Should The Internet Be Controlled More Strictly In The U.s.

The Internet is one of the most important Inventions of the 20th Century. The internet is the work of dozens of pioneering scientists, programmers, and engineers who each developed new features and technologies that eventually merged to become the ‘’ information superhighway ‘’ we know today. Undoubtedly, the World Wide Web has influenced our lives in many aspects. For instance, it greatly affected our education, entertainment, politics, and business, it changed the way we communicate and store our information.

Noticeably, since almost every person uses the Internet for the mass media, it creates a lot of debates about should the Internet be controlled more strictly in the U.S. On one hand, it’s a source of incredible knowledge and information and on the other, it can be used for propaganda and fraud. I believe that the Internet was created as a place for freedom of speech and self-expression, none of the countries or private corporations should be able to steal or to use private information or dictate the rules to the users. Therefore the internet should be without any restrictions except for those that would be governed by the Internet itself.

Argument 1

The Freedom of speech is rooted in American History and by controlling the internet we are going against our constitution. Naturally, humankind is a social creature and the Internet is giving the opportunity to communicate with other people more easily and in a convenient manner. Obviously, the Framers couldn’t predict the birth of the internet. If they knew about future technologies I’m pretty sure they would put something to protect freedom of speech on the internet. The internet makes it much harder for governments to limit the spread of knowledge and information. Any kind of information on any topic is available on the internet ranging from governmental law, market information, trade fairs, and conferences, new ideas, and technical support, the lists are simply endless.

We can use the search engines like Google or Yahoo, websites dedicated to different subjects and a large number of articles and papers are available for perusal in a matter of a few seconds and few keyboard types. There are over 1.5 billion websites on the world wide web today and only less than 200 million are active. The milestone of 1 billion websites was first reached in September of 2014, as confirmed by NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey and first estimated and announced by Internet Live Stats. People can find whatever information they want, they can express themselves and get to know other people’s opinions. Therefore, it is apparent that the internet gives a golden chance to people worldwide to communicate with others which is impossible to achieve during the past decades. The internet is the number one guard of free speech, where people can express themselves freely and I think it should stay the same way.

Argument 2

The U.S already violated freedom of speech and we can clearly see it in the case of Wikileaks. According to the first amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” But yet when it came to the case of WikiLeaks, the Supreme Court decided that Julian Assange is an anarchist.’’His actions in the unauthorized release of classified information are a ploy to gain notoriety for his website ‘’ Lacy, Lee O. “The Case Against WikiLeaks: The Pentagon Papers Reconsidered.” American Intelligence Journal, vol. 30, no. 1, 2012, pp. 129–133. JSTOR. What’s more, the Supreme Court says that Julian Assange is just as dangerous as shouting ‘’fire’’ in a crowded place.

Basically, the U.S. bends the understanding of the freedom of speech as they please. Wikileaks revealed the wrongdoing of the U.S. when they posted a video of U.S. military missile attack in 2007 in Iraq that killed 18 civilians and two journalists. It lifted the curtain that was covering U.S. military actions and that they were portraying as ‘’fighting for democracy and against terrorism’’ when in fact they were just killing civilians. Of course, information like that isn’t beneficial for the U.S. and they decided to take down Julian Assange and Wikileaks.’’Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect U.S. national security. He is being pursued because he has exposed the wrongdoing by U.S. administration and their military forces ‘’ (https://defend.wikileaks.org/)

By persecuting Julian Assange, the U.S. violates the freedom of speech, the freedom of his life (possible death penalty) and his freedom of liberty and justice. The U.S. is breaking bedrock of American society- the freedom of speech and by doing this it goes against the idea that the Founding Fathers created this country for.

If U.S. attempts to control the internet they should definitely check first on other countries experience who already put the restriction on their internet. Many of you probably heard of the Great Firewall of China. You won’t be able to access your favourite websites such as Google, Facebook,and Youtube. Even if you, the websites internet speed that lets you view things or download them will be completely unusable because of the Great Firewall slows them down. This censorship engine allows the Chinese government to control the internet and ‘’protect its citizens’’ from its ‘’dangerous ‘’ content. According to The 2015 list of 10 Most Censored Countries ( part of CPJ's annual publication) China is number 8 in top internet restricted countries and number 3 in top three jailers of journalists in the world, which makes them completely undemocratical country.

In her book ‘’Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall’’ Margarete E. Roberts defines three methods that Chinese government is using to control the internet. The first one is Fear, when they threaten or punish people from talking, posting or commenting about certain stories. Second method is Flooding, when they hire millions of people who distracts or confuses people in the commentary section on social media or protects pro government side. The last one is friction, Roberts explains it as when you need to put extra money, time and effort to access the spread of information. All of these methods would be against the U.S. Constitution.

Counterargument

Instagram, Facebook, Google and everything that people use on a daily basis, it's only the top of the internet iceberg. All of that is just a surface web. Other than visible part of the internet there are two more parts of it. The Deep Web and the Dark Web. Anything that you can’t find on Google is on the Deep Web. Everything that behind a password is a Deep Web(even your email). According to Stewart K. Bertram the Deep Web is 96% of the whole internet. As I said before, the internet is a wonderful place where everyone can find whatever they want. Even though, Google, Yahoo and other search engines block most of illegal things, people who know about dark web can still gain access to all forbidden topics. Under the layers of protection from the government lies the dark web. The dark web is a very dangerous place that you can get access to with special browsers or software.

The main difference between surface web and the Dark Web is basically that it’s almost unreal to track you down. In less than 2 minutes anyone can get access to the Dark Web through search engines like the Tor. In the dark web you can easily buy guns, drugs or even child pornography on the Ebay-like structured dark websites. Because of protection and full anonymity that Dark Web gives people terrorists, predators, spies thrive there. In ‘’The Dark Web’’ Stewart K. Bertram explains why it’s so hard for the U.S. government ( or any government) to track dark web users or block the content because of how complicated it is. The U.S. government is trying to shield their people from possible terrorist attacks and illegal content of the Dark Web. So they should restrict any access to it and make the internet and life in the U.S. safer than before. Because if the terrorist won’t be able to get guns or special chemicals or predators won’t be able to find childporn than U.S. will be a better place.

In conclusion I believe that the Internet should not be regulated. When we speak about something being regulated, the very first question is who or what is supposed to regulate the internet? Is this government? In this case, it would never work. If this are corporations - then all users are automatically give it up into their greedy hands - and they'll make sure to make their profit on our basic right.The freedom of speech. The government, back in the days was limited to very few tasks, and regulating the people and their conversations was not one of them. The government regulates the news and internet, keeping certain things from the general public. Regulating the Internet would contradict what the U.S. idea of freedom stands for. We have the freedom of speech, and our natural rights include the right of pursuit of happiness.