Should internet freedom be curtailed?

Should internet freedom be curtailed?

Introduction:

With Russia and Turkey playing hard to restrain internet freedom, there is no short of countries as more and more join the clash to retrain giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google to censor its content. Both Russia and Turkey tried curtailing these internet companies at different times of the year to remove controversial contents and pages from the internet. The result, however, was same in both the cases. Facebook and Twitter respectably removed the content but copies of the same documents were circulated in various ways and hence censoring the content was worthless. India and Pakistan has also been in the imbroglio of internet censorship to fight terrorists from manipulating youths for joining ISIS. Pakistan, however, had a different kind of story to censor with ban of YouTube.

Yes, internet freedom should be curtailed:

1. Controversies never spread faster until it started going online. Anti-government protests, terrorism blurts, defaming of persons, false rumors and allegations have all been a prominent part of the viral contents on the internet in the gone year. Even before companies were contacted for censoring or removing the content or video, copies were uploaded the very next moment.

2. In the European Union, a court ruling last year established a “right to be forgotten,” which includes freedom to access search engines like Google to remove links of content of negative material about them. This is important to safeguard against personal information going online after being hacked and leaked. 2014 saw many incidences of nude pictures of renowned celebrities going viral over the internet. Internet freedom should not include the right to leak private content of any person without their consent.

3. Talking of freedom of expression, not everything shared on the internet is intended for good reasons. Leaked MMS defame women. Racial content create imbroglio. Misleading information harm youngsters. Manipulative videos and articles create revolutions that are harmful for the world at large. The sharing of this type of content cannot be included in freedom of expression.

4. Censoring content on internet is difficult but that does not mean that the government should not even try to do so. Further spreading of such content could be stopped by asking the companies to remove or censor the video or any sort of content. Graphics and videos on the internet are far more influential in affecting the minds of people hence it is important to put restraint on these.

5. The biggest challenge that the world is currently facing is spread of terrorism and to prevent further more youths from being manipulated by the fundamentalists, it is important that interaction of this sort be censored from the internet.

6. Internet access is available to children below the maturity age limit. For preventing children from viewing inappropriate content, it has become even more important to censor hardcore pornography and other disturbing content from the internet. India is still lagging behind in retraining such content from the access of minors.

No, internet freedom should not be curtailed:

1. Freedom of speech and press is being advocated in support of Charlie Hebdo but the same is being censored on the internet. Every individual has the right to express their idea and to propagate what they believe to be true on basis of recorded evidences in the form of audio or video. Why can’t the government apply the same rule before asking internet companies to cut out the controversial content? Free speech can either be curtailed to certain limits or given complete freedom to circulate any sort of crap over the web.

2. Censoring the content creates that curiosity that compels people to do what they are prevented from doing. Copies of such content go viral after they are removed or blocked from the main pages. Those copied contents add to the trouble with added wrong rumors to it and hence is more awkward that the original content could be.

3. Censoring with become the right exercised by the government at its call. This might prevent information containing the truth of any situation from reaching out to the public. There will hidden secrets which public would have no access to.

Conclusion:

It is necessary to go by the demand of present situation and the present day challenges that the world at large has been dealing with calls for restraining freedom of internet and to limit its extent of publishing content to only those that are non-harmful and doesn’t involve larger controversies that could affect lives of people. Facebook has always been very cooperative in this matter. In the year ahead, we expect all the other big internet companies to follow the same prospect.