Censorship and why it is used

Censorship is any attempt to limit the right to free speech. It is fairly common to some extent as there are no countries that will give you the right to absolute free speech. However there are some countries that censor more than others and there are a variety of reasons that they do this. Most of the time it is to protect the government leaders themselves.

The most common reason that censorship is used is to protect moral standards. All countries do this to a certain extent although there are some that do it more than others. Almost all countries will for example ban things like child pornography of hate speech. In some countries however the number of things that are censored is much larger. This is especially true in Muslim countries were standards of what is acceptable and what is not are usually very strict and there is a considerable amount of censorship.

The other reason that censorship sometimes occurs is when it infringes on the rights of somebody else. This is most common when there is a conflict between the right to free speech and the right to privacy. In general you do not have the right to say anything that you want about a person. This can be viewed as slander or libel. That being said in most democratic societies there is a lot of leeway given in regards to what can be said about public figures. However in countries that are not democratic the restrictions on what can be said may be very strict.

Where censorship starts to become more of a problem is when it is used to stifle criticism of the government or to prevent information from being passed on. This is usually done in countries where the leaders are not elected and they need to keep the populace in line. By restricting what can be said they are able to cover up corruption and tyranny which allows them to remain in power. In most cases if the population do gain the ability to speak freely the government will not last long. Once people know what the government is doing they rarely tolerate corruption.

There is a new area where censorship is starting to appear and this is one that could really limit free speech in a lot of democratic countries. This is where the censorship occurs to protect copyrighted material. This is the result of the fact that much of the material that is available online is copyrighted and not being used legally. Governments are starting to pass laws that allow them to shut down sites that are using copyrighted material illegally. However most of the laws are written in a way that gives a very broad scope for censoring what can be posted online. This will likely open whole new avenues for censorship.