Free Speech on the Internet: The Boundaries of Censorship
             With the ever-growing popularity of the Internet more and more people are concerned with the vast amounts of uncensored material that can be accessed. Although there have been many attempts to legally censor the Internet, thus far most have failed. The common thread that runs through each of these articles is the extent to which censorship should be applied to material on the Internet. Most all agree that to some degree there is already some forms of censorship being exercised today, especially outside of the United States. Although free speech is a constitutionally guaranteed right for American citizens, not everyone has this liberty. Countries in the East push the limits of censorship on the Internet even though only a small number of citizens have access to computers. Because the Internet is still a new medium of information it is difficult to interpret how censorship should be addressed and even who should address the issue. The fact that the Internet is a glob!
             al source of information makes it even harder to place censorship restrictions based upon the United States Constitution.
             The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has led the fight for free speech on the Internet and is very outspoken about their views on censorship. Although many feel that censorship in moderate doses the ACLU's view is that any censorship is a violation of the right to free speech. The ACLU has even led the attack on the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which is designed to protect minor users from harmful material (Mosquera 1999, 1). According to Mosquera (1999), the ACLU was also against the Communications Decency Act, which was designed to verify ages of user who try to gain access to pornographic material. They felt that such limitations would adversely affect a users ability to gain access to information about sexual health or orientation (Mosquera 1999,1). The...