Persuasive Essay: Should the Government Censor the Internet

Pedro Guerrero

Baker

English 10

9 May 2013

Persuasive Essay: Should the Government Censor the Internet

In today’s world, censoring internet would be a useless gesture. There are three reasons to prevent censorship on the 3 million U.S. internet users, that I will use. First there are many, many, many, many, ways to circumvent these censorships. Second, the internet is a safe haven for any and all opinions, controversial or not. Lastly, would be that it’s a violation to the Bill of Rights First amendment. These show just a few of many reasons that censorship for the internet is a bad idea.

Internet censorship can easily be rendered useless by using proxies to get to a website that has been censored in the U.S. AD HOC bypasses, Indirect bypasses, to using Ultrasurf and proxies are ways in which the youth can circumvent these laws. Tor is a good example of a proxy since it uses millions of computer, the ones you and me have, to go around firewalls put up by governments. Tor is run by the people. So, if someone tries to censor it, many more will pop up to take it’s place. An example of this are thepiratebay (a p2p service that shares files, and had its domain name in Sweden) proxies.When one is taken down by an ISP, a few will take its place and offer people a route to the website. When the website itself was threatened by the Swedish government, it simply changed itself slightly so that it wouldn’t be legal to get taken down. Opinions are one of those items that shouldn’t be taken down either.

Opinions on the internet right now are like Red vs Blue, Republicans vs. Democrats, or which way the toilet paper goes. You are able to post your opinions without having to worry about repercussions. A few ways where its censored in this area is that you could possibly be in a forum that has dark humor, and make a threat (JOKINGLY) to plan an assassination on an important person, where you’ll get a visit from the SS. 4chan.org is often called “Anonymous”. Anonymous is a group of people that uses 4chan as a way to post whatever the fuck they want and they would be able to get away with it, merely because its 4chan. They make their sick and funny comments on recent tragic events and care little if its “too soon” or not. This ties in with the bill of rights first amendment.

The freedom of press is part of the first amendment. This interpretation