Censorship and Information Privacy Policies in Eastern Asia and the United States of America

The media could be determined a tremendous and powerful weapon. If used properly, it can provide society with great benefits, but if used in negative ways, it can destroy. In a modern world where information can spread as fast as wildfires, a reason to monitor or limit types of media appear rational, but along with that, irrational cases still exist. This argument has circled in the United States for a while and a decision needs to be made. Parents and citizens around the United States think concerningly about what our eyes witness on the news, in stores, on billboards, etc. When the government determines what appears in the media, it not only belittles citizens, but it denies the First Amendment, which states the basic rights of an American. Censorship of the media, as displayed in 1984, clearly exhibits the violation of the First Amendment, rightfully given to the citizens of the United States, by the founding fathers of this country.

Censorship in China has gained much attention recently because of the conflict between Google and the Chinese government’s self-censorship policies. In fact, censorship has been practiced since ancient China and the intensity only increases by the years. Nowadays, the most notable measure of censorship is being done on the Internet. More and more restrictions have been put into actions by the Chinese government, which make the life of Chinese Internet users, the Chinese netizens, very inconvenient. With the intensity of censorship increasing and the censoring technology improving, Internet censorship has mainly negative effects on Chinese society.

Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. This can include blocking entire websites, blocking parts of certain websites, prohibiting certain search engine keywords, monitoring individual internet use, and punishing individuals for this use. On a smaller scale, companies censor access to certain websites to increase productivity in workers or decrease chances of a sexual harassment lawsuit. Parents may block certain website on their family computers in an attempt to maintain their child’s innocence. On a much larger scale, entire governments can censor or track the Internet use of its constituents.

When discussing internet censorship, one of the major concerns is what children can see on the internet. Internet censorship was a huge deal during the 1990’s and early 2000’s and it still is to this very day. The internet back then was much different than it is today. Back then, we could only access the internet from a computer and most people didn’t own one back then. Nowadays, most people have multiple computers and a cell phone that can access the internet. It was easier for parents to control what their children could have access to back then. Now, parents can still put restrictions on the router settings and set a timer for when the internet shuts off but kids can always just go somewhere else that may have internet access to view any

In this paper, I will compare and contrast Internet censorship in Canada and China. While China is widely known for censoring the Internet for political reasons, Canada remains relatively free of censorship. Through this paper I argue that the large differences between censorship in Canada and China are due to their inherent political systems. Currently, China is the leading country in Internet censorship technology, policy and practice. By comparing China, a secular country, to Canada, I intend to show one of the biggest contrasts in censoring ideologies in the world.

Censorship in the common world, is like racism, there is a little grey area. To pass however, there will be no more mention of this grey area; just the words “No censorship”. Source C, D, and F fit into my mindset. As humans, censorship is harmful to our society.

“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”( Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed,2002) In the 21st century, technology has advanced significantly, making invasion of privacy much easier and much more common. Thus, due to the government’s implementation of censorship in society today, the invasion of public’s privacy is a much greater issue. As a result of the invasion of the public’s privacy, human rights are constantly violated,

Today, the internet has evolved, and is continuing to do so, into a give-and-take source of payed information and free information. Payed information has now evolved from just payed software to payed websites like Match.com to Amazon and Apple Music, things the elites accept as socially acceptable to have and is expect from everyone else to accept.

Imagine living in a country where you could be imprisoned for speaking against the common viewpoint; where holding a specific set of opinions could ruin your life and land you locked up in a tiny cell at the mercy of your superiors. It sounds like it came straight from a dystopian novel, but this is a reality for many people in this world. In countries like China, a person’s freedom of expression is severely limited. If you speak out against the government or actively voice certain viewpoints, you could be imprisoned (Freedom). In other places, such as the United States, people enjoy a much more open society when it comes to freedom of expression. But even in the U.S., some people believe the answer to our problems lies in banning certain types

Michael Anti is another person has a different perspective of censorship but the anti-censorship. Anti made a TED video explains the censorship of the Chinese’s internet, and how their firewall is like the Great Wall of China protecting their people. Anti described the situation of the Chinese’s internet as the cat and mouse game. The cat is the Chinese’s internet as in the government and the mouse as the citizens using the internet (TED video). He explained that all the social websites that the United States of America have and other countries like Twitter, Facebook, etc., the Chinese have their own version. The video continues to give detail on the Chinese’s government and how it prevents citizens to access the global internet and inaccessibility

(Finlay) Up until recently in China, the government has censored the population and its activities until lower-class and farmer backed blogs started to appear, revealing and declassifying the tyrannies and horrible practices of the government, but the government has been able to shoot them down with their impermeable internet firewall. In China, there is a very strict internet firewall that restricts the media output of the citizens that is sometimes referred to as the Great Firewall of China. The Chinese government is trying to “control public discourse.”5 The public discourse referred to in this article are blogs and online forums where people can share their opinions about the articles they read online. The articles are also banned

It's prevalent to affirm that the China and the United States relationship have improved over serval decades; nevertheless, both countries does not seem to play by the same rules. China censorship and apply heavy laws and regulations to benefit its local industry over the rest of the world's organizations in an apparent unfair manner; having said that, the Hofstede’s individualism cultural dimension sets China as a collaborative nation and the United States as an individualistic nation. With this precedent, would you think that a third party or mediator could be the driver that allows both nations to collaborate and coordinate their agenda?

Throughout the long history of China, central government has played a significant role in practicing surveillance on all sorts of social media. Numerous people were arrested or killed by the government merely because they spread messages which are potentially harmful to the government, similar as the thought crimes described in George Orwell’s novel,1984. After the establishment of PRC, the communist party took over this tradition and started spying on people via all the methods in order to stay in control. With the increasing popularity of Internet, China has set up one of

What if you were online shopping for clothes, concert tickets, or sports equipment and all of a sudden, the webpage became blocked? Would you feel that your government is protecting you or preventing you from having freedom on the internet? This is a controversy currently being discussed in China. The censorship of the internet in China is also referred to as the Great Firewall. There are 1.4 billion people in China and 751 million citizens use the internet; that is equivalent to the total population of Europe. More than half of the Chinese population uses an internet that is controlled and censored by the government (Feng and Winjing). The Great Firewall in China ensures online safety for children, reduces illegal activity,

In the United States, every child, teenager and adult uses Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook, among numerous other sites, regularly. The internet is open and uncensored for the most part, other than parental controls. In China, most, if not all of those types of sites are or have been blocked. As in, you could not go to them, unless you found some way around the web filters and firewalls the Chinese government runs in their country. While China defends their practice of internet censorship, based on “protecting” the people, heavy internet censorship is a block to free speech and impedes economic and social development in the 21st century.