Internet Censorship Law around the world

Today, I would like to talk about internet censorship around the world. The first country that I want to talk about their internet censorship is Sweden.

Sweden

In Sweden, the Parliament legislated the "Act (1998:112) on Responsibility for Electronic Bulletin Boards". Electronic bulletin board is defined as to include storage of data on the Internet such as web pages, excluding personal mailboxes. The law places an charge on service providers who store information to remove such as instigation of rebellion, racial agitation, child pornography and illegal description of violence.

China

China had used a filtering system to avoid delivery of offending information by blocking the access to about 100 websites. For instance, western news outlets, Taiwanese commentary sites, anti-China dissident sites and sexually explicit sites. According to Associated Press, China has issued its most intrusive Internet controls to date, ordering service providers to screen private e-mail for political content and holding them responsible for subversive postings on their Web sites in 2002. That's all for China and which country will be the next??

France

France has been enforcing the laws prohibiting race hate material concerning illegal material on the internet. For instance, in 2000, a French judge had ruled that USA Yahoo! Inc must blocked the access of French users to sites that about race hate memorabilia. Yahoo! said that it was technically impossible for it to block Internet users in France from searching Nazi-related content on USA websites and it is French site that followed with France's laws forbidding advertising Nazi memorabilia.

United States

The USA Government has enacted two Federal laws intended to censor offensive online content. The first law, The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was enacted in February 1996. The CDA prohibited Internet users from using the Internet to communicate material that, under contemporary community standards, would be deemed patently offensive to minors under the age of eighteen. The second law is Child Online Protection Act (COPA) which is more narrowly focussed and covers only communications that are made for commercial purposes on the World Wide Web.

These are the online censorship law around this world. Online censorship should be enforced all the time so that people will not simply do things that is against the law. What do you think? Do drop me comments.. Thx... =)

HaPpY VaLeNtInEs DaY!!!

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Sources:
URL: http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/cens3.html

Online Censorship? How they do it?

There are few techniques of censorship implemented online. Those that I’m going to share about are pixelization, bleep noise, captioning, censorware and firewall. Here how it goes like:

Pixelization is where in a video or image the part that needs to be censored will be blurred or shown in a lower resolution.

http://leifharmsen.deviantart.com/art/Jason-raw-only-37205296

It’s a way which allows people to view it without seeing the censored part. It’s a way where we can avoid or stop people from being exposed to nudity or profanity images or video.

Bleep noise are inserted to censor the vulgar word that is been used in a speech or it even can be a small part in a song or video. For example, most western songs consist vulgar words which some music portals have censored it and some have not. Even the video clips or drama series or even news cast in video portals, those elements that are vulgar or not encouraged to be listen usually bleep noise are inserted to censor it.


Captioning is used to avoid vulgar words in replacement with an array of asterisks. This technique is used when writing article or even in song lyrics, an example of Eminem song:

"Ohh Beeby, the way you shake it, I can’t believe it, I ain’t never seen an *** like that the way you move it, you make my peepee go DOING DOING DOING. I don’t believe it, it’s almost to good to be true I ain’t never seen an *** like that the way you move it, you make my ****** go DOING DOING DOING"

http://www.anysonglyrics.com/lyrics/e/eminem/Ass-Like-That-Lyrics.htm

Captioning is mostly used in blogs. Bloggers love to express their feelings and expressions in their blog post but yet we are not allowed to do so because of censorship. I believe that most of us don’t wish to asterisks all the word that we want to express yet we don’t have a choice right?....=)

Censorware is mostly used by parents or guardian to filter or block internet content that can be harmful to their children. The system works based on the settings emphasized to block certain content/ website from being used by children. The settings of the software system determine whether to permit acess to that particular content or website. It prevents kids from misusing the internet in the wrong way. This is a good precaution to be practiced by all parents and guardians to prevent kids from being influenced by unsecured and immorality elements in the internet.

Firewall is a combination of software and hardware which can do filtering. This system is usually implemented by an organization to restrict people from viewing or access into unsecured/ explicit sites. For example, an host organization implements firewall to prevent their staff from accessing social network sites like Facebook and Friendster and instant messaging applications like MSN or Yahoo messenger. This is because people tend to be to keen into instant messaging and busy writing comments on people's ‘Wall’ in Facebook where they end up not completing their task. Sounds familiar… =P ...Another example will be in most colleges where they restrict their students from accessing into Facebook, Friendster, You-tube and many other entertainment websites.

I hope that the information that I have shared is helpful to you. Don’t forget to drop us your comment on the techniques that are implemented for online censorship.

Have a great bloggin-tines day tommorrow…Enjoy =)

Vote Results (Week 4)

Do you think online censorship should be reinforced?

Below is the results of the survey poll , 58.33% of the respondents agreed that online censorship should be reinforced because it affects the morality of the individual negatively, whereas 25 % of the respondents agreed to the reinforcement of online censorship to enhance national security. The remaining 16.67% is the percentage of respondents disagreed to reinforce online censorship because it is the individual's responsibility for their behavior. No respondent disagree that online censorship reinforcement would restricts an individual's freedom of expression.

From the poll, this can be concluded that majority supported that reinforcement of online censorship is important to protect the morality of the society. Well, like what I mentioned in the earlier blogs, the purpose of online censorship is to guard the little ones from being involved in pornography, online gaming, and online gambling and so on.

Online censorship definitely protects the national security. Defense Ministry signifies the country state of life. Once the defense being corrupted, everything goes hay wired. Just imagine that Google map can zoomed into the location of Putrajaya or worst still White House or Pentagon where the leader of the world is. Terrorism rate would increase tremendously like a thermometer in a boiling soup. The world literally will be out of control.

Some believed that online censorship should not be reinforced because it is our personal role to manage and control your attitude and behavior. What are we, if this online technology controls our lives instead of us controlling. We don't want technology to be the Master and we the slaves.

There are various reasons on why no respondent actually agree that online censorship should not be reinforced because it is violating or restricting an individual freedom of expression. This is because nothing can change the fact that we are Asians. For example, since young, we have been taught that sex is a taboo word, the unspoken word. Everyone will give you a stare if you ever mentioned the issues regarding this. Unlike the Westerners, they are more open-minded compared to Asians. They are the pioneers of arts and communication and mostly everything. They had always appreciated that the nakedness of the physical body is actually an art of expression. In US, The First Amendment strongly protects an individual's freedom of expression and speech. Well I would said, too much exposure can be a destruction.

Please leave your comments.
Have a great week ahead! Cheers =)