Freedom of speech on the internet, who controls it...

There are many different issues that can arise when discussing freedom of speech and the use of the internet to express one’s thoughts and ideas. In the article I reviewed titled, “The Academy and Cyberspace Ethics” discusses this topic in detail.

“One of the great problems with the atmosphere of free expression now tolerated on the Net is the fragility of communities and their susceptibility to disruption. The only alternative to imposing potentially dangerous restrictions on freedom of expression is to develop norms, folklore, ways of acceptable behavior that are widely modeled, taught and valued”.(Kittross, J., 2003)

This quote outlines the ethical dilemma of freedom of speech that is presented when communicating in cyberspace. It refers to open lines of communication that exists and that there are no real rules or laws to dictate what can be said in cyberspace by who, which can leave a lot up to the interpretation of readers. Cyberspace can be referred to as an electronic community; as some are linked together and other are isolated. This is a key factor in the lack of regulations that governor the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents and then allowing the information to be linked together. Sir Tim Berners helped to develop the Web in 1990, the Web is unique in that no one person’s owns or controls it. “I think IT projects are about supporting social systems-about communications between people and machines. They tend to fail due to cultural issues”. (Berners, T.,n.d.) This quote is the perfect example as to how cyberspace can affect the way we live our lives. Sir Berners-Lee believes that the World Wide Web is exactly what you make of it, if you intend to use it for bad things than that is exactly what you will get out of it. However, his main goal for the Web was to create an independent universal platform for communicating with others and not to restrict the freedom of speech. I think that this means that individuals should be able to use the Web as a form of communication, but should be held responsible for their words.



References:

Berners-Lee, T. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved July 10, 2010, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tim_bernerslee.html

Kittross, J., & Gordon, A. (2003). The Academy and Cyberspace Ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 18(3/4), 286-307. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.