Censorship (Essay Sample)

Censorship
Student Name
Date
Does censorship violate human rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Imagine that you login YouTube to stream that entertaining video your friends talked about, but an error message appears, “sorry your government has banned access to this video.” This is the worst experience you can ever go through. I strongly support that authorities should not be given the privilege to censor the Internet.
Censorship implies that the government would have the ability to ban all materials deemed unfit at their discretion. Censoring internet materials can be described as a suppression of freedom of speech. The United States government has executed several attempts to legalize censorship of the Internet. According to Erickson (2011), the US congress attempted to pass the “stop online piracy act" bill in 2011 but it failed (Erickson, 2011). The internet provides great sources of essential especially for students undertaking different courses at school (Cutugno, 2000).
On the contrary, The Internet can transmit very disturbing as well as adult medium unsuitable for children. Some online materials should not be viewed by children (Cutugno, 2000). Censorship was introduced to prevent viewing of violent, graphic, and explicit material on the Internet. Censoring the Internet can prevent access to illegal materials, racism, fraud, terrorism and child pornography. However, heavy usage of censorship is bound to affect information flow and perhaps violate the rights outline in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Erickson, 2011). So, the big question arises, “who should ensure that children are not exposed to explicit internet material?”
In conclusion, censoring the entire Interne...