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2/21/96, lpackard@umich.edu, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lpackard/, Ann
Arbor, MI USA
Last modified: Friday, 08-Mar-96 23:52:25 EST

[blueribbon]The Internet, Censorship, and Free Speech

     By Laura Packard, lpackard@umich.edu

     My name is Laura Packard. I am a computer science student at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. This page has more information about me.

     The Internet for me, is a place where everybody can talk to each other
on a level playing field. It's a place where color and sex and dis/ability
are only what you make of them. It's a place for honest conversation, which
is rare to come by. It is a place for learning more about yourself, and
about other people. How can you really learn in an atmosphere of fear and
secrecy?

     Not all speech on the Internet is stuff you will agree with. Not all
of it will you enjoy. This is not the point. The Internet is not about just
your preferences, or your lawmaker's preferences, or your mother's
preferences, or Pat Buchanan's preferences.

     Blackening out the things you don't like, does not make them go away.
It's not a healthy way to deal with difference. It's not a grown-up, mature
way to deal with difference. It's the way of people who are too afraid to
be reasonable, too afraid of what they do not understand, to be able to
listen and watch with unprejudiced mind.

     The best antidote to offensive speech, is more speech. This is the
community of the Internet; a world of words. The solutions to 'bad' words
are more words, not closing your ears and locking the speakers away. By
robbing us of a free Internet, the censors aren't just making an o.k. world
for themselves. They are robbing everybody of the richness of an open
community. If that is the Internet's future, then it's no superhighway I
want to be a part of.

Laura [picture]

My Home Page