Many parents are now considering the option of installing content-controlling software. With the help of this software you can now decide what kind of control will become available to your kids when they are browsing on the Internet. In fact, your kids are already familiar with it – it is used on their school computers, libraries and many other public computers. Most of this software are available free and often come under other names such as content filtering software, internet filter and the controversial, censor ware.
With most content controlling software you can specify keywords for which you do not want results to show up. In some cases, you can block certain URLs or websites altogether. If you do not want to install the software you could contact an ISP who can block out websites before they can reach your computers. One can even monitor via proxy servers (called intercepting proxies) which can filter content that passes through them so that it doesn’t reach your computer.
At times however, there can be certain issues – like you end up blocking out vital information when blocking out certain keywords. For example, you may find that blocking the keyword ‘breasts’ blocks out recipes using chicken breasts. Or that ‘sex’ also blocks out ‘Wessex’ or Sussex’. Thus, you may find that the whole deal is really backfiring. The other issue is related to censorship in general. Many online privacy enthusiasts and activists in general find it scandalous that content shown to someone else can blatantly and legally be censored to the extent that it may misrepresent vital information. And one cannot deny that censoring does encroach upon the Right to Information. Parents trying to protect children from accessing objectionable material on the internet may be okay, but exactly how much objectionable? Also, considering that the internet in the fastest growing medium in the world, it deserves the same rights that other media do. We wouldn’t allow someone to censor what we watch on television or in the theatres or the movies. So how far can we censor the internet?
There are many anti-censorship activists, and most of these are large organizations all for privacy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation for example, which is supportive of parents wishing to censor coming into their homes but are up against the government deciding what needs to be censored and what not.
