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 The Internet, Web Content, and Invisible Cyberspace
(What Makes the Internet Safe ?)

06-28-16

Those serving the internet, which consists of providing websites and email to the vast number of users of the world-wide-web, agree that it has experienced mid-life growing pains, observing a toll over the years since its inception of the 1990s.

The means to service your own website and email can be tied-up in such issues as equal rights and discrimination.  Since equality and fairness have been established for such issues as consumerism and freedom of speech, how does it follow in the course of history for the invention and evolution of something called the Internet ?

A general consensus agrees that it is most likely internet content.  But web content, or web publishing, could be covered by the free speech clause of a constitution.  Free speech has been granted in such venues, for example, as newspaper writing and although news content may conflict with another individual, it is thought to resolve on its own grounds.  For example, a news item of conflict can be handled by printing an extraction or by writing another news article to counter the negative effects of the former.

Web publishing can thought to be handled in a similar manner.  But it may be considered even less controversial. Web sites are generally not created at the public.  You must somehow be imparted the URL (Universal Resource Locator) or have done a search yourself to locate a website.  Any given web site is not nominally exposed to the public and therefore is not considered forced content.  A user must have fore-knowledge, or imparted by someone, a website URL and type it into the browser himself to locate the website.  Otherwise, it remains invisible in cyberspace.  Compare this to a newsstand with the headlines of printed media blaring its message to a passerby. 

Take another example, which considers the opinion of which businesses are the proper or right exposure to a given individual.  If you were to stroll down a business avenue, you will see the “store fronts” of all the businesses either to your liking or disliking.  Someone may humorously remark that you must “wear blinders” when walking down a particular business avenue (insinuating a distaste for its venue).  But this does not exist in the “world of the Internet”.  There are no store-fronts to be seen.  This is because it is all invisible to us (invisible cyberspace).  Other than how one may set the default page of their browser - which can be set as blank – there are no storefronts to be seen.  It requires conscious action to begin a browsing session.

But there is even more to safeguard the use of the internet.  Any website can be literally blocked by the utility tools of a current day browser.  These even include “wild-card” features to block a complete set of domains, such as anysite.*   Further, the internet is continuously monitored by certain watch groups, namely the group of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who provide the internet connection, the FCC, and even specialty groups such as Google.  To complete the security of the internet, it is considered up to every individual to report unacceptable or inappropriate content as believed necessary.