Internet censorship is the idea of
censoring peoples’ communication throughout the internet. Everybody has the
rights to exercise their freedom of speech. It is their fundamental right to go
against whatever they disagree with. However, there must be limitations.
Sometimes media tell people something that they are not sure about. For
example, last year, one the most popular newspapers in Hargeisa wrote that
there were rebel groups somewhere in Somaliland and when they were taken into
the court they failed to prove where they got the source from. People must tell
and discuss in public the ideas that they do not agree with but in return they
should be very careful.
Internet helps us in many ways and
it makes the whole world like a family. If we need to search something a decade
ago it would take our whole life investigating it but it would take us a very
short period of time to fully understand what we are looking for if we use the
internet. Internet helps us to communicate with each other and to revolt
against dictatorship governments. Last year, the countries in the Middle East
and North Africa used social media to take over their regimes. It was
successful in some countries whereas in other countries like Syria took
eighteen months and still continuous.
The question that we are going to
answer is; should we let governments to control the internet or should we make
the internet universal and a host that people should share their ideas. Some
governments do not tolerate when people say true facts about them. In 2007, an
editor of the Azerbaijan Daily was thrown to jail when he criticized how the
government treated his father after they kidnapped him. The Azerbaijan
government hunts down journalist and bloggers.[1]
If we let this type of government to look after the internet they would not let
people to express their ideas by using internet.
Next month the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) is having a meeting in Dubai and there are a lot
of activist organizations who are against it. ITU wants to come up more
regulations in the internet. There are number of websites who are posting,
“Free and Open world depends on Free and Open internet.” This might look a
biased statement but it deals with what is happening around the globe. If the
people in North Korea are not allowed to use social media and also the
journalist are oppressed and the only TV station is the government media how
are we going to know the reality in N Korea.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of
governments who supporting the idea of “controlling the Internet.”Some
countries already made their own social media such as Russia. Russia wants to
come up more regulations and restrictive laws in this “international” meeting. We
shouldn’t be letting one organization that has the name of many countries to
manipulate our freedom of communicating.[2]
[1] Brown Ian. “Azerbaijan is the wrong place to
hold a forum on internet freedom”, www.theguardian.co.uk/ 13/11/2012.
[2] Naughton John. “Would you trust Vladimir
Putin with the keys to the web”, www.theobserver.com
/25/11/2012.
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