Save the Internet

Did you know that 83.5%

of the images available on the Internet were pornographic (Kershaw)? Did you

know that pornography on the Internet is readily available to curious little

children who happen to bump into them?

Today, the Internet which has only

become popular several years ago, is unequivocally one of the most revolutionary

innovations in the computer world. The information superhighway has changed

peoples' lives dramatically and have created many new exciting opportunities

as well as markets to be exploited. But, unfortunately, the Internet also has

created a haven for the depravity of pornography and hate literature. Therefore,

this has called for immediate action and the only solution up to today is censorship.

The Internet must be censored to the utmost.

Many people complain that censorship

is the violation of the first amendment and the suppression of freedom of speech

but there is a point where freedom of speech becomes corrupt; freedom of speech

only creates an excuse for the vile pornographers to poison our nation let

alone our children.

Pornography is regarded as immoral and downright filthy

by the people. It denies human dignity and often stimulates the user to violent

acts (Beahm 295). Therefore, pornography and violence are correlated. It trivializes

the human beauty and converts it into commercialized slime (Beahm 295). Moreover,

the consumption of pornography can lead to a detrimental addiction and the

consumer can become a slave to it (Beahm 297). In short, pornography is a very

addictive drug; which has an equal or more potency to hard-core drugs like

heroin and cocaine. Can you imagine a ten year-old innocently surfing the Internet

and suddenly bumps into a pornographic site depicting explicit images of naked

women and becoming addicted to it? The damage is long-term and when the time

comes, we will have a nation of perverts. Galbraith says, "The U.S. constitution

does not forbid the protection of children from a pornographer's freedom of

speech. That must be inferred through the First Amendment." These are our children

and we have

the right to protect them. The fact that pornography is damaging

mentally is further aggravated as the availability of pornography to all Internet

users is a major problem as well.

The ridiculously easy accessibility to

all types pornography; by anyone who logs into the Internet has raised a major

concern from both the government and the public. The Internet, being the biggest

interactive library ever existed, has no owner, President, chief operating

officer or pope (Montoya). "Inevitably, being an uncontrolled system, means

that the Internet will be subjected to subversive applications of some unscrupulous

users." (Kershaw) Internet users can publish pornography and hate literature

that information is literally made available to millions of Internet users

worldwide (Kershaw).

A five year-old can easily obtain pornography on the

Internet by just typing the word "sex" in the search engine and literally hundreds

of thousands of listing will appear on-screen, each leading to a smut page.

This type of easy accessibility have people calling for censorship (Kershaw).

"Most popular images available were of hardcore scenes featuring such acts

as paedophilia, defection, bestiality and bondage." (Kershaw) According to

Chidley, "In 1994, more than 450,000 pornographic images and text files were

available to the Internet users around the world; that information had been

accessed more than 6 million times." (58) This shocking figure is further agitated

by the fact that pornography would be very harmful to the young unsuspecting

child who happens to stumble on it while roaming about cyberspace (Kershaw).

Remember, our children is our most important resource in the future; we have

to refrain them from negative influences so that they could be good citizens

of tomorrow.

"Regulating the Internet might be the only way to protect Internet

users including our children from accessing obscene pages." (Montoya) Singapore

has taken an encouraging step to establish a "neighborhood police post" on

the Internet to monitor and receive complaints of criminal activity-including

the distribution of pornography (Chidley 58). They have also implemented proxy

servers to partially filter our pornographic sites such as "Playboy" and "Penthouse"

from access. An anonymous author quotes, "When such material is discovered,

access providers could be alerted, and required to deny entry