The Internet has opened up a whole new world for us to discover many new things and to explore the world around us. However, as wonderful as it is, there are many harmful things appear on the Internet that we should watch out for when we browse for facts or entertainment.

Some people believe the Internet should have restrictions and censorship to protect people–especially kids–but I don’t feel that any of that is really necessary. This relates mostly to parents, who feel that children need protection, however parents need to realize it is their responsibility to do the protecting. Parents should censor the internet if they don’t want their children surfing the net and accidently coming across something objectionable. Parental reasoning for wanting censorship is understandable, but it’s not needed by everyone as a whole, just children. That’s where parents come in.

Another reason the internet should not be censored is that people feel it violates their First Amendment rights. Censorship would be directly opposing the First Amendment. Censoring the Internet does more harm than good. Eventually hackers would find a way to beat the system anyway. Sites that require you to be a certain age don’t do any good; children could just lie about their age, and, again, this is where the parents should come in to do their own monitoring.

Another reason the internet should not be censored because of “offensive” material is that labeling something “offensive” by one person is arbitrary because it might not be offensive to someone of another race, age or religion. It would cause conflict when it’s time to regulate certain Web content and its level of offensiveness.