Why Internet Censorship is a Bad Idea

In this modern times, information is very easy to obtain. It is different when we compared it to the previous age. Right now, thanks to the internet we can obtain information wherever and whenever we want to. The internet provides free flowing data and information for us to see. The users can find any information they want such as information about a car, information about how to cook a certain dish, information about education, and etc. they almost can find anything without any limitation thanks to the internet. Even though the internet can be accessed from any places and at any time, the internet is open to everyone yet some countries decided to ban or censors some resources on the internet. “Reasons they restricted some access are vary, starting from the contents are bad, contents are copyrighted, the government do not want the citizen to see the contents, and etc”. Censorship on the internet may sound good but in reality it is a bad idea because it gives a lot of negative impact to the internet users in many forms.

Right now with the help of the internet, we can search any information that we want. One study done involving young pupils had revealed some 97% of students had obtained information via the Internet rather than using the library (Aktay 2018). Based on the research we can tell that most of the students used the internet to study rather than going to a library because it is more convenient. If the government limit the access of the internet it will directly impact to the students because most of them used the internet to find materials and sources to study and limiting access would mean limiting the ability of the students to improve or to learn new things and it would likely impact the quality of the education of the country itself. Government censors forced users to use VPNs or other similar tools to get around technical censorship filters (2017). The main purpose of censorship is to block the access to a certain website but it also encourage the users to use another alternative to bypass the censored website by using a VPN. The government effort in blocking some certain websites is deemed useless and the money that is invested into the censorship project will be wasted because what is the point of censorship if the users can bypass the censorship system.

A real life example of Internet censorship is Article 13 that is published by EU. So, what is article 13 and what impact does it gives to the internet? Article 13 is the part of the new EU Copyright Directive that covers how to deal online copyright content such as movies, television, game, and song (Fox 2019). From the definition we can tell that Article 13 is a law to limit the share of copyright content on the internet. Article 13, requires online platforms to filter or remove copyrighted material from their websites. What article 13 wants is to remove all copyrighted materials from a website which pose a problem for a website that relies on user generated content such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and etc. something like this is a problem because article 13 can kill the internet itself. Most of the content that the user post in social media could be pictures like memes, links, and videos. With article 13 around, people cannot share pictures like memes freely in the social media, memes are intended for entertainment purpose or humor for the internet users. If the users are not allowed to share memes that means the user are not allowed to have fun the internet. Also, memes can be used for satire and criticism, and if it is banned then it is the same as limiting users’ freedom of speech. Other than sharing pictures, another website that relies on user generated content such as twitch is in trouble too. Video game content belongs to the developer and publisher of the game, so streamers and the platforms they use could potentially be held liable for copyright violations under Article 13 by streaming or uploading gameplay videos without permission. People in twitch usually live stream a gameplay and the game is a copyright content. If the article 13 is in effect, the streamer is doing a crime and eventually the streamer will lose his job while twitch will lose a user that generates contents. It can impact on the streamer career and twitch business and that would be very bad for both the streamer and twitch.

Other than Article 13 that is created by EU, North Korea also limit the access to the internet but it is even worse than the article 13. Normal citizens in North Korea do not get access to the internet, the privilege to access the internet is left to a select number in the country, known as elites, as well as some academics and scientists (Lee 2012). It sounds awful that normal citizens cannot access the internet and the citizens will never know about a credibility of an information they received, they can be tricked by the government with false informations or even manipulated with false information and for the rest of their life they will never know the truth. Normal citizen will also have a hard time to interact with people outside from their country because they do not have the privilege to access the internet. North Korea has developed its own devices such as smartphones, tablets, and software, including Red Star 3.0, an operating system that mimics IOS and these products were carefully designed to control and monitor information of the users, Red Star 3.0 has surveillance capabilities, and the interface of the intranet, Kwangmyong, is set up to give the impression that the user has full internet access. An analysis of Red Star’s capabilities by the tech-focused outlet Fast Company found that its approximately 5,000 web pages mostly contain propaganda (Jerreat 2017). To limit the interaction with outside world, North Korea created their own devices, the problem is those devices are designed to monitor the users. Even with a communication devices the citizens cannot have their own private time when using it because the government constantly monitor them and it feels like they are not allow to have a private time when using the devices. Other than the devices, webpages on the North Korea internet are made of propaganda which can be bad for the citizens. Imagine if a child in North Korea surfs the internet and the thing that the child can only found is propaganda. The child will be brain washed by the propaganda and it will affect the child mindset and can directly affect the child future.

Some people disagree about the censorship of the internet but there are some people who agree with it. Most of people agree because in the internet you can search anything such as education, news, pirated software, and even porn and it is very easy for children to find porn in the internet. The Digital Economy Act was largely launched off the back of a report from the NSPCC that claimed more than half of children and teenagers that ended-up looking at porn 'stumbled across' it on the internet. It is certainly a bad thing for children to see porn because they can get addicted to it and to prevent that most of the government decided to block porn in their countries. However, it is not the government job to block porn websites but rather it is parents’ job to supervise their children when surfing the internet. Any trained Computer Science graduate that took cyber security course or networking could create a secure encryption system to disguise data that they want to be sent to another party. In this case, government censorship means nothing to them and it is because they can hide the information from the censorship system through the encryption and send the encrypted data such as porn to the others. Also, children can be exposed to pornography through another media such as television, radio, magazines, and so on other than the internet. Blocking the internet does not mean preventing children to search porn. Other than the internet, porn can be introduced through television, magazines, and etc. Therefore, blocking the internet is useless and does not resolve the problem.