Reflection of lecture 2017/05/17

                       The censorship question, should we or should we not?

The internet is the fastest way to give and receive information, for me the internet is the best thing since sliced bread. But with this freedom of information on the web comes responsibility. Regrettably it is being abused by certain individuals to disseminate pornography, hate posts, copyrighted material (movies). An event that is playing out at the moment: hackers are demanding a ransom from Disney Studios in America. These hackers have illegally downloaded (stole) the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” from Disney Studios, they are demanding a ransom, if not they will disseminate the movie on the web which will lead to losses for the movie studio. The issue is currently being investigated by the FBI in America.  

Also, it’s a fact that children can be easily influenced and manipulated by various kinds of information and influences on the web. Like the current Russian “Blue Whale Suicide Game”, that encourages teens to commit suicide. The game does its rounds on Instagram. Teenagers gets a task from “administrators” that includes self-harming, viewing scary movies and waking at strange hours of the night, the tasks gets more extreme, with participants encouraged on the last day of the game to kill themselves. It is due to these reasons, in my opinion, that information on the web should be managed and censored. Some people are of the view that not all information on the web are indecent, they would view certain information as useful and others might view it as harmful, which can lead to a loss of morality. Having said that, censorship should be applied with caution as to guarantee freedom of expression of responsible citizens. The issues of censorship will always be a contentious one as everyone’s agenda and interests are not the same.  It’s the duty of the government to censor the internet as to protect citizens from disinformation, immorality and also to prevent the distribution of copyrighted material.

Here is a link of a clip relating to the past, present and furure of internet censorship:
 https://youtu.be/spapXznZf4I