The
hardest task for any politician is to please everybody. The ongoing debate on
censorship has long been a contentious one, as one’s view of what should be
censored is subjective to the individual’s point of view, and will differ
greatly depending on a person’s personal, political, or religious interests and
motives. When governments step into the censorship debate, it becomes a
difficult task to legally define obscenity in a way pertaining to society as a
whole (7). Many countries already block illegal content through the use
of filtering systems, and society
generally accepts this (1),
but some countries are trying to pass legislation to also restrict access to
sites that contain controversial content like pornography, file sharing, or
politically inconvenient material. Critics of these proposals have raised the
issue of freedom of speech, claiming these measures to be extreme and
oppressive (1; 2; 9; 12; 16).
 |
| Fig.1 |
It
seems logical that information inciting or promoting illegal or unethical
practices should be censored. However, coming to an agreeable definition of
what is illegal and unethical is not simple. Pornography and gambling are by
some deemed unethical but are legal in many states and cultures; abortion and
same-sex marriage are deemed ethical but illegal in others (15). One
historical attempt to censor pornography in the USA in 1957 had the Justice
define what was obscene, and the definition included sexually explicit material
appealing to prurient interests, and blasphemy (7). In some countries
this definition would be acceptable, given their religious affiliations, but
not in all.
 |
| Fig.2 |
Censorship
which appeases to individual religious interests cannot be deemed proportionate
to society’s interests in general, when a greater extrinsic religious
orientation is linked with lower emotional intelligence (4), and
pornography is found more appealing to people with a higher education (3; 14 cited in 17). Societies
which currently have the strictest online censorship are countries ruled by
authoritarian governments, like China and Iran (9; 12),
who have political views that oppose those of democratic countries (9). Freedom of speech and choice is vital to the survival of a democratic
government (8 cited in 9). Held (2010, p.122) asks
the question ‘is it the Government’s role to determine the value of literary,
artistic, political, or scientific works, and thus prescribe which attitudes or
tastes are valuable and which utterly lack social importance?’, which raises
the issue of how much influence a Government should have on the content of
public media.
 |
| Fig.3 |
Staple
Internet services in Western societies, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google,
are banned in China by the Government. There are censored Chinese alternatives,
such as the search engine Baidu, the Chinese equivalent to Google, which are
policed by approximately 50,000 censors. A search for ‘Tiananmen Square 1989’,
for example, will not produce any results about the protest between Chinese
activists and the Chinese army, and the massacre that ensued, saying the site
is nothing more than a tourist attraction. Many Chinese natives, even those who
are tertiary educated, have no reason to doubt the information they find online
through Baidu of its integrity (12). Western society also has this faith
in the quality of information found online, believing that if you cannot find
something on Google or Wikipedia then it must be untrue, unimportant, or does not
exist (13).
 |
| Fig.4 |
If
more stringent censorship laws are passed in Western countries, just the
knowledge of the restrictions’ existence could make all those affected lose
faith in the quality of news reports, medical and legal information, and all
other information they find online, fearing that it has been manipulated to
meet Government interests, as is the case in China (1; 2;
12; 15; 16). Google has criticised the
Australian Government’s recent censorship plans, which if implemented would be
the strictest of any Western nation, stating ‘that the scope of content to be
filtered is too wide’, and would result, for instance, in blocking euthanasia,
and gay and lesbian discussion forums, but not pirated media file sharing, or prevent
child luring through chat rooms (1). The US Stop Online Piracy Act,
which aimed to grant the US Government power to restrict access to foreign
sites that host copyrighted material, failed to pass Congress this year after
online protests. Alternatively, in a bid to protect privacy, the European Union
have proposed a ‘right to be forgotten’ that will allow individuals the legal
right to remove online content about themselves that they do not want
available, regardless of the fact they may have voluntarily provided it (2).
 |
| Fig. 5 |
 |
| Fig.6 |
Pornography
is another favourite target of online censorship advocates, who have suggested
that consumers should have to enrol on a register, kept by Internet Service
Providers, to be able to view online pornography, to prevent youth from
accidentally accessing these sites (16). Not only is the collection
of names of who watches pornography a privacy concern, but youth accessing
online pornography is not done so much by chance as we think. Studies show that
the average male is first exposed to pornography at ten years old (10),
and 16 percent of fourth to eleventh graders have intentionally accessed a
pornographic website (11). When trying to
recruit candidates for a study comparing attitudes of consumers and
non-consumers of pornography, researchers at the University of Montreal failed
to find a single male in his 20s who had never watched pornography (10).
The
omnipresence of pornography in today’s culture makes it serve as sex education
for many young adults, as adults are not always open to discussing sex with
adolescents (6; 17),
though this can have both positive and negative effects. Weinberg, Williams,
Kleiner & Irizarry (2010) found a positive correlation between the
frequency of viewing pornography and a more expansive sexuality, in terms of
what acts were found appealing to watch, and the occurrence of these acts in
their own sexual behaviour. The increased sexual activity, though, was only
occurring with their regular sexual partners, not friends or strangers, meaning
pornography does not promote promiscuity. The greatest effect was on
heterosexual women, who felt empowered by watching sexual acts, with one woman
claiming ‘watching made it real’.
 |
| Fig.7 |
The
need for normalisation and empowerment of sexuality is important for people of
all genders and sexual orientations (5; 6; 17), and pornography can enable this, though
mainstream pornography is made by men, and made to appeal to male audiences. If
pornography is to be used as sex education it must also be made aware that
there are many different sexual tastes, that men and women do not always like
the same thing, and that sexuality can reflect many different image types (5; 6; 16; 17). According to Gallop (2009),
We live in a
puritanical double-standards culture, where people believe that a
teen-abstinence program will actually work, where parents are too embarrassed
to have conversations about sex with their children, and where educational
institutions are terrified of being politically incorrect if they pick up those
conversations.
Censorship
of non-illegal content online encroaches on democratic society’s need for
freedom of speech. The implication of banning controversial content would be a
political step backwards, appeasing only to a few societal niches, and not of
utilitarian benefit to the general public. Issues of any controversial manner
should be openly spoken about, instead of being suppressed by legislated
censorship. ‘Censors are, of course, propelled by their own neuroses’ (Justice
W. O. Douglas, 1968 cited in 7, p.127).
REFERENCE
LIST
3- Buzzell,
T., 2005. Demographic characteristics of persons using pornography in three
technical contexts, Sexuality and
Culture, 9, pp. 28-48.
4- Chung-Chu,
L., 2010. The relationship between personal religious orientation and emotional
intelligence, Social Behavior &
Personality: An International Journal, 38, 4, Abstract only, Psychology and
Behavioral Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost,
accessed 17 February 2012.
7- Held,
J. M., 2010. One man’s trash is another man’s pleasure: obscenity, pornography,
and the law. In: F. Allhoff, & D. Monroe, eds. 2010. Porn – Philosophy for everyone: how to think with kink. West
Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Ch.9.
8- Hirschman,
A. O., 1970. Exit, voice, and loyalty:
responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press. Pp. 44-45.
9- Krastev,
I., 2011. Paradoxes of the new authoritarianism, Journal of Democracy, 22, 2, pp. 5-16, SocINDEX with Full Text,
EBSCOhost, accessed 31 January 2012.
11- Loughlin,J., & Taylor-Butts, A., 2009. Child luring through the internet, Statistics Canada [online]
12- Margolis,
J., 2011. Great wall of silence, New
Statesman, 140, 5066, pp. 36-39, Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost, accessed 15 February 2012.
13- Matte,C., 2009. If you can’t find it on Google it doesn’t exist, Quirky Fusion, [blog] 18 April.
14- Parvez,
Z. F., 2006. The labor of pleasure: how perceptions of emotional labor impact
women’s enjoyment of pornography, Gender and
Society, 2, pp. 605-631.
15- Peace,
A., 2003. Balancing free speech and censorship: Academia’s response to the
Internet, Communications of the ACM, 46,
11, pp. 105-109, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, accessed 18 February 2012.
17- Weinberg,
M.S., Williams, C.J., Kleiner, S., & Irizarry, Y., 2010. Pornography,
normalization, and empowerment. Archives
of Sexual Behavior, 39, 6, pp. 1389-1401, LGBT Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost, accessed 31 January 2012.
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