Wired Politics :: Internet Web Cyberspace Essays

The Internet is a unique global communications medium used today by billions of people all over the world. It is the same observation of Steve Case, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of America Online as reported in the article titled AOL Chairman: Web Shapes Politics, by Eun-Kyung Kim, an associated press writer for the Los Angeles Times. Steve Case stated that the Internet plays the role of a catalyst for real social and political change in a worldwide scale. One of its great strengths is the ease with which it spans the globe. Information flows as effortlessly from Washington to Russia as from one building to another in New York, and through five or more countries all in one day. No one can imagine that five years ago, the World Wide Web barely existed and that e was just the fifth letter of the alphabet. Case predicted that the times have changed and that the next U.S. president will launch the Internet Century and that it is the presidents job to make sure the era helps make lives better around the world. Case emphasized the importance of reinventing the governments policies on issues affected by a newly connected nation. Free expression on the Internet, if protected and maintained, enhances democracy, culture and economy not just in the United States but also in a global scale. The Internet is a democratizing medium, uniquely suited to the promotion of human rights, but threatened by governmental restrictions. These observations by Steve Case can be compared to Jon Katz article, The Netizen: Birth of a Digital Nation, where they both shared the same opinion on the issue concerning the publics right to know about information collected, disseminated and maintained by the government in order to increase public accountability and awareness. Unfortunately, in the United States, domestic policies have not been fully supportive of these rights. The US Congress has enacted censorship legislation attempting to control the content on the Internet and limit the freedom of communication through the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Fortunately for the new digital nation, these laws have been ruled unconstitutional by the courts yet members of Congress continue to press other restrictive measures and proposals. Both Case and Katz believe that government-mandated use o f blocking and filtering can restrict freedom of expression and limit access to information. Katz emphasized freedom on the Internet more than anything on his article.