MSc-IT Study Material
June 2010 Edition

Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town

Censorship and Controversy

Who has the power to decide which sites are "good" or "bad"? Who is in control — the one who rates or the one using the ratings?

Ratings

Ratings usage can be grouped into the following categories

  • Closed group: The ratings given depend on the criteria set up by the raters. A religious organization would tend to be stricter than a secular educational institute. Therefore the accepted ratings would depend on which rating organization was utilized to perform the rating.

  • Community: Net Shepherd (a ratings organization) claim that their rating community is a virtual, online community of people who represent the Internet's general population. However, these people may not be representative of the world's population. Studies have shown that Internet users are more affluent and educated than non-users. Thus, the community is self-selecting.

There are many groups of user to which ratings may be applicable:

  • Individual users: There is no single, familiar labeling system, as with movie film ratings. This can make it complicated to learn the various labels attached to different websites. Again, this brings up the issue of which group to trust.

  • Imposed: The individual might not be given the option to choose. Restrictions can be placed by a company or by a government that regulates the Web servers in its country. National 'firewalls' are implemented in China and Singapore, blocking certain types of material. Firewalls also exist to 'protect' the computer networks of many institutions around the world — such as universities and local government organizations.

Ratings may not be representative of the majority of the world's population.

Activity 4: A short proposal

The object of this exercise is to consider the issue of personal responsibility involved in making censorship decisions.

Write down two lists:

  1. Reasons why you think you might be qualified to decide what the inhabitants of your home town could view on the Internet.

  2. Reasons why you might not be able to make fair decisions (with regards to 1).

You can find some thoughts about this activity at the end of the unit.

Freedom

A 1960s folk song (Colours. D. Leitch. 1967. Pye) has the lyrics "freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking". This is possibly a very useful philosophy and certainly worth remembering. Freedom may have a completely different meaning to different people. Freedom for a child to cross a busy road on his/her own may place that child in danger. A parent will educate the child as to the nature of such dangers until the child can take responsibility.

As the founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee has said that the main idea of the World Wide Web was to allow any and every kind of information to be published and accessed. There are many people advocating the freedom of the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/ ) was set up to 'work in the public interest to protect fundamental civil liberties, including privacy and freedom of expression, in the arena of computers and the Internet'.

Pressure to Control

The pressure to clamp down on the freedom of the Net comes from concern that not all material published is educational or beneficial. Websites with "inappropriate" content might adversely influence children, and possibly many adults. Employees surf sites that have no connection to their tasks as employees, reducing office productivity.