Internet Pornography

Jay Horsley

There is a full-blown, yet still growing, problem of the easy availability of pornography via the internet. Pornography, as the article cited will note, is ancient, but never has it been so accessible. Before the advent of the computer, pornography had to be purchased by someone, then the magazines, tapes, etc. had to be physically stored and passed around to be seen. Children were unable to buy it, even if they knew where to get it. So youngsters could get a hold of it only if someone's father, uncle, older brother, etc., had it and let them access it, either directly or through negligence. Such is no longer the case. Through the computer it is often free and available to all in minutes.

Cyberspace's Red-Light District

Robin Raskin, FamilyPC Magazine, December 2000, pg. 85-87

[These excepts comprise approximately half the article cited. wjh]

Pornography – the written, visual, or spoken material that depicts sexual acts intended to arouse the viewer – has been around since the days of the Greeks and Romans. But with each new medium, the quantity of pornography, its ease of distribution, and the number of people who have access to the tools to create porn grow.

During the 80's when obscenity-law violations were prosecuted more strenuously than they are today, and people like Hustler publisher Larry Flynt made headlines, pornographers were on the wane. Today, they find that the business is booming. Even by conservative estimates, it's a $10 billion dollar a year business, with Web sites contributing between an estimated $1 billion and $2 billion. Depending on who's counting, there are anywhere from 20,000 to 7 million X-rated sites, and every day nearly 30 million people log on. Danni Ashe likes to point out that with revenues like these, it's unlikely that the porn industry is catering to just a few lonely perverts.

Today, parents can buy a variety of software filtering tools or blocking solutions that do a good job of blocking solutions that do a good job of shielding kids from inappropriate material on the Net most of the time. The major objections to using filtering software are that it also often blocks kids from seeing perfectly reasonable content, and that the means for identifying and labeling inappropriate sites are not very good. Many ISP's [Internet Service Providers - wjh] such as AOL, Go.com, and MSN even go so far as to not allow adult businesses to take up residence on their sites.)

On the legal front, lawmakers have tried twice, first with the Communications Decency Act in 1997, and more recently with the Child Online Protection Act in 1998, to make it illegal to distribute pornographic material to minors online. Both times, the laws have been overturned, primarily because of the efforts of free-speech advocates.

The simplest place to start is to ask why pornographers would want to target children in the first place. According to Ashe [Danni Ashe, creator and owner of one of the Internet's most profitable pornography sites - wjh], most pornographers don't want kids knocking at their door. “Like any business, there are good and bad people,” she says. “But kids don't have credit cards, and don't forget that many pornographers have kids of their own and they don't want them visiting these sites.” [We might disagree with Ms. Ashe on this. Because of the nature of the pornography business there are no good people in it. There are only bad and worse. And the next paragraphs will explain why some pornographers do, in fact, target kids.]

Like other Web site operators, unless they're selling something or charging a membership fee, pornographers are in the “eyeball” business. The more eyeballs that visit their sites, the more money they can make, mostly by charging higher rates for ads on their sites. To this end, pornographers, as well as other Web site operators, often rely on harvesting names from e-mail lists to attract customers. In other words, they buy the name of people who've been to other sites and then offer them an invitation to attend a porn site. Inadvertently, many of those people are kids.

Pornographers also make money from driving traffic to porn sites others than their own. For example, each time a viewer clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays a few cents to the site that housed the ad. In an attempt to keep you clicking, many sex sites are little more than one big banner advertisement after another. Often, as you click you'll spawn new widows of pornography banners that won't go away. Any attempt to close the windows only seems to generate more windows, which leave the viewer caught in an endless loop.

But because so much X-rated content is free, pornographers have actually begun to undermine their own revenues. A few sites that do charge membership fees have reduced them from $10 per month to around $3.95 a month. Low membership fees and free pornography are certainly alluring to children, and also force pornographers to cast a wide net to attract new visitors.

Plus, savvy pornographers know how to trick search engines into making their site show up in searches for non-pornographic sites. This explains why you sometimes search on topics like “toys” or “teens” and find yourself confronted with a list of choices that often include porn sites.

Finally, pornographers prey on those with poor typing skills. ...[I]ncorrectly typing in Disney, Sony or even Beanie Babies can get you into trouble as well.

[Author suggests the possibility of placing all pornography in one area of the internet with the ending “.xxx”.]

Of course having a red-light district in cyberspace won't solve all the problems. For one thing, it's hard to enforce this rule internationally, plus there will be countless small sites, including everything from news groups to a Webcam in someone's house, that will slip through the process.

Be aware, as this article points out, of the ease of accessing this material. It can even be inadvertently accessed, and e-mail with evil content (and links to more) can be sent to innocents. Realize that this can happen, but also know that this is a very convenient cover for those who get caught.

This article, and many others, mentions filters that can be purchased or are included in certain internet services. These are useful, but if you have ever had to ask your child to fix a computer problem, you will come to realize that the kids may know more than you about the machine and the software. They will probably know how to get around it. Sometimes you can examine logs of internet activity to see what has been viewed. But if these logs are a machine that the children have access to, they can easily be erased.

The software that the Dickinson schools use is very restrictive, to the point that email and chat lines are not accessible. (Much harm has been done with this text only features of the internet.) Also the schools logs all internet usage and these logs are kept on centralized machines that the students cannot get to. This probably will not be case on your machine at home. The school maybe the safest place for your children to access the internet. The library is not. The American Library Association is actively against all filtering of content and pornography can often be accessed by anyone. Cases of children accessing pornography, and adults accessing it in the view of children, have both been reported in libraries across the country.

So what to do. Have no internet? That is an option. “And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire.” (Matt. 18:8) But if you decide the advantages out way the risks, check as best you can what is viewed. Check not once, but often, and randomly. Restrict access as best you can, but don't rely entirely on software to guard against evil. Don't have the computer in a closed off room or the screen pointing toward a corner. Have it set so that anyone walking by can see what is on the screen. Consider restricting access when the parents are not home.

And finally, teach the young about the danger of this pernicious sin. Their self control, guided and brought to maturity by the parents, is the only sure solution.