Blown to Bits: Chapter 7- You Can’t Say That on the Internet The internet has long been a place where people go to escape, connect with others, and better themselves. However when children start connecting with people that seek to do them harm, or have a less than appropriate relationship, United States authorities step in. In an attempt to keep children safe, lawmakers drafted legislation that would require children to have adult supervision to access a large portion of the internet. These laws brought to national attention the core idea of chapter 7, how much can you really control what children do on the internet? The balance between keeping children safe and simultaneously keeping them connected to the wealth of knowledge that is the internet. The internet …show more content…
One key point presented in this chapter is that users provide content to most sites, meaning that anything the user says, though accessed through a distributor, isn't the responsibility of the intermediary. This issue became grey when Oakmont v. Prodigy forced web services into a corner: Filter content and become responsible for all post, or leave it to the dogs and hope it doesn’t get too vile. Determining if things are too obscene falls to the miller test, though the test relies on local standards, of which there are none in cyberspace. Touched upon later in the chapter while explaining the defense of internet indecency, the internet is a continuous stream of information and of ideas, for the government of any country to attempt to control those ideas is absurd. The government of the united states passes the role of gatekeeping the internet to the schools and library that are connected. This chapter closes by further discussing the topics of censorship on the web, self censorship, and the role of government and legislation in these topics. All in all the main conclusion to draw from this chapter is that the internet is run as a