The History Of Censorship From Ancient Times Till Today
Censorship is when the government blocks information. CErtain websites get censored. Censorship is taken place worldwide. Since the beginning of time till today, censorship has been occuring. For people to understand censorship, one will need to research about Modern Times, and Middle Ages.Burning books, burying scholars alive, or even executing families were some ways that censorship in 200 BCE was utilized. To start with, Qin Shi Huang was the emperor of Ancient China. In fact, Qin Shi Huang, the people that worked for him censored everyone in Ancient China by burning all books that talked about history, philosophy, and poetry. In addition, Chancellor Li Si stated, ¨Anyone who has failed to burn the books after thirty days of this announcement shall be subjected to tattooing and be sent to build the Great Wall.¨ (Shiji ¨The basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin¨ 213 BC)
In other words, tattooing ment cutting the person and then putting ink in the cut so people will see that, that person did not follow the emperor's rules. Also, being sent to build the Great Wall was a viscous punishment because a lot of people died making the Wall of China. In fact, rumor has it that dead bodies were put inside the Great Wall. The purpose of censorship was for Qin Shi Huang to gain more power Qin Shi Huang censored all the people in Ancient China, making them believe what was true. In the 2000’s, censorship continues to proceed in Russia by the Russian government. To start with, certain websites and social media apps are banned in Russia. Along with, digital communication being under surveillance, which means people are being watched. Apart from that, “Some of the more recently adopted laws threaten privacy and secure communications on the internet and, in effect, make no digital communication in Russia safe from government interference.” (Modern Russia’s Censorship-Article) As a result, a lot of Russians are censoring themselves because they are very unsure of what is suitable for them to say without going to prison or getting a large fine. For that reason, the government is gaining more power by censoring online activity for Russian citizens. As can be seen, in modern times censorship is still manipulated by the Russian government.
Modern Russia and Ancient China have differences in censorship. For a start, Modern Russia has distinctions from Ancient China in harsh punishments for not following the laws. Moreover, people were killed or even buried alive if they offended Qin Shi Huang or if they did not burn books that included history, philosophy, and poets in Ancient China. Unlike death, people in Modern Russia would either go to jail or have to pay a large fine if they insulted the Russian government. As can be seen, censorship punishments in Ancient China was more fierce than Modern Russia.
To conclude, Ancient China has disparities of punishments with Modern China.
Censorship in music ought to be banned because censoring music is ruining the hard work people put into it and music artists have the freedom of speech. To begin, the 1st Amendment commits to all the people in america to have the freedom of speech. In addition, music artists have the right to express themselves through lyrics but are not able to because their music is getting censored by radio stations and cd’s. As a result, when that happens it violates the 1st Amendment. To add, people are spending their time on making music they did. For example, artists spend most of their time making then gets ruined by censorship. Censored music must be terminated because music gets ruined when censored and they have the right to say what they want without it being censored.
