Of course many countries such as China severely restrict what is available on the internet. Censorship is greadually increasing in America in regards to the internet. Political Correctness is gradually gaining control under the guise of not offending anyone.....should people have a constutional right to not be offended? Where will that lead? It is becoming increasingly difficult to honestly discuss anything of a controversial nature. Google even censors their search engine...very difficult to find anything with the google search engine that is not politically correct.
Yes, freedom of speech is a basic human right, and that right means nothing without the reciprocal freedom to hear, if someone is so inclined. Google sucks. As a defacto library service, as it were, it, and all search engine companies, are ethically oblicated to present unbiased search results. The Mayor stopped using google when it became public that Google was promoting anti-Prop 8 (California anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiative) to the top of the lists, artificially denigrating pro-Prop 8 websites and thus interfering with the free flow of information required of an informed electorate. Regardless of anyone's opinion on Proposition 8, Google sullied it's reputation with that partisan crap. FYI the Mayor voted against Prop 8, and if the Obama voters believed in that same-sex marriage crap that their messiah spewed, Prop 8 would have been defeated. No, there's no human right against getting your feelings hurt. And there's no way to legislate it, either. So there's three certainties in life, death, taxes, and your feelings will be hurt (judging from King Obama's rant on the failure of his gun-grabbing measure, it's safe to say he's never had his feelings hurt in his life, ever).
There is nothing stopping you setting up your own server and making pretty much anything you want on the available internet. The only real limitation is the law of the land your server is in and possible complications surrounding libel, but none of that is internet specific. What people complaining about the lack of free-speech on the internet seem to want is private owners of servers and services on the internet to be forced to host, publish and promote all the material they support (though are at best silent about their opponents'). But doesn't free speech also include the right not to say something? Do the owners of Google or boards like this not have rights too? The "mainstream" internet does have "mainstream" limitations largely by personal choice and majority expectations though just like in any other environment, they can go further than maybe they should. This ignores the vast swathes of the internet that is pretty much a free-for-all though, albeit maybe a little more difficult to navigate. There is socio-political speech covering every imaginable concept out there, including some I'm sure even you would prefer was stamped out (active promotion of terrorism, murder or child abuse for example). Just because something is a right doesn't guarantee it will be easy.
DE-CENSOR THE INTERNET! Let people look at whatever they want. It isn't your job to judge what's right and wrong, and chances are, I don't agree with you. Paranoid governments are always gonna mess this up with racial profiling, uptight beliefs, etc. Don't want it to get worse? Don't let it happen at all.
Yes. They should have the right to look up what they want to, when they want to. The internet is the closet thing we have to a free society and I don't want that taken away.
Yes, we do. One should be allowed to search for and do anything he or she wants on the internet. If you don't like something that someone else does on the internet, just don't do it. Simple. It's like anything. If Billy really likes soccer but Jimmy likes to play baseball and hates soccer, Jimmy shouldn't disallow Billy from playing soccer, instead Jimmy should just not play soccer. If the government wants to censor our Internet, it's most certainly not for our own good.
The internet has been the one bastion of free speech. Newspapers refuse to use certain words. Television promotes only certain viewpoints. The internet was the one place where information was unfettered. It seems that now even the internet is becoming censored. That is a sad commentary on the freedom to explore all viewpoints and ideas.
I used to to work for a News station in one of the top 10 markets for a major network affiliate. I quit because of the absurd bias in what they covered. Especially when I would talk to reporters and they'd come in and say "yeah sorry I haven't read this yet" they read through the script as I'm recording the audio. Then when they're done they say "Wow what a stupid story". Then 10 minutes later he's on the air and says "Now this is a must see story" They're essentially actors reading off a script. The station clearly had agendas in both the stories they covered and the way they presented it. So I agree with what people said about how Television only promotes certain view points. The internet is best when not regulated, acts like SOPA and PIPPA are absurd. That's written by people who think the internet is a series of pipes and tubes lol.
Thing is the vast majority of the internet is completely free of any censorship, most people only ever use 10% of what is actually out there, the reason being is that the 10% is the easiest to access, the rest you need to know what you are doing in order to use it or even see it. The Dark or Deep Web is the place where anything goes - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web .. but be warned if you feel like entering this area you had better be pretty darned sure you know what you are doing.
I think the problem regarding the internet and freedoms, is that people assume the information exchange is a private thing, ie face book posts ect. In reality anything published on the net is public and the laws are catching up with how they operate in society. I.E there is a lot of uproar recently with people being convicted for offensive face book posts. If such abuse was done in public people would have no problem. There is also the issue of service providers harboring illegal activity. Even tho they are a 'middle man' imo they should be as liable as in a real life situation. IE if i buy drugs through a middle man, he is still criminally liable regardless as to whether he benefits or not.
I think the owners of each individual website, like individual businesses, should be free to censor/uncensor, or just run their websites the way they want to run them. Some websites will be more free than others and some will be more restricted than others. Obviously depending on the 'business' and what each websites target audience is will depend on what they want to allow and what they want to restrict. It should be left up to them to figure out what they want to do and not be government controlled.
Information channels not under control of the government or interest groups are not a human right but the basic condition for implementing the political idea of "democracy". Democracy is based on the free will of the voter. "Free will" means freely chosing between all possible and available alternatives. Free decisions depend from free and reliable information about positive and negative properties of those alternatives. If information is controlled by censorship, only limited amounts of information available, the choice is manipulated by those having the power to filter and tailor the information. It plays no role if people are clubbed or psychologically manipulated into making a choice which is not in their own best interest, but in the interest of the manipulator. Manipulated voter decisions are a kind of "soft totalitarianism". Democracy then becomes an illusion. Democracy however is not a human right. Many different systems have existed and exist on this planet, none of which are declared a violation of human rights based only on the system itself.
