When is censorship okay?

I think it’s safe to say that a majority of the Wednesday class is largely in favor of internet anonymity, no censorship, and all that free-speech jazz.  While I don’t disagree at all, there arises an issue when that sort of clashes with (the ever so subjective) morality.  It’s easy enough to say “well I believe no government or company should stop me or anyone else from what we want to do. It’s the internet, I have free speech!”

Well, what if you or anyone else wanted to look up something heinous or illegal?  You could say “well what’s heinous to you may not be heinous to us, and just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean it’s wrong”.  Okay, fair point, let me be a little more specific then.  What if you or anyone else wanted to look up rape porn? Or child porn?  I apologize for the sudden darkness of this text but it’s a current issue being advertised by the British government and taken on by none other than our overlord Google.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10456445/Google-vows-to-block-child-pornography.html

The British government, and more specifically its Prime Minister David Cameron, was in the news not too long ago for wanting to censor internet search queries about things such as child pornography.  Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you or anyone else about how we should all be allowed to search for something like that if we wanted, because I fall into the majority who finds it morally repugnant.  However, there is that small minority interested in it who would agree.  And this could extend to literally any other topic. What if you really loved Back to the Future, especially those awesome DeLorean cars?  What if, recently, some stupid kids somehow got their hands on plutonium and caused a lot of nuclear damage, and the whole world decided DeLoreans should be outlawed now and any searches for them deemed illegal and blocked just in case you want to recreate your own time machine too?  This is an absurd case, of course, but the point I’m trying to drive home is this:  When is censorship okay?  You could say well obviously its okay when the thing people are searching for is morally wrong but whose morals are we talking about? Yours? The average of everyone’s?  Whose?

What if in the far-future, we evolve to be so intelligent that we are intellectually and emotionally mature by age 2.  Would “child pornography” be okay then as long as kids are older than 2?  The term would probably be redefined as those below age 2, which is fair I guess.  My point is, social morality is not set in stone.  So if we can change what is absolutely morally wrong and should absolutely be censored, should we really censor anything?  If we let this form of censorship stop, where will it end?  One could say “well I trust Google will do the right thing” but they are just a business after all.  What if they decide to secretly censor any searches that would lead users to their competitors' services?  Would you be okay with that?  Would you even ever notice?

If you eventually found out, would you switch to Bing?