The Rise Of Internet Censorship

Internet censorship refers to the suppression and control of what people can access, publish, or view on the cyberspace (Reynolds, 2014). It may be done by regimes or private firms at the command of the government. It can be a government’s initiative is or carried out by regulators. Organizations and individuals may practice self-censorship for religious, business or moral reasons to comply with societal norms, out of fear of consequences such as legal impact, or owing to intimidation. The degree of cyberspace censorship differs on a nation-to-nations basis. Most democratic nations have moderate cyberspace censorship. Other nations go as far as to restrict the information accessibility; they suppress discussion among citizens and limit news. Internet censorship can also occur in anticipation of or in response to events like protests, riots or elections. An ideal example is the increased level of censorship owing to the Arab Spring events. Other censorship areas include defamation, copyrights, obscene material and harassment.

“After a string of adverse legal decisions, Napster, Inc. began its death spiral on March 6, 2001, when it began complying with a Federal court order to block the transfer of copyrighted material over its peer-to-peer network” (History.com). The death spiral of Napster happened rapidly. After Napster went out of business many websites like pandora and Spotify learned from Napster’s mistakes and got legal rights to the music but without Napster, they wouldn't be around.

"Censoring the internet would take away individual or group rights. If the internet would be censored the government would band information online that is thought to be objectionable or dangerous. The remove of ideas that are available to society online would prejudge the material for everyone and take away the option of making one’s own opinions on given topics. This removal of information would take away the right to fear all sides of every issue and to make individualized judgments on those issues. These rights are protected under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. The First Amendment was passed by Congress on September 25, 1789 and it states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment

Artists such as Metallica have suffered from this problem. They sued Napster for copyright infringement and were on their way to shut Napster from its services. Napster was facing legal charges from both the artists and the music industry and that made it hard for them to fight the battle. They thought it was easy, but the judge ruled against Napster.

The problem of illegal downloading in the recording industry was a result of specific technological developments. It was the development of MP3 file formats for digital audio recordings, which first emerged in the early 1990s, but did not become a significant copyright threat to the recording industry

The Internet has served as a medium for peers to share any kind of files, like pictures, videos, music, books, etc. However, in order for peers to be able to exchange files, a platform is needed. There are many platforms available that serve as a bridge technology so that peers can share files with other peers around the world. These platforms only serve as a connection devise and not as a piracy store. As a result of the existence of these types of platforms, industries became concerned that this practice is violating the copyrights of the copyright holders. These industries demand that these platforms are shut down. However, these sharing file platforms state that they are not

Though it doesn 't receive as much attention in terms of media attention and public discourse as it earlier in the 2000s, the issue of copyrighted music and its illegal consumption over the internet still continues to be a major issue. With the advent of the internet, digital music, and mp3 players, one of the drawbacks for many of those in the music industry was the subsequent increase in pirated music that occurred. As illegal torrent sites appeared, such as Napster and Limewire, people were discovering that they could now download for free what they once paid for. Of course, as a direct result, music companies and artists both saw a significant decrease in sales in terms of the physical medium, with CD sales beginning to show sharp declines. In fact, this had a carryover effects of also closing down many of the mom and pop record stores that existed, since they did not have the financial means to withstand a restructuring process. Major chain stores were also not immune to the decline sales, as some once-prominent stores, such as the Virgin Megastore and the Wall, had to close down. Once Apple Inc. released its iPod and created the iTunes Store, the music industry was finally beginning to adapt itself to the digital realm, as Apple began signing agreements with most of the major music labels to release their songs on a digital platform as well. With songs being available individually for just $0.99 cents and whole albums able to be purchased, people now had a legal

With today’s technology, communication and information can travel across the world in a matter of seconds. Ever since the internet was first made publically available in 1991 the ease of accessing entertainment, education, and information has been increasing every year. We now live in an age where roughly 30% of all people in the entire world are connected to the web ("World Internet Usage Statistics New and World Population Stats"). However, despite the obvious advantages of the internet’s freedom, some countries are trying to control the internet and display what it deems appropriate for the public eye. Many countries, including Australia, China, and North Korea implement a system to filter web content. Even the United States is now

The first real attempt at public policy against internet piracy began with SOPA and PIPA, twins bills introduced in early 2012, that were designed to give the government the right to “block the domain names of infringing sites” and “allow rights holders to seek court orders requiring payment providers, advertisers, and search engines to stop doing business with an infringing site.” (Newman) In layman’s terms, the bills gave them the power to take down any website they believed to be committing piracy and to cut off that website from any advertisers or search engines, and any site accused would have five days to appeal its case.

No one wants to be censored, but sometimes there has to be a limit for the greater good. What kids are able to view and read on the internet must be protected until they are old enough to handle the information that is available by the multitudes on the internet. Parents should have the right or the ability to censor the information that comes into their home.

There are internet service providers that are helping in the fight against internet pirates. However, there are also service providers that are helping in the fight that do not enforce the antipiracy rules enough and that allows the pirates to continue on with piracy. The problem is that internet piracy has been around for quite a while. “Still, in the eyes of the industry, illegal downloads remain a lingering problem. According to the RIAA, since Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have fallen 53%, from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $7 billion in 2013” (Jones 1). The problem has been around since the late 1990s and has since then evolved more with more torrent sites being created and giving people opportunities for free music or free movies. This has caused a problem with many people in the music and film industries. The music industry has suffered more from internet piracy with internet pirates constantly posting music on torrent sites that allows most users to download them for free. This causes music sales to go down and this causes the music industry to lose more money than they could have gained if everybody bought their music. Consider piracy of music and giving it away for free a way of theft. Bootlegging is robbing music sales as well as people do buy pirated albums as wells. This just goes to show the problem with piracy is getting bigger.

Until the 1980s, it was difficult to copy creative works. Books were only printed and bound on paper, and music was stored on vinyl records. With the introduction of the digital age and the use of binary code to transmit information, it has suddenly become much easier to infringe on copyright laws (Ford, Adam, and C. Ames Cushman). For example, the website “Napster” was founded in 1999 as a music downloading website that expanded until it had 38 million users. Unfortunately, the website was not paying for the numerous copies of music it was allowing its users to download, so the Recording Industry Association of America sued Napster for $100,000 for each song and won. Napster was officially bankrupt and shut down by 2002, allowing the music industry to recover and make a deal with a fair, legal website known as iTunes (Choate 275). Although the obvious reasons for not participating in piracy or copyright infringements are that laws state that these acts are illegal, there are additional reasons. In a world where information is increasingly available online, intellectual property must be protected by restricting piracy and illegal copying in order to ensure the livelihoods of content creators, encourage creative thinking, and preserve the United State’s national security and technological prowess.

Napster, which was created in 1999, became an internet sensation in the blink of an eye. It was a free file-sharing community that involved millions of users. Napster linked numbers computers to a centralized server, which was accessible to almost anyone that had access to the internet. When logged onto the server, users could see music files along with their location, and begin to download them to their computer library. Users had the ability to search for music on peoples computers around the world.

Everyone has heard of the Internet and how it is going to help set the world free. The Internet is the fastest growing form of communication and is becoming more and more common in the home. Companies these days do big business over the Internet, and online shopping has grown tremendously in the last few years. For instance, the online auction site eBay sells millions of items every year online. Many companies are making even more plans to expand their business to the Internet. Unfortunately, there have been numerous attempts lately to censor the Internet. If the Internet is controlled, regulated, restricted, or censored it will have harsh effects on its capabilities.

Due to their unwillingness to see the opportunity to evolve and change as the trends began to foreshadow the concept of file sharing within the music industry, music labels were forced to transfer their power into the consumer's hands. One of the commonly cited causes for the lack of success of organizational change is “resistance to change.” (Palmer) Streaming music also known as downloading music are common legal terms used in today's age to describe how to acquire music, however in less than twenty years ago the idea of file sharing was deemed a no-no. The introduction of MP3 files, file sharing networks such as Napster and Kazaa, and the widespread practice of illegally downloading copyrighted music files constituted a