Computers & Technology >
Internet Issues
Get a Widget for this title
RSS FeedPornography on the Internet: Free speech or subject to regulation?
Results so far:
| Regulate | 55% | 495 votes | Total: 892 votes | |
| Free | 45% | 397 votes |
Regulate
Write now
Print
Invite a writer™
Add to FavoritesMy five year old was on the internet the other day and asked me to type in the name of a popular character toy and find it's website. Imagine my horror when a pornographic site just popped up! There was no warning at all! I was quick to draw the mouse and log off, but to this day I wander what my daughter saw.
I would prefer that Internet porn be banned altogether, but at the very least, there needs to be strict guidelines and legislation passed regulating this Internet porn. If there was a topless bar on my block they would be required to black out their windows, regulate who enters the club and make it very clear who they were. These porn sites should be held to the same standard.
Regulate The Names:
If there are going to be Internet porn sites, the names of these sites need to be closely regulated. It is far too often that someone will type an innocent word into the search engine, or worse the name of a child's toy and a site will just appear! Make them put porn in their name, so we know it!
Regulate The Windows:
If a strip club or topless bar has a store window, it is required to be blacked out. We can require this with Internet windows and we must! Once a child, especially a boy, sees one of these images it is impossible to erase it from the mind. There have been studies done to show that children or adults that see these images are more likely to view porn in the future. This is why it is pertinent that these sites have a front page without any pictures that say who they are.
Require Security:
Topless bars and strip clubs have bouncers that check people's age and guard the doors. These Internet sites need a password system that filters who goes in and out. Would this regulate everyone? No. Do the bars let in underage kids? Sometimes, but a security net of some form is better than nothing.
Finally, parents I urge you not to let your children on the Internet by themselves. You may think that they are at a secure and innocent cite, but the tide can shift in an instant. Our home computer has an outrages amount of security, and this happened to us. Furthermore, once it happens there will be cookies in your computer that will allow it again and again.
Learn more about this author, Catherine Fuller.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Free
In my opinion, pornography on the Internet is no more an issue of "Free Speech" than books selling on Amazon about how to build bombs or the "instruction" of how certain poisons can kill people without a trace. We, as a nation, do not have the right to condemn what is being shown or said either in hardcover book form or on Internet.
Child pornography will always come up in the argument by people who want to regulate Internet Pornography. I agree that there are certain lines that should not be crossed, but we better be very careful how we establish those lines. Most children have no idea what they are doing or where these pictures of them are going. We can't assume that such young women and boys are capable of making the rational decision to participate in these photos and videos that are still being made by people and bought by other people.
There are already laws on the books which prohibit the exploitation of a minor in many areas including Internet Pornography. At some point in our country's growth, the child labor laws were enacted. Children are banned from being able to do many things by establishing an arbitrary age of 18 or 21. We can't even agree on the drinking age from one State to another, who is going to have the eraser in their hand to censor Internet Content?
A lot of things that I and I'm sure you, do not agree with, are protected under the First Amendment. Internet Pornography should be no different. If a person doesn't like it, don't look at it. If we're afraid of our children seeing it, it is a form of hiding my Playboy Magazine underneath my mattress. If it's out there and a child wants to see it, they will find a way.
Internet Pornography should be left alone to fester in it's own little world, no matter how much it offends some of us, because we don't have the right to censor anything we don't happen to like.
We, as a nation, have no right to censor anything on the Internet. If it's "bad", who are the people making that decision?
The video game industry writes programs that allow you to kill policeman and each other in surprisingly graphic detail. Some people want these games censored.
Internet Pornography gives anyone trying to get onto the Pornographic site, one or two ways to allow you to leave before anything "really bad" shows up. It's working and still allowing free speech for Internet Porn. We can't legislate morality, no matter how hard we've tried over the years.
Let the person who wants to watch, have that right, just as a person who does not want to watch it, move on to something else. Regulations by a group in Washington D.C. or anywhere else in the country, is a slippery slope and could also come back and bite us in the butt.
Let people watch, read or search the Internet without a group of people who don't like what they are seeing or don't agree with some of the Content, making these choices for us.
Learn more about this author, W.D. Nelson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
