What is Internet Censorship?

   

Censorship comes from the root word known as 'censor'. Oxford dictionary defined censor as official who examines books, films, news, etc. that are about to be published and suppresses any parts that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security'. In other words, censorship is eliminating or changing a certain content which can be a threat to the society. The word censored is not new to many of us as we hear this word often. For example, in a movie scene whereby a scene has been censored or a certain dialogue was censored. What is internet censorship? Internet censorship is removing or replacing a certain information that is being published in the Internet to maintain its peace among societies.

Internet is a global network of vast information accessible with a computer. With the click of a mouse, an individual can have access of up to 100 million sites filled with educational and recreational information and linked with other related sites to create a spider-like web of topics known as the World Wide Web. Many use the internet for entertainment, business, education, games, social networking and many more but there are some that take this as an advantage to pollute the internet with various content that are obscene,vulgar or lies.

There are quite a number of content that are censored. Most common one is pornographic material. This pronographic material can be nude pictures, dirty  dialogues or text or even videos. The internet is being flooded with many pornographic material despite the tight censorship.



  
    Secondly, violent content. In Malaysia, this violent content is strictly prohibited from publishing. Violent content can be in a form of text, video or pictures. Violent content can be either brutal murder, bad accidents and much more. Some countries gives out the summary of the violent event without the full information.



    Next, profanity language or words are one of the content that are censored. Vulgar or indecent words from any person or a song lyrics in the internet are often removed, replaced or changed (***).



    Sensitive issues such as religions or cultures are censored. This is to respect the other religions. For example, in Malaysia, the word 'pig' is replaced by using 'swine'. This is to respect the Muslims as for them, it's 'haram'.






    Reference :
   http://gilc.org/speech/osistudy/censorship/