Source: Greenberg-arts.com
2 years ago, ABC News (2008) had interviewed journalist and author of "The Blogging Revolution", Antony Loewenstein, who discussed the blogging trend in Cuba, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Seeing a similarity, Loewenstein describes that these nations' governments have filter the Internet services in their area's and limit their information width. Hence, with censorship, many blogs and websites are blocked from views and this also affect the people's right to express their ideas, silencing freedom of speech in the countries. At the same time, some people were having very limited access to the Internet, as only the privileged ones from the middle class were able to enjoy it. Cuba has suffered as the "least developed" country in the Internet world as Loewenstein had studied.
It is obvious that most of all countries in the world constitute the rights for freedom of speech to the people. As blogs become popular in the Internet world, they offer the opportunity for people to voice out in almost any event or incident they face, as well as to have the ability to comment with other fellow bloggers (VanFossen, 2007). With this feature in the Internet, blogs help widens the public sphere in the society as diversities of ideas on their region keep on increasing. Here, we can see that blogs are the symbols of freedom of speech in the Internet.
However, while governments are trying to prevent the spread of crimes activity on the Internet, the option of Internet filtering may affect the public sphere of the society, as well as preventing the voices of dissemination from being spread apart. Excessive practice of censorship, will cause negative public opinion from the global society, specially from the Western nations. VanFossen (2007) gave an example of a Chinese blogger who defended his property from the Chinese government had his blog being shut down after having a huge numbers of views. This further gave the Chinese government more bad impressions against the rights of freedom of speech in the eyes of the world.
In conclusion, a government should not excessively filter the Internet as it violates the people's rights of education and freedom of speech. As stated in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 2010), the people are born free in equal of dignity and rights. However, law enforcement still should be applied in order to track unscrupulous cyber crimes and seditious remarks in the Internet.
References:
ABC, 2008, "The Blogging Revolution", viewed June 15, 2010, <http://www.greenberg-art.com/.toons/.Toons,%20Media/qqxsgInternet%20censorship.gif>
UN, 2010, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights", viewed June 15, 2010, <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml>
VanFossen, L 2007, "Blogging Freedom of Speech: Can You Really Say Whatever You Want?", viewed June 15, 2010, <http://www.blogherald.com/2007/03/27/blogging-freedom-of-speech-can-you-really-say-whatever-you-want/>
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