Phoenix Network Forums

im doing a project for school at the moment and i have to write about the ethics behind censorship.

i was wondering if anyone could help me/give views/give good sources like newspapers, books, magasines, or sites.

i have to write:

describe the term censorship.
explain why people dissagree with censorship
"contraversial information should be held back" do you agree?

any information would be fantasic

David

Have you checked wikipedia and related links?

Its always hard to judge which (kind of) censorship is appropriate for individual cases. I believe there are some good reasons and there are a lot of bad ones .

Being as though this is a school paper, I won't give you too much info, but....

Censorship isn't all bad. In fact, most people ignore the extreme good that censorship provides. The FCC censors TV to make sure there isn't explicit sexual action going on when little kids are watching. The newspaper is censored so you don't see pictures of grisly murders on the front page.

And Phoenix censors here. We remove inflammatory non-productive troll posts.

Censorship does not always equal "OMG NO MORE READING FARENHEIT 451". Sometimes it means you can't have public sex on the subway.

when youre younger and its stoping you it seems bad but i supose if as you get older you realise some of it needs to be done ^_^

If i were you, i'd go into censorship during war times, or possibly even recent events such as Google's acceptance of China's censorship terms.

The thing you must touch upon is this belief of "Freedom of Speech". you've got to question the extent to which an individual should be allowed to make their own statements, and at what point does this idea of utilitarianism cross into a dictatorship, or a totalitarian state at least.

That being said, censorship has played an important role in wartimes, removing sensitive imformation from the hands of the media to save the lives of domestic troops.

Just make sure you approach the topic from both sides, since it has its own advantages and disadvantages, and like most things, isn't clear-cut.

Will wrote:Being as though this is a school paper, I won't give you too much info, but....

Censorship isn't all bad. In fact, most people ignore the extreme good that censorship provides. The FCC censors TV to make sure there isn't explicit sexual action going on when little kids are watching. The newspaper is censored so you don't see pictures of grisly murders on the front page.

And Phoenix censors here. We remove inflammatory non-productive troll posts.

Censorship does not always equal "OMG NO MORE READING FARENHEIT 451". Sometimes it means you can't have public sex on the subway.

Yeah like that. I mean, If censorship didn't exist, this world would go to hell in weeks.
9-Year-Old watching porn vids on TV? no thanks.

Yeah I agree that we need censorship to keep blatantly immoral and unhealthy behaviors/TV/etc away from young kids.

AWERT

ASDFG

Pete wrote:Protecting children is a good thing; however, it is not the governments job; it is the job of the parents. Adults need some fun too; not everything can be: teletubbies and power rangers.

Regards,
Pete

Absolutely, however, parents can't control everything that's deemed illegal without forms of censorship. Joe Camel and cigarette ads targeted to children come to mind.

alg8662 wrote:Yeah I agree that we need censorship to keep blatantly immoral and unhealthy behaviors/TV/etc away from young kids.

That is a very bad argument for censorship, as it creates a big margin of interpretation for what is "immoral," and has historically always been twisted to cover anything wanted ("Sorry, Teletubbies and Sesame Street are now banned due to their subtle homosexual references; this is 'immoral' as deemed by the current relgious-zealots in office").

To understand this more, look at recent United States policies (the last 50-75 years would be sufficient) that are ambiguous in their granting of powers; many lead to war when the policies do not specifically state that force is granted to leaders.

[quote="al_tyranny("Sorry, Teletubbies and Sesame Street are now banned due to their subtle homosexual references; this is 'immoral' as deemed by the current relgious-zealots in office").

[/quote]

Wait, so the purple dude teletubby with the purse wasn't gay? Yeah, and so is Richard Simmons.

//Pardon pathetic quib, butI've got a 2.5 hour layover in Denver right now, and I'm bored.

i believe it`s a wellcomed think sometimes as long as it`s not exagerated

ASRGR FG

How about internet censorship?

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sitting here on my last year of high school, and it's worse than it's ever been. I can't look up information on, say, racial segregation of the mid-1900s because it's racism. I can't look up information on, say, popular media and the effect of sexuality because it's sexual. Can't look up the effects of smoking because it has to do with drugs.

And god forbid, brand new this year, I can't check my email! Unless, of course, I want to use the school's eChalk service, through which I can navigate and load my email in about 6 minutes. I need to check my gmail, guys. Honestly. I keep some of my documents there (side note - if you're running windows, check out GMail Drive, great shell extension). I'm involved in plenty of other things that I need to check on. And all I can do right now is log on remotely to some random shell and look at everything through lynx/links. It's pathetic.

I fully agree that it is the responsibility of the parents to monitor censorship as concerning to their children. I also see how the government should have some resposibility in the issue, but I think that should be minimal and used in specific cases: like, for example, cigarette advertisments. It should not, however, be trusted to pseudo-intelligent filters that can't comprehend the material or the intentions of the user.