"A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was discussed this week and in the lecture, Andrew Turner, my fellow American in class, leaned over to me and whispered, "This is just like the Declaration of Independence." I do not know how much Australian's study the American Declaration of Independence, but the Cyberspace version is amazingly similar. I can understand why the Cyberspace version would be similar though, I do not want to sound like "a conceded American," but if the Declaration of Independence has been working since 1776, why not use it?
In the tutorial we also talked about the monitoring of the Internet. I personally do not think this can be done. The Internet is too large and it was created to be free. It isn't supposed to have all of these blocks and monitors. Look at China for example. I actually tweeted a link the other day to the "Great Firewall of China". It amazes me how China can have such a strict hold over their Internet.
Basically this is how I see things: there needs to be someone or something out on the Internet patrolling for things such as people who deal with child pornography and child prostitution, but when the Internet gets to the point of the "Great Firewall of China," that is too extreme for my taste and the government needs to reevaluate their system.
I agree, the internet is too big to control. It relies too heavily on self regulation. And even if laws are put in place, the internet is evolving too quickly. Ways around the rules are created as fast as the rules are implemented as demonstrated in Lessig's Gambling in Boral example from "Four Puzzles from Cyberspace". Its a troubling reality but there has to be someone in the world smart enough to find a solution.
ReplyDeleteFreedom is the main reason the internet was created. But at the same time with freedom comes responsibility which means that unfortunately people have been known to exploit this new found freedom. Henceforth a minute amount of control is needed in order to dispel the possibility of 'cyber-anarchy'.
ReplyDeleteExploited they have, and most likely always will and I suppose that just sparks on the constant debates over what to censor and what not and whether it's right to do so. Alas it may always be fought over i guess.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your opinion. Internet should not limited by government. Information also should be transparent and free rather than to be controlled. I was suffered from ‘’Great Firewall’ for many years since I used internet. Actually, users can not cross over the Great Firewall to get the other information. Every single news what we saw which has been scanned by government on the internet. Chinese internet is totally within bureaucratism and authoritarianism. For example, some users upload an article which involved into some sensitive words, after 24 hours even just few hours you won’t see this article again. As a Chinese, I think this is very awful and unhuman that internet has been totally controlled by government.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the your opinion that there does need to be a minimum amount of monitoring, so things such as child pornography and such are dealt with.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the internet is so enormous that this task is quite difficult, however I do believe it is something necessary and something that our society should not live without. If cyberspace is a world that we live in, just as we live in the real world, then there should be forces to govern, regulate and restrict certain content.
You also made a good point in that the Chinese government has gone to the extreme. There needs to be some regulations in online content, but there has to be some freedom as well.
First off, you lost all credibility in my eyes when you name dropped my name :p... That being said your right, there is loads of parallelism between these two documents. I agree that the internet should be free, i liked what Aidan said about legislation not being able to keep up with the constantly evolving internet. I think that regulation falls on us as the users. We need to use our own morals and values to regulate it. Simply, if we see something we don't like or think is bad, report it. We generate the content, we police it. The more restrictions placed on us, the more we feel like we don't have to regulate. We wait for others to do it.
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