reaction to censorship packet

After reading through the packet one article really stood out. The article was titled "Censorship Reaches Rediculous Extremes." The article dealt with extreme over censorship of internet materials for child use. The article made good points that by simply censoring searches containing cuss words they were censoring much much more. An example of this was humpback whales, simply because "hump" was involved in the search it was eliminated. So now they have censored the child's ability to learn. That seems a like a huge price to pay so kids can't happen upon sexual explicit material. Another point is that this censorship and extreme guardedness around sexuality is causing ignorance. Its one thing to try and keep young kids from finding hardcore porno, and another to have them completely ignorant of sexuality. The article cited a situation where students thought that oral sex could lead to pregnancy. Obviously children shouldn't learn sex ed from the internet, but they need to learn it somewhere, and these schools that teach abstinence only aren't getting the job done. We cant have a generation of sheltered ignorant kids. They need to learn, and experience things. Its one thing to protect the youth and another to hide them from the world.

What is the solution as far as internet censorship is concerned? I dont know. If I were a father I wouldn't like the idea of my son/daughter finding hardcore sex acts. At the same time, I don't want to limit their possibilities to learn. Right now it seems like an all or nothing situation, and until they devise a better way to filter out innappropriate sites we have to take the good with the bad.

Federal Packet Reaction

The packet contained a series of brief articles discussing how the government is making a lot of once public information private. This is related to the ongoing debate of whether information should be made available to all, or only to cetain people. One topic mentioned is that of e-mail privacy. Some said emails were documents and should be allowed to be made public. Another said that emails were like telephone calls and we dont tap every phone line. Its a pretty sticky situation. On the one hand it seems that information shouldn't be limited because how is right for some to decide who can see what? However, if sensitive information falls into the wrong hands terrible things could happen.