" Although the results then were not complementary to this clause of the First Amendment, the actions made then opened the floodgates for redresses of grievances against the United States government.
The validity and effectiveness of the First Amendment as well as all other amendments of the United States Constitution can be determined through various tests in time. Fortunately, the First Amendment stood steadfast and changed various facets of American lives throughout the centuries. But despite all these, the First Amendment, and even the whole American Constitution and Bill of Rights for that matter, cannot be deemed as perfect because any case brought to test it will have results that are both acceptable to some and unacceptable also. This is what makes for a great democracy like the United States when its laws are not taken at face value but rather there will be challenges to the applicability thereto. In the case of the religious freedom provision of the First Amendment, "back in 1990, the Supreme Court upheld an Oregon law forbidding the use of peyote, a drug used in Native American religious rituals. Faith groups worried that the precedent could lead to more laws that infringed on religious practices, so Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) (Hinkle, 2011)." Although the RFRA may seem broad in contents, the importance of the actions leading to the promulgation of the act is that the foundation of religious freedom saw protection from the Legislative Branch of the American government.
In the Information Age, the biggest challenge faced by the First Amendment is with the Internet. The reason being is the lack of geographical boundary and clear delineation of scope of cyberspace. Aside from this, the Internet has become the ultimate venue of freedom of expression albeit sometimes too much freedom. The result of is that "since 1996, every Congressional session has passed at least one piece of legislation attempting to censor the Internet, almost always in the name of protecting the youth of America. The first such attempt...
Internet Censorship The internet came to prominence as a tool and pursuit of the masses starting in the early 1990's. The capabilities, depth and breadth of what the internet has to offer have increased exponentially over the ensuing two decades. Such expansion has greatly eased the spread of information (Palfrey, 2010). The ease in which people communicate and disseminate information has created a cause for concern among many different parties that
Internet censorship could also result in job losses since a court order may compel online search engines in America to block results or domain names. This could contribute to the instant death of some companies, particularly those with limited resources to fight potential legal cases. In addition, concerns have also been raised regarding the possibility of Internet censorship to weaken the protection provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that
private) activities created an unlimited power of moral and ethical censorship that transcended all boundaries (p 258)." Human Rights Watch (2008). Human Rights Watch World Report 2008. Human Rights Watch, New York, NY. This report will contribute the study being conducted here with regard to statistical information. Other insights into how modern technology is being used by the Chinese people to reach out to other cultures and to send news of important
Another avenue of Internet censorship is the censoring of pornography, which is most often done in the name of 'protecting the children' (Dvorak, 2005). Legislators and concerned lobbying groups around the world, but especially in the United States, have taken it upon themselves to foist their own morals and dogmas on the swatch of the Internet by limiting the access individuals have to pornographic material. But the claims that this
Internet and Politics What are the ways in which government sometimes tries to regulate or censor internet content? What are the problems with these efforts at regulation? In recent times, cyberspace regulation has surfaced as a hot topic. The parameters and laws of cyberspace are principally defined by state-controlled Internet filtering. The governments and states exercise control over the Internet content at various levels. This power of governments over the Internet has
Internet Censorship One of the most publicized debates or controversial issues in the recent past is whether information on the Internet should be censored. The controversy associated with the issue is centered on whether the censorship is necessary towards the maintenance of a specific ethical standard in the society. Controversies regarding Internet censorship have also been fueled by the development and enactment of certain legislation that seeks to censor information on
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