Topics from week 8

Oh week 8 with your rather painful topic of democracy and the political possibilities on the internet, but alas I will carry on and share my rather self indulgent thoughts about it.

One of the topics that I wanted to research further from the lecture was that of free speech and censorship. Its an interesting thought, whether or not the internet allows free speech or if there is a lot of censorship and conflict in terms of copyright. I think that you can't censor the internet in the same way you could a newspaper, or television as it is not as controlled. The internet allows anybody to access and create things on it and there is such a huge number of people who use it. Music is something that is extremely prominent on the internet, particularly leaked and free music that you are able to download. This brings up the issue of copyright and what is the limit in providing what is a lot of the time illegal music downloading. However I think with cd prices o high at the moment and even on itunes, it is not surprising people are participating in the free sharing and downloading of music.

I'm not sure how I feel about the clean feed, it seems a little ridiculous but at the same time it might be necessary. This once again goes back to free speech and peoples right to post what they want and do what they want on the internet, yet this clean feed may make the internet a cleaner and safer place to be because lets face it there are a lot of creepy people flosting around on the net.

Censorship in a democratic society is also a present issue. Its a question of just how much the government can control before its takes peoples rights away and in the end democracy is about what the majority want so whether or not they want censorship it should be up to the people to decide I think. It seems like that would be the best result possible if we want to say we live in a democratic society.