The Pros And Cons Of Censorship

Censorship often has a negative connotation. The term, censorship, is associated with the words totalitarianism and communism. Democracy is a term excluded from censorship. Censorship is not a newly constructed concept. Censorship has been around for a long time. Censorship has been created without the consideration of one’s freedom. Although Plato argues that censorship is beneficial, censorship should not be enforced.
To begin with, censorship is unfair because the definition of obscenity is not based on a consensus rather the government decides for the greater good. Censorship is often executed by the authorization of the government because they believe that certain content or material is harmful to the public. In this case, the content is deemed as obscene. While it is true that some material are obscene, some …show more content…
To demonstrate, an academic article written in 2006 by Jeffrey Rosen, a professor of George Washington University Law School, discusses the attempt of Congress to suppress internet pornography. The articles discusses a Supreme Court case in 1973, Reno v. ACLU where the Supreme Court rejected the Communications Decency Act where it prohibits obscene material to underage people. The Congress rejected this act because Congress failed to make the correlation between obscene and pornographic. In response to this, Congress redefined the terms they used in the court case. Rosen states, “And instead of prohibiting "indecent and patently offensive communications," it identified a narrower category of "material that is harmful to minors"(Rosen 5). Rosen explains that the Congress narrowed the category of indecency to material that is harmful to minors. There are many materials that are harmful to minors but some more than others. The issue of deciding what is harmful to minors and what is not comes back. If censorship is executed on these basis, then the government claims that they know what is best for their citizens.

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