GA11

12 February 1, 2012 Views

virtues of censorship to the children of the Arab Spring who are using social networks to oust the their corrupt governments as we speak. Let them run a black pen over the words of the revolutionaries risking their livelihoods to bring about freedom of speech in China. Let them block the likes of Julian Assange and Wikileaks shedding light on the dark practices of the nation that claims to be ‘a beacon of light to the rest of the world.’ For surely they’d censor the world with the same guillotine voice that came down upon the heads of Luther, Locke, and Jefferson.

These much-to-do-about-nothing blame the internet for the corruption of our na-tion’s youth, and spit their rhetorical catch-phrases at PTA conferences saying, “Think of our children, and what kind of example we’re setting for them.” They blame the new found media for freedom for the corruption of a generation, but take little time to realize that at the end of the day they are still the parents of that generation. Their inability to raise their children to their expectations reflects upon their own inabilities to raise their children, and not the horrors of free and unlimited informa-tion. They complain about the immorality and filth of the internet while putting their children in front of a screen for five hours a day in substitution for real parenting.

As the kids of a new generation read textbooks and are taught to look dis-paragingly at the Dark Ages and a mil-lennium without the freedom of public thought and speech, their mothers and fathers attempt to bring us back to a world where free thinkers are reviled as blashpemers, and sanction the only truly free source of information still al-lotted to us. We are living in the time of a new great enlightenment, and as history

has taught us there will always be those opposed to progress. However, it is our responsibility as a society to persevere and not let the folly of our fathers persist into the new millennium.

At one point in history, children couldn’t go anywhere without their par-ent’s permission. And if by some chance

they got away and went to a place they didn’t belong, they would at least get in trouble with the law.

Today, circumstances are somewhat different. Children have more freedom than they ever did before. They don’t need their parent’s permission to visit places that spark their curiosity. And they most certainly don’t have to worry about conflicts with authorities. Best of all, they can visit these places right from the comfort of their bedrooms.

Sure puberty is only knocking, but who needs to wait a few more years to visit a strip club? With just a few clicks and some bogus security questions to confirm the user’s age, the frantic ado-lescent brings the strip club home.

As dad walks in, the tab is simultane-ously shut. Only the pyramids and the periodic table are displayed. Soon the history is obliterated. All traces are gone. Everybody is innocent.

Before long, dad gets his chance also. The process is repeated. Only this time, it’s dad’s rendezvous with Candy girl 216.

It’s just that simple nowadays. With the world at our fingertips, there’s noth-ing we can’t have. Of course, on paper the law is clearly outlined. Sure we are told what we can and can not access. We are told who can access what. And parental control is available if need be. But it’s safe to say these restrictions are hardly hurdles at the moment.

And with the convenience of mobile devices, access to whatever anywhere is inevitable. This includes children bring-ing their gadgets to school and sharing adult rated content with their peers. At times, it’s even possible to find adults taking pleasure in public thanks to their laptops and other devices.

In today’s world, there is absolutely no effort necessary to find obscenity. Maybe all you want to do is catch a glimpse of the funniest kitten on the planet. But along comes the bone head who feels the need to express his tirade against an innocent kitten. Or maybe you just want to catch up on all the scores from last night, but the audience here has

an uncanny ability to change the subject from sports to politics, to race and sud-denly to hatred on an unbelievable level.

Then there are cowards on a whole another level. They hide behind their anonymity and reveal their repulsion of those who maybe suffering due to starva-tion or natural disasters. They regard the information that is reported as irrelevant and the victims as extraneous. Still this is seen as freedom of speech. Ultimately there is hardly anything done to combat this sort of hate.

As for all the personal information we think we share with only a select few, we have no idea how far it actually spreads. Often we forget that advertisers feast on every little bit of information we give. Meaning if you’re black and

single, you are bombarded with ads of black women looking for black men. And all it takes is one click of an ad to open up Pandora’s Box.

This is most certainly true on sites where copyright infringement is the norm. The ads on these websites appear from all corners in hopes of getting the user to click them. And once they’re clicked, what follows is usually an unwanted download, viruses, and other malicious content.

One of the most disturbing trends on the internet recently took place on Facebook as nude photos were posted by hackers. But it was not the first time Facebook had faced such an issue and it most definitely is not the first or last website with this problem. However, this is just a small sample of what happens in a world that’s loosely regulated.

By TomAs KAssAhun

Rampage Reporter

Congress shall make law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, of the press; the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

As governmental forces push ever closer to censorship of the Internet through leg-islation like SOPA, PIPA, and a thousand other special interest bills based in a sense of relative morality, we now risk losing the gift of seemingly infinite knowledge granted to us through the internet. The congressional officers who were elected of the people, by the people, and for the people now seem anything but, pushing ig-norance upon their citizens in exchange for ‘corporate welfare’ and a good Christian’s sense of morality, all the while forgetting the history that sought to make them the protectors of liberty.

During the Red Scare in the 1920’s Americans, fuelled by government pro-paganda became worried that Marxist ideology would infiltrate the country, turning America into a socialist hellscape. In order to escape the looming doomsday prophesized by the McCarthy’s, and the propaganda media of the time, drastic mea-sures were taken to censor anything that the public thought could be sympathetic toward the communist agenda.

Known communists were arrested under false pretenses, literature deemed to be anti-democratic was banned, and even people like Lucille Ball, star of “I Love Lucy,” was black balled from show business for a period of time because her grandfather had convinced her to register as a communist in her youth.

We now look back at those times of misguided fear with a sense of shame, knowing that in our effort to thwart “Big Brother” we became him. We strayed away from the promises of the first amendment for a false sense of security, forgetting the words spoken by Benjamin Franklin centuries ago- “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

Yet today, men ignorant of history are intent on repeating its folly, chastising the genius for poking at the insecurities of society in an effort to see the world remain in the purgatory of stagnation, forfeiting progress for pseudo security.

So let them tell their anecdotes about the

By Jesse FrAnz

Rampage Reporter

“...it is our responsi-bility as a society to persevere and not let the folly of our fa-thers persist into the new millennium.”

-Jesse Franz

The reporter can be reached at [email protected]

“And all it takes is one click of an ad to open up Pandora’s Box.”

-Tomas Kassahun

The reporter can be reached at [email protected]

PRO CON

SHOULD THE INTERNET BE REGULATED?