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Kaitlyn ONeill
Adam Padgett
English 102
3 April 2016
Should the Federal Government be allowed to Regulate Information on the Internet?
The Internet has come a long way throughout the years. It has gotten to the point now
where people use the Internet to do research and gain knowledge on different subjects. When
using the Internet, one must be cautious as to what one is reading because there is the possibility
that the information may be wrong. The reason for this is because anyone can post information
on the Internet, which is why it is important to know which websites are credible or not. Since
people can just post whatever on the Internet, there is a possibility that what a person posts could
be offensive to the government or someone else. When this happens, the government jumps in
and regulates that information on the Internet through censoring. This concept brings us to the
question: Should the federal government be allowed to regulate information on the Internet?
In order to better understand what the question is asking, one must understand what is
meant by the word regulate. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, regulate means, to
bring (something) under the control of authority (regulate). In other words, when the
government regulates information on the Internet, they are controlling, for the most part, what
information can and cannot be seen or posted. One way in particular that the government is
doing this is through censoring information. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
censoring is defined as when a personexamines books, movies, letters, etc, and removes
things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, [and] etc (censor), so
basically when the government comes across information such as obscene information, they will

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censor it by either somehow removing it or blocking the material on the Internet. The federal
government should not be allowed to regulate information on the Internet because it violates
peoples rights, it limits resources, and it could eventually lead to people not knowing what the
truth is anymore.
The federal government should not be allowed to regulate information on the Internet
because it violates peoples rights. People have the right to Internet freedoms, and according to
the First Amendment of the Constitution, we have freedom of speech. It is understandable for the
federal government to regulate information by censoring information that is obscene. Their main
reason behind it is because the Internet is accessed by people of all ages, which includes children
(who should not have access to obscene information). This is the mind set of the federal
government and of the people who agree with this side of the argument. Although they make a
good case on why regulating this specific type of information on the Internet should occur,
censoring this information on the Internet does go against peoples Internet freedoms. I am not
saying it is okay to look at obscene information, but information should be left alone on the
Internet. It should be up to each individual to censor that information from themselves if they do
not want access to it, but no one, including the government, should be able to censor information
for other people because the government are people too. Who is to decide what to regulate? In
the article titled, Untangling The Web: Exploring Internet Regulation Schemes In Western
Democracies, Renee Keen states, Its approach to the regulation of Internet content involves
allowing Internet users to regulate their own internet experience by offering tools to assist
citizens in controlling the content that they see, rather than giving this power to a third party or
requiring compliance by law (Keen). This goes along with the First Amendment by means of
freedom of speech and of press. People will go far enough to say that blocking or removing

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information that they posted on the Internet is like taking away their right to speak their mind or
read what they want. A law review written by Sean J Petrie states, banning Internet obscenity
restricts speech in an unprecedented manner, such a law requires a careful reexamination of
applicable First Amendment doctrines (Petrie 638). In this quote, Petrie is talking about
obscenity laws for the government to be able to regulate that information, but it is not that simple
to make it just happen because it has to revolve around the First Amendment without it violating
it.
The federal government should not be allowed to regulate information on the Internet
because it limits resources. In schools nowadays, students use the Internet to do research for
projects and papers. Students even use the Internet to help look up answers to complete work
sheets. School districts are starting to bring technology into the schools, and some classes have
gone digital to where everything that is needed for the class is online. An article titled
Mythology and Internet Filtering states, So blocked, filtered and locked out is school Internet
access that the Internet is now a useless tool for us, said one Los Angeles art teacher whose
class can't even call up basic portfolios (Males). This is an example of what students and
teachers have to deal with when they are trying to do something for their class, and they are
unable to do it because they are blocked from sites. Censorship in schools does more harm than
good because it is limiting resources for the students. Michael Males writes, Congressnow
wants to use federal funds to force even more school censorship such as mandatory library
blockers (Males). It is quite annoying when a student is doing research for a paper, they go to
click on a link, and it will not let them through because that website is blocked. This has
happened to me on multiple occasions back when I was in middle school and high school. After a
while it seemed like all the sites that I clicked on ended up being blocked, which made it even

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harder on me to find information on whatever I was writing my paper. Michael Males writes,
Yes, schools and businesses have an interest in keeping students and employees on task rather
than browsing sports or porn sites, but that (as in any other kind of sloughing) is the job of
supervision, not hysterically sweeping technical censorship (Males). Just like what this quote
says, schools mean well with having censorship in them, but in the long run, having censorship
in schools is very inconvenient. It does not enhance learning capabilities, it makes it harder for
students to find specific information that they need to do well in their classes. In high school, we
were told that everything that we do on the Internet can be seen by the district office, which was
a good enough reason for a bunch of the students to stay on task. If the students stay on task,
there is no real need for much censorship on the Internet.
Another reason the federal government should not be allowed to regulate information on
the Internet is because it could eventually lead to people not knowing what the truth is anymore.
When someone tampers with something, such as regulating information, after a while others
would not be able to detect that the information has been messed with. This relates to the book
1984 with the concept of Big Brother. For example, in the book the government takes all of the
books and written materials and regulates them by removing information and changing it to
shape what people learn and think about. The government in the book 1984 basically took all the
information that talked negatively about the government and that they did not agree with, and
they got rid of it by censoring it so that no one would have access to it. This is basically what the
government does in real life, especially in other countries. In the article titled Internet
Censorship by Governments Is a Human Rights Violation, it mentions that a blogger named
Anas Maarawi got arrested in Syria for voicing his views on the Internet (Clinton). The views
that Maarawi was voicing were about the government, and the government did not like it, which

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is why he got arrested. Arresting the guy was the easiest way to get him to stop putting
information that the government did not agree with out on the Internet, so it was like a way of
censoring and removing information. In the article that Fred Charatan wrote, it talks about health
websites and how the government does not have a law that adjusts information on them
(Charatan). It states, healthcare experts try to ensure the integrity of health information on the
internet (Charatan). The reason for this is so that people can trust what they read and not have to
worry about it being false information or altered. Health information has to do with a persons
well-being, which does not give the government a reason to censor or change this kind of
information. If the government were to start regulating and/or censoring this kind of information,
eventually no one would question it because they would not know that it was altered. Another
example would be in China. The article titled, Just Doing Business or Doing Just Business:
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! And the Business of Censoring Chinas Internet states, In the case
of Google, the concern was providing China with a version of a search engine that omitted
references to the 1989 events of Tiananmen Square, terms like freedom, and Falun Gong the
banned religious group (Dann 219). It shows that the information on the Internet, especially in
China is censored because in this case, the Chinese government keeps an eye out on what they
want to keep the people of China from knowing. This censoring will eventually lead to people
not knowing the truth about specific events, like Tiananmen Square. Some more examples of
people eventually not knowing the truth about certain things due to censoring information in
other countries are mentioned in Renee Keens article. It states, Germany censors material
containing holocaust denials; China actively censors political dissent, and Brazil and Canada
censor broad categories of racial hate speech (Keen). From these examples, one can tell that the

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information that the governments from each of the countries censors are the mistakes that have
occurred in the past that they do not want to remember or have their people talk about.
In conclusion, there are some good reasons to why information on the Internet should be
regulated. Although, the reasons for why the federal government should not be allowed to
regulate information on the Internet outweigh and outnumber the opposing reasons. In the article
titled Balancing free speech and censorship: academias response to the Internet, it says,
Information that is unethical and illegal must be censored. However, gray areas exist where
information is considered either illegal but ethical (for example, gambling sites are illegal in
some areas, but considered ethical by many individuals), or legal but unethical (for example,
pornography is considered unethical by many individuals, but is legal in some areas) (Peace
106). The gray areas that Peace talks about in his article are what the government thinks should
be censored on the Internet (Peace 106). Although things such as pornography on the Internet
should be censored, it is not the federal governments say. It is each individuals own decision as
to whether or not they want access to whatever it may be that is out there on the Internet. A.
Graham Peace states in his article, institutions clearly do not see Internet censorship as a
pressing issue on campuses of institutions (Peace 106). The reason for this is because most
college or university campuses do not have Internet censorship going on, but there are some that
do. Peace writes, The University of Oklahoma initiated a policy of censoring pornographic Web
sites (Peace 106), which would be an example of one of the universities where censorship is
occurring. According to the article titled Untangling the Web: Exploring Internet Regulation
Schemes in Western Democracies, it says, While all governments have been faced with novel
complications posed by the prevalence of the World Wide Web, democratic nations have had to
confront the uniquely difficult matter of balancing the need to regulate illegal material, while

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simultaneously preserving the inherently democratic freedoms upon which they are built
(Keen). In other words, even though the federal government wants to regulate information, they
will abide by the rights and the freedoms of the people, which at least brings the two sides of the
argument to somewhat of an arrangement if this argument is never settled.

Word Count: 2077

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Works Cited
Censor. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster.com online.
Charatan, Fred. "Buyer Beware" Remains US Policy Towards Information on the Net. BMJ:
British Medical Journal 324.7337 (2002): 566566. Web.
Clinton, Hillary. "Internet Censorship by Governments Is a Human Rights Violation." Internet
Censorship. Ed. Margaret Haerens and Lynn M. Zott. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2014.
Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. of "Remarks at the Conference on Internet Freedom." N.p.: n.p., 2011.
N. pag. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 3 Feb. 2016.

Dann, Elijah, and Neil Haddow. "Proxy Login - University Libraries - USC." Proxy Login University Libraries - USC. Springer International Publishing, 30 Mar. 2007. Web. 08
Feb. 2016.
Keen, Renee. "Untangling The Web: Exploring Internet Regulation Schemes In Western
Democracies." San Diego International Law Journal 13.1 (2011): 351-381. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Males, Michael. "Mythology And Internet Filtering." Teacher Librarian 28.2 (2000):
16. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Mar. 2016.
Peace, A. Graham. "BALANCING FREE SPEECH AND CENSORSHIP: Academia's Response To The
Internet." Communications Of The ACM 46.11 (2003): 105-109. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Petrie, Sean J. Indecent Proposals: How Each Branch of the Federal Government Overstepped
Its Institutional Authority in the Development of Internet Obscenity Law. Stanford Law
Review 49.3 (1997): 637665. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.

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Regulate. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster.com online.