people to see where and how they can help avoid this bill. Google used modern day technology to produce a modern day online petition. Will this bill eliminate these sorts of uses as well?

Another large website that stood up in defense of this was Wikipedia. Almost every student has heard do not use Wikipedia as a source, but in the end if one is looking for something quick and just want a basic answer, this website has achieved one of the best online public made reference books ever. On the day the bill was released, Wikipedia shut down their website in an attempt to get users to understand the extent of this bill. A 24-hour period of Wikipedia was a great way to get peoples attention on the subject. Wikipedia has 3,853,687 articles on almost any subject you can think of. Now imagine every user that now can’t access this information for 24-hours. That is definitely proving a point; my point – that the government should not be allowed to censor nor define where, how or what Americans can know.

Picture too, all the websites and jobs that face possible shut down as a result of websites being shut down. In my opinion, censoring is archaic and unnecessary and downright wrong. I do not support censoring the Internet or anything else for that matter, but I would like to hear others ideas on why or why not. Please comment and share your opinion with us.