Why Censoring Cyberspace is Dangerous and Futile
[Reprinted from Issues & Views Winter 1998]
Don't be fooled when some politician uses "pornography and pedophiles on the
Internet" as an excuse to cripple the most valuable technology America has
going for it. Heavy-handed attempts to impose restrictions on the unruly but
incredibly creative anarchy of the Net could kill the spirit of cooperative
knowledge-sharing that makes the Net valuable to millions.
It would be a mistake to let the censors create an infobahn police force. We
might be trading precious liberties for illusory protection.
Yes, we have to think about ways of protecting our children and our society
from the easy availability of every kind of abhorrent information imaginable.
But the "censor the Net" approach is not just morally misguided. It's becoming
technically and politically impossible. As Net pioneer John Gilmore is often
quoted: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." If we
were to agree to clamp down, does the U.S. have the troops to send to Finland
or Kazakhstan, to prevent people from putting pornography on their local
tributary of the Internet? And when we throw up the legal roadblocks necessary
to stop teenagers from downloading grainy versions of the same photos found in
magazines under their beds, how many people in cancer support groups are going
to suffer?
The Internet was designed to withstand nuclear attack. The Rand Corporation
designed the network to be a decentralized command-and-control-and-
communications system, one that would be less vulnerable to missiles than a
system commanded by a centralized headquarters.
This decentralization of control means that the delivery system for salacious
materials is the same worldwide network that delivers economic opportunity,
educational resources, civic forums, and health advice. This technological
shock to our moral codes means that in the future, we are going to have to
teach our children well. The only protection that has a chance of working is
to give our sons and daughters moral grounding and some common sense.
I got an Internet account for my daughter when she was eight, but I didn't
turn her loose until I filled her in on some facts of online life. "Just
because someone sends you e-mail, you don't have to answer unless you know
them," I instructed her. "And if anybody says something to you that makes you
feel funny about answering, then don't answer until you speak to me."
Citizens should have the right to restrict the information-flow into our
homes. You should be able to exclude from your home any subject matter that
you don't want our children to see. But sooner or later, our children will be
exposed to everything we have shielded them from, and then all they will have
left to deal with these shocking sights and sounds is the moral fiber we
helped them cultivate.
Teach your children to have no fear of rejecting images or communications that
repel or frighten them. Teach them to have a strong sense of their own
personal boundaries, and of their right to defend those boundaries. Teach them
that people aren't always who they present themselves to be and that predators
exist. Teach them to keep personal information private. Teach them to trust
you enough to confide in you if something doesn't seem right.
Yes, pedophiles and pornographers use computer networks. They also use
telephones and the mail, but nobody would argue that we need to censor these
forms of communication. The most relevant question now is: how do we teach our
children to live in an uncensorable world?
-- Howard Rheingold is a prolific writer on computer subjects and is author of
Virtual Reality and The Virtual Community. Visit his webside at:
http://www.rheingold.com.
Copyright 1998 © Issues & Views
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