The concept of censorship is relatively simple: material that is harmful to people in some way should not be allowed to circulate where they can see, hear, or be influenced by it. Material that incites people to commit acts of violence or terrorism should likewise be censored. Information that compromises the national security must be censored. Censorship in its purest form is protection. As protection, censorship is a good thing that a civilized society needs for combating harmful influences as much as it needs firemen to fight fires and law enforcement officers to battle criminals. It is an invisible bubble that prevents undesirable influences from corrupting, terrorizing, or brainwashing innocent people. Yet there are people who are vehemently opposed to censorship.
One might ask how there can be such vast differences of opinion over whether something that is gravely harmful should be censored or not. The controversy in censorship arises because not everyone agrees on what is harmful, what incites violence and terrorism, or what compromises the national security. While many mothers wish to protect their children from pornography, for example, there are many more people who feel their civil rights are being stifled if they cannot view, listen to, and purchase pornography. They do not view pornography as damagingùin spite of a multitude of scientific evidence to the contraryùand they regard the censorship of pornography as wrong. The unresolved issues in censorship, then, revolve around who decides what is right and wrong, what should be censorable, and what should not.
Furthermore, the decision to censor something must be made by someone, and that someone is going to be a fallible human being with biases of his or her own. This virtually guarantees that some censorship decisions will be illogical, unfair, unconstitutional, or otherwise just plain wrong. Some people would like to censor everything they personally d...