This is the age of information, computers are everywhere, more and more people are buying cellular phones, and now satellite television is not that uncommon. As we try to fit more things into our busy schedule, staying in contact with work and home is becoming more important. Everybody is trying to stay on the cutting edge of information. We want to know what�s going on in the world so we can plan accordingly. There is one major source of information that is becoming increasingly popular, the Internet. Almost everyone who has a computer is connected to millions of computers world-wide. With minimal difficulty, the average home computer can be set up to display web pages. You can do anything from buying a car to research. While you may not want to by a car, the Internet is the best place to do research because, it is updated every second. You can find the most up to date news topics and late breaking stories on the Internet.

This creates a problem, the Internet is a new form of communication which has no laws as to what can or cannot exist on the Internet. The government has addressed this issue by trying to pass bills that limit our first amendment right to free speech. By passing these bills the government will be censoring the Internet. The government is trying to pass law to censor the Internet. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 is one such law. This law would have limited the content of the Internet to a great extent if it had not been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This law would have removed �indecent� material from the Internet as well as e-mail and any other type of electronic communication. This bill would have given the government the authority to monitor personal e-mail. Theoretically, a message could be sent to the same place with the exact same content and the government would not check the one sent throughout the post office, but the one sent electronically would stopped and the person who sent it would be fined and or imprisoned. Censorship is wrong and limiting what is allowed on the Internet should not be a governmental issue.

If the government wants to censor the Internet, they would have to block all of the web pages that can be accessed in other counties from all of the Internet accessible computers in America. Besides, other counties are doing a good job of fighting censorship on their computers. Unless there is a worldwide law for censorship, or the government checks all the web pages in the world, they would have block all the web pages that aren�t created in the U.S. This would cause problems. It would make the American government look bad not only in the eyes of foreign countries but, in the eyes of many businesses. America is the land of opportunity but, with censorship, not on the Internet.

Conservatively speaking, there are well over 30 million web pages in America. There are far more web pages set up outside of our country. The government does not currently have the resources to monitor all of the web pages in the country therefore, they cannot check all of the web pages in the world. If they try to oversee the information flow on the Internet, it would greatly slow down its development.

I use the Internet to get the details about the newest computer games and software. If I need to catch the news, I got to the New York Times homepage. With the Internet, I don�t have to wait for the magazine or newspaper to hit the stands. I don�t even have to walk to the mailbox to get it. Just think about the impact censorship would have on the rate that the Internet is updated. It�s not a one time thing, people update their pages often daily. Every time a revision is made in any web page, it would have to be sent to the government for approval. Without the element of time on its side, the Internet is just like an electronic library of back issue magazines. Forget about email, you�d be better off using the post office. With censorship the government has the right to monitor all electronically transmitted information.

Maybe I haven�t convinced everyone that censorship would do more harm than good yet. There are quite a few people who think that the Internet is littered with pornographic pictures and bomb ingredients. This is not true. I have spent hours upon hour on the Internet and have never come across this material. I�m not saying it�s not out there, it is. What I am saying is, that unless you know what you are looking for, you will rarely access on of these sites accidentally. I will be the first to admit that you can find anything on the Internet. I have seen everything on the web from insurrections on making a multiple warhead nuclear weapon to sports cards trading companies.

Censoring will remove all of the pornography and other indecent material. But, as I stated above, the government doesn�t have the resources to censor the Internet. If you are worried about your child using the Internet, use it with him/her. Not only are you spending time with your child, you are in effect filtering what the child sees. If you don�t have the time to watch you child or the child has access to the computer when you aren�t around to watch, there are many security programs available that will block that material from your computer.