Internet Censorship

So the class time was not used the way I expected it to be used, but it was definitely used well. Even I learned some stuff as I never thought about the idea of self-censorship. However, it is related to the something else I wanted to discuss; who is doing the censorship. One of the article that we didn't go over in class was the one about the Mexican drug cartels that executed bloggers. My own thought when reading this was the same as the way I felt in class. I would have never thought about the possibility that there would be another entity aside from politicians and industry leaders that might push for censoring the internet. Despite the disclaimer at the bottom of the article that claims the man murdered was just a scapegoat, the 3 who were murdered before him were not scapegoats (the previous 3 cases aren't mentioned in the article. The 2 shown in the picture were the first 2). When I first went into this topic of internet censorship, I wanted say the right to free speech would be the most important aspect that might be affected by internet censorship. However, here is a situation where something even more important than freedom of speech is affected by internet censorship (in a round-about way).

Another topic that I wanted to talk about is the OPEN Act and ACTA treaty. The OPEN Act is basically another bill aimed at tackling piracy, but has help being drafted by new media groups that actually depend more on the internet, such as Google. ACTA treaty is an international treaty signed by multiple countries, but drafted in secrecy since the 1960s. It was meant to protect medicinal patents, but has been used by movie industries to tighten the grip on their products. ACTA is very similar to SOPA and PIPA in the way it works, while the OPEN Act would try to be very precise in trying to find and take down websites dedicated to piracy. Despite the way the act and the treaty are portrayed, ACTA has been signed by the U.S. and OPEN has not obtained much popular support from people online. I wanted to know what everybody else thinks about all of these bills and treaties that try to regulate piracy, but end up being worded too strongly. Personally, I don't like all of these extra bills trying to put more regulation on the internet. If anything, the OPEN Act is the best option so far, but the problem of cost of regulation comes into play.