Government Internet Intervention Essays

Submitted By Kweshon1
Words: 1714
Pages: 7

Why there should be governmental involvement in the internet
I am going to try and tell you why there needs to be governmental oversight on what has grown from a very specialized experiment to a world shaping monument called the internet. There are the “Doom & Gloom” types that will tell you that the internet should not be censored in the slightest since of the word. This group of people will make you aware of the slippery slope that the government will use to take away our 1st amendment rights. The way that the government will start with something small like child pornography and end up with the religious right taking away your right to view pornographic material in the privacy of your own home. They will then tell you how the government will then move to blocking anything that may be considered violent in nature because of all of the gun violence that has plagued our communities; and that the information on how to build a bomb out of everyday kitchen appliances like the perpetrators of the Massachusetts bombings needs to remain available for viewing because it’s our God given American rights that are at stake. On the other hand there are those who believe that everything on the internet needs to be filtered down to a G rating, PG at worst. This group of people believes that if any information on the internet is found to be offensive in nature to even one person that information needs to be removed immediately. This group believes that there needs to be a special force of individuals whose sole purpose is to monitor and patrol your internet keeping it safe for you and your children. I tend to believe that there is a place of sanity between these two groups that we the American people can come to an agreement on. I do not believe that child pornography should have a place on the internet. I do however believe that pornography is a viable business and this market should have its place in the e-commerce marketplace on the internet. If you can find the subject matter in a book down at your local library, there is no reason that you should not be able to find it on the internet. The internet must be protected by legal and regulatory measures that balance a variety of potentially conflicting values and interests. I do understand the threat of losing some of my civil liberties in the name of censorship. If properly implemented; the potential impact of internet governance and regulation could be a wonderful thing. Governmental oversight is not only needed in policy matters such as who gets assigned what domain names, how bandwidth should be spooled out, or how much influence any one entity should hold over accessibility, etc. but governmental influence is needed in issues concerning user behavior as well. There needs to be a strict guideline for identity fraud, copyright laws, I would gladly lose my access to Bomb Building 101 to gain the security that every time I use my credit card to make a purchase on the internet that there are laws in place to punish a person that fraudulently uses my name, likeness, or credit card information to make purchases without my approval. A user should feel confident that when they type in a search for anything, all of the available information on that subject, product, process or person will be available at their screen for review. The internet should not be controlled by large corporate entities. The infrastructure and servers should be owned, maintained, and solely controlled by the United States Government. There is a phrase “you can never put Pandora back in its box”. That is the case with trying to roll back the infinite search capability of the internet. However there is another phrase that states “everything in moderation”. This should be considered with every rule put into place to shape and mold the internet, as well as rules and guidelines that are not. If corporations are allowed to have free reign over the internet without governmental oversight huge multilateral corporations will turn