Communication Ethics book part for Censorship and Free Speech. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

In the United States, we have the First Amendment of the Constitution that guarantees us certain things.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is less of a concern to some countries, such as China. However, modern communication capabilities can affect free speech in a lot of ways, both enhancing and diminishing, depending on how it is used. No matter how you look at it, freedom of speech will be affected in every country.