The censor may also view explicitly sexual works and politically unorthodox ideas as attacks on religious faith. Antireligious works, or materials that the censor considers damaging to religious beliefs, cause concern about a society many see as becoming more and more hostile to religious training, and these works buttress beliefs about society's steady disintegration.
Political views. Changes in the political structure can be equally threatening. The censor may view a work that advocates radical change as subversive. The fact that such works have been seen as attacking basic values is confirmed by the number of attempts to label library materials with such broad terms as "communistic," "un-American," or "ungodly.
Minority rights. Of course, not all censors are interested in preserving traditional social order. The conservative censor has been joined by groups who want their own special group values recognized. For example, ethnic minorities and women struggling against long-established stereotypes are anxious to reject materials viewed as perpetuating those stereotypes.
These groups too may use the devices of the censor. Whatever the censor's motives, attempts to suppress certain library materials may also stem from a confused understanding of the role of the library and of the rights of other library users. Over time, the Supreme Court has established guidelines, or tests, for defining what constitutes protected and unprotected speech. Among them are:. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Categories of unprotected speech also include:. Determining when defamatory words may be censored has proved to be difficult for the Court, which has allowed greater freedom in remarks made about public figures than those concerning private individuals.
In New York Times Co. Sullivan , the Court held that words can be libelous written or slanderous spoken in the case of public officials only if they involve actual malice or publication with knowledge of falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. Lampooning has generally been protected by the Court. In Hustler Magazine v. Falwell , for example, the Court held that the magazine had not slandered Rev. On the issue of press freedoms, the Court has been reluctant to censor publication of even previously classified materials, as in New York Times v.
United States — the Pentagon Papers case — unless the government can provide an overwhelming reason for such prior restraint.
The Court has accepted some censorship of the press when it interferes with the right to a fair trial, as exhibited in Estes v. Texas and Sheppard v. Maxwell , but the Court has been reluctant to uphold gag orders , as in the case of Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart In Chaplinsky v. Since the backlash against so-called political correctness, however, liberals and conservatives have fought over what derogatory words may be censored and which are protected by the First Amendment.
In its early history, the Supreme Court left it to the states to determine whether materials were obscene. Acting on its decision in Gitlow v. New York to apply the First Amendment to limit state action, the Warren Court subsequently began dealing with these issues in the s on a case-by-case basis and spent hours examining material to determine obscenity. In Miller v. California , the Burger Court finally adopted a test that elaborated on the standards established in Roth v.
United States Miller defines obscenity by outlining three conditions for jurors to consider:. In the s, some individuals thought anti-war songs should be censored. In the s, the emphasis shifted to prohibiting sexual and violent lyrics. In general, rap and hard-core rock-n-roll have faced more censorship than other types of music. Caution must be used in this area to distinguish between governmental censorship and private censorship.
Courts have not interpreted the First Amendment rights of minors, especially in school settings , to be as broad as those of adults; their speech in school newspapers or in speaking to audiences of their peers may accordingly be censored.
Advancing technology has opened up new avenues in which access to a variety of materials, including obscenity, is open to minors, and Congress has been only partially successful in restricting such access. Parental controls on televisions and computers have provided parents and other adults with some monitoring ability, but no methods are percent effective.
In contrast to that straightforward definition from Roman times, contemporary usage offers no agreed-upon definition of the term or when to use it.
Indeed, even whether the word itself applies to a given controversy in the arts is often vigorously contested. Here are excerpts of definitions of "censorship" from U. They are not intended as any composite mega-definition of the term, only as indications of the variety of approaches to this concept. Censor: One who supervises conduct and morals: as a an official who examines materials as publications or films for objectionable matter; b an official as in time of war who reads communications as letters and deletes material considered harmful to the interests of his organization.
Censorship: The institution, system or practice of censoring; the actions or practices of censors; esp : censorial control exercised repressively. Image credit: Joseph Xu, Michigan Engineering. Running continuously, it takes billions of automated measurements and then uses a series of tools and filters to analyze the data, removing noise and teasing out trends.
It will also help activists make more informed decisions about where to focus their efforts. Manual monitoring can be dangerous for volunteers, who may face reprisals from governments. The limited scope of these approaches also means that efforts are often focused on countries already known for censorship, enabling nations that are perceived as freer to fly under the radar.
While censorship efforts generally start small, Sundara Raman says they could have big implications in a world that is increasingly dependent on the internet for essential communication needs.
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