Obscene and Offensive Content

Section 211 of the Communication and Multimedia Act prohibits content that is indecent, obscene, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person.

The contents of some of the websites and other electronic communications over the net can be really distasteful, obscene or offensive for a variety of reasons. In many countries such communications are considered illegal. It can be very troubling if your children are exposed to adult content. Offensive content, or more realistically, potentially offensive content, is content in Freebase which may offend some visitors. For example include porn, hate speech, etc.

Obscene Content gives rise to a feeling of disgust by reason of its lewd portrayal and is essentially offensive to one’s prevailing notion of decency and modesty. There is every possibility of such content having a negative influence and corrupting the mind of those easily influenced. The test of obscenity is whether the Content has the tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such communication.

Many jurisdictions place limits on certain speech and ban racist, blasphemous, politically subversive, libelous or slanderous, seditious, or inflammatory material that tends to incite hate crimes. The extent to which these communications are unlawful varies greatly between countries, and even within nations. It is a sensitive area in which the courts can become involved in arbitrating between groups with entrenched beliefs. One area of Internet pornography that has been the target of the strongest efforts at curtailment is child pornography. Content is found to be obscene if it features activities that go against the prevailing values of a community. For example, if you're a blogger or blog publisher working with edgy material, you may post obscene content. Without losing money or public standing, you may want to know how you can legally post.
These negative contents which are obscene and offensive can easily influence people, especially those of the younger generation. It is unethical to publish obscene and offensive content such as pornography, child pornography, online sexual grooming, etc. Pornography tends to deprave and corrupt those viewing it. It is the activities being depicted which are the roots of the obscenity. Highly sensitive issues relating to online pornography tend to involve the viewing, possession, making and distribution of indecent images of children or serious stalking or harassment facilitated by communication technologies. Thus, the discovery of obscene materials is likely to be a serous criminal offence. On the other hand, storage and transmission of material which is considered obscene is a criminal offence. Child pornography is pornography which features the sexual abuse of children. Child pornography, including the depiction of any part of the body of a minor in what might be reasonably considered a sexual context and any written material or visual and audio, whether explicit or not, with a minor is strictly prohibited. The law’s approach to child pornography is that it is so offensive that possession as well as circulation of offending images is criminalized. It is an offence to possess indecent images involving children. Another term which is sexual degradation which it portrayal of women, men or children as mere sexual object s or to demean them in such manner is prohibited. Other than that, online sexual grooming it is now a crime to befriend a child on the internet or by other means and to meet or intend to meet the child with the intention of abusing them. A new preventative order, may be imposed which will prohibit adults from engaging in inappropriate behavior such as sexual conversations with children online.

Obscene and offensive content is a universal problem that can aversely affect the criminal, information security, economic and cultural aspects of society. This may increase in the criminal cases, youngster and adults who are easily influenced. Negative content will lead to loss of emotional control and inducement to commit crimes such as murder, rape, etc. Other than that, threats such as viruses, worms, Trojans and spyware will increase. Economic is another that affected which commercial trade of obscene material on the internet is seen as profitable and can contribute to revenue a big amount of money. However, this kind of trade profits foreign countries because of the outflow of our currency to their countries on purchasing these obscene materials. This aspect has also goes against the grain of our cultural values. It brings negative and unethical to our culture, values and morals, especially to the younger generation.



Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_crime#Obscene_or_offensive_content

http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Portals/12/Documents/PDFs/crimeOverview.pdf

http://www.cybersecurity.my/data/content_files/13/80.pdf?.diff=1176417783

http://www.skmm.gov.my/facts_figures/codes_gl/guidelines/pdf/ContentCode.pdf