t it is very difficult to prevent a range of potentially offensive material from being distributed once that material has already been dispersed. Not only that but the USA could be protected by the First Amendment. Also, the offense usually is one of possession of material so once the material is distributed over the Internet, it is out of the hands of the main offender. The Internet is international and it is not possible to stop material at the border in the same way that books and magazines can be stopped, therefore, it is left up to individual organizations like Carnegie Mellon. This is an example of how technical developments have overtaken the ability of the national governments to control the circulation of information on a national scale. It is not certain whether legislation applying to, for example, obscene publications, can be applied to digitized material because the question that is asked is whether or not it is published. What may be legal in one country is illegal in another. For example, German law prohibits claims that the Holocaust did not happen, but this does not stop white supremacists from the US or another country from transmitting this claim to their sympathizers in Germany. This is a complicated issue because usually there is a feature of different cultures, for example, codes for women's dress in Islamic counties. It would be very difficult to find a common denominator that everyone could agree upon that should be censored. Even at an individual level what is offensive to one person may not be offensive to another. internet distribution is fast, less agreeable to control by governments, it is almost global and the actual potential audience is huge. It is also less public: the same images can be sent to your terminal in your own room. What material on the Internet could cause offense and generate demands for censorship? It is not possible to cover all the possibilities but a highly selective list woul...
