Technology: Pornography & the Internet

There’s been a big brouhaha recently regarding internet censorship and your local librarian. Remember now, the computers at your neighborhood public library are many people’s only way to connect with the web, including many school children who must rely on the web for research to be competitive in the classroom.

It seems that Congress, and much of the public, wants the librarian to censor internet content for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, to protect young children from the tens of thousands of pornography sites that seem to pop-up like weeds on the net. Second, many people don’t feel that it’s necessarily appropriate to spend taxpayer dollars to bring X rated content to adult patrons. The specter of hard core pornography on the internet has posed a conundrum for many parents who have given their children at-home internet access as well.

Thus far, the solution has been “baby-sitter programs that attempt to determine in advance if a site is inappropriate for young minds. For the most part they do this by searching the site for key words that would indicate the possibility of sexually explicit content. These programs don’t do a very good job, either of filtering-out X rated content or of helping a youngster use the internet efficiently. Example: try doing research on a subject like breast cancer on a computer with a baby-sitter program installed. Once, I was unable to file a story on the Shakespeare Festival until I deleted a reference to the “boob tube.” Ms. Dos may think she’s smart, but she’s unable to make the intuitive leaps in logic that constitutes human thought.

There are many other reasons to oppose graphic sex on the internet. Almost all pornography tends to objectify women, and there is often a level of violence that is downright scary to those of us who believe in the concept of civilization. Many, as well, are rightfully offended by the almost daily X-rated solicitation that have become part of having an email account. And we shouldn’t forget the religious, for their rights are important too.

Outlawing pornography on the net is out of the question. Fortunately, the courts seem to recognize this and have reluctantly been taking a position firmly on the side of the first amendment in nearly all attempts to censor the internet. The baby-sitter programs not only don’t work, but they often get in the way as well. But these are the only two solutions we ever hear to solve the specter or hard-core sex in the world wide web.

If these are the only two solutions our leaders are offering us, then they’re either stupid or they have something else up their sleeve. The easiest solution would be to require all those in the adult entertainment business to change their address to dot sex.

Or dot adt, for adult. Or dot XXX. It doesn’t matter.

We’ve already got .com for commercial enterprises, .org for organizations, .edu for colleges and universities, .gov for the government. Why not designate .sex (or .adt) for sites whose visitors must be restricted to those over 18? America’s daughters and sons would be protected from visiting a porn site (or a site that sells hash pipes or tobacco products) simply by telling the computer to filter-out all sites ending with the .sex suffix. Public libraries could still offer the full range of the web without attracting dirty old men who want to get their cookies off.

The purveyors of adult material could be compelled to use .sex by a simple legal deal. We just tell them that as long as they have a .sex address they will be free from legal responsibility if a minor should accidentally enter their site, that having the “adults only” suffix would shield them from legal and civil action. If all the public has to do is filter that suffix, then this should easily become a done deal. Certainly, if such a deal was made, the next version of Windows would come with a way for parents to block the .sex suffix already built into the system.

The same would be true for unwanted X rated solicitations via email. All you would have to do is order your email account to accept no mail from an adults only address.

The only objection to this plan is that requiring the porn merchants to have a special suffix could be construed as a form of censorship, but that would be a matter for the courts to decide. However, there are already legal precedents for such regulations. In almost every community around the world, there are laws regulating the location of adults only business. Here in North Carolina, for example, there are regulations regarding such a businesses proximity to churches and schools. In some cities, X rated business are restricted to certain parts of town - exactly the same thing that we are proposing here.

An adults only suffix would be the easiest and cheapest way to protect your children from internet pornography.

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