North Americans are terrified of accidentally exposing their children to pornography.
It's an interesting fear. Pornography hasn't been shown to harm children in any studies; it's just that we find mentioning children and sex in the same sentence to be distasteful. Because it makes us uncomfortable, we figure the idea of sex must harm children - but it doesn't.
It's only an unsupported gut reaction which tells us we should embark on a crusade to rid the Internet of pornography. The Internet isn't just an American, or just a North American, pastime. It's a worldwide phenomenon. A gut urge is not enough to justify trampling on the enjoyment and free speech rights of everyone on the planet.
It's mainly religion that claims thinking of sex, masturbating, or randomly running into an online picture of a Nasty Nun in her Knickers to be harmful. Those who believe such things to be dangerous to the soul due to their "sinful" or "degrading" nature should probably stay off the Internet, or at least, keep their children away from it. It isn't the Internet's job to cater to a group's religious views.
Here's some news for all the prudes out there: pornography does not degrade women any more than it degrades men. It is not sexist. What's sexist is thinking that women should feel personally degraded by their sexuality, while men should not. The truth is that sex is not degrading by nature for anyone, the sexual arts are wonderful (while admittedly, some examples of such arts are of much higher quality than others), and there's nothing unhealthy about occasionally indulging in them.
The Internet, we must remember, is a beautiful, dangerous wilderness of free speech and open trade. If you can not prevent your children from viewing pornography while surfing, it's your parenting style which needs to change, not the Internet. It's hard to believe that some parents think the most popular method of instant communication in the entire world, used by the entire world, should change for them! It's preposterous.
We all know pornography is prevalent on the internet. About a quarter of daily searches are related to pornography; young people tend to run into pornographic images while browsing; children's characters are linked frequently to pornographic websites; and, of course, as the popular song goes, "The Internet is For Porn." There's a lot of porn out there because people want to see it - even the really weird stuff, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle orgies.
"Rule 34" is an important rule to take note of, known thoroughly by frequenters of message boards and chat rooms. Rule 34 of the Internet states that if you can think of it, porn exists for it. Don't believe me? Do a google.com search for "dragons having sex with cars." This theme has its own entire subculture. In order to get the best results, you might have to use the f-word instead of "having sex." If that offends you, too bad: as already stated, the Internet is a dangerous, beautiful wilderness of uncensored communication, and the f-word will be a part of that until it loses its shock value.
Those who are afraid of all the pornography on the internet often are so frightened because they don't know how to use the internet. Net Nanny programs, junk mail filters, and most of all, experience, are what will keep porn away from your eyes while you're online. As long as there are people desiring to weed porn out of their Internet experiences, there will be programs and services available to help them do so. Why? For the same reason porn exists: there's money in it, because people are willing to pay for it.
A seasoned internet user might run into the occasional boob or cartoon crotch, but it's easy for someone so experienced and undesirous of porn pictures to forget that the loud, obnoxious, pop-up-crazy porn sites even exist anymore. Once you know how to use the internet (which, after ten years of constant use, I can attest to), you'll know how to control your own search results.
You will not succeed in banning pornography from the internet, and this is a good thing, as if this were to happen, it would mean that one minority's personal preferences had been imposed on the rest of the world in a controlling, stifling, sexually unhealthy, totalitarian fashion, without justification. The best you can hope to do is remove porn from your personal Internet experience, using free and paid services in combination with your own ever-growing web savviness.
I would like to add a personal anecdote: I wasn't exposed to pornography by the internet, but by my dad surfing the internet. My brother, a friend, and I, would peek over the stairs and giggle at the images on the computer screen in the basement. Dad browsed, and we, behind our hands, giggled madly: we were viewing something taboo, something we had been told was "bad," but within which, we couldn't see anything wrong. We just knew dad might get in trouble. And that was hilarious.
This is how children respond to pornography: "EW! GROSS!" If they're not old enough to be interested in the opposite sex sexually, they're going to react negatively to porn, though they might pause a moment in morbid curiosity before clicking away.
If they're old enough to be sexually interested in the opposite (or sometimes same) sex, it's very likely that they're already creating their own sexual fantasies which pornography would merely sharpen, rather than inspire. Either way, porn can not be shown to do damage to a child's psyche. Rather, it's upbringing and personal experience which determines the healthiness of one's attitude toward sex.
Human are naturally sexual creatures. It's one of the strongest drives in nature, not just for humans, but for all sexually-reproducing creatures, and should be treated as a powerful but manageable friend. There is nothing to be afraid of in sex, since fearing it is like fearing a pet. If you call it names, neglect it, or beat it down, it will roar up and take control and might even do violent damage; but if you "pet" it once in a while - wink, wink - give it treats, play with it, and treat it with respect, you and your sex drive can be great friends. And then, you'll feel no need to "rid" the Internet of pornography.
Not only is it impossible to rid the internet of pornography, it would be wrong to do so. What we need to rid ourselves of is the terror we feel when confronted with pornography, and when confronted with the prospect of our children encountering it.