Internet and Child Pornography

The Internet has become such a vast and quickly growing technology that law makers have had difficulty keeping up with the technological advances within the internet grid and the sick minds of individuals. One specific area of concern is internet safety regarding minors, especially in the area of pornography. There is a controversy that surrounds the policing of the Internet for illicit activities such as pornography that has been going on since the early 1990’s between the U.S. government and the American Civil Liberties group that claims policing the Internet would take away personal freedoms from Americans in the form of freedom of speech. This issue has even gone to the highest court in our country, the United States Supreme Court. “Leaving the Internet alone” has been the nations Internet policy since the Internet was first commercialized in the mid-1990’s. The primary government imperative then was just to get out of the way to encourage its growth (Strickland, 2012). In 1998 President Clinton signed COPA (Child Online Protection Act) into law, but it was never enforced (Information Week, Nov. 2006). The rate of pornography viewed in the United States has grown, and continues to grow in viewership to this day with few arrests being made for those distributing the sites or for those who are viewing them where minors are concerned.

In 1998, when President Clinton signed the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, it was supposed to place restrictions on websites concerning pornography. It was supposed to require that a user submit their name and age to verify that the person viewing the material was at least 18 years of age. However, the American Civil Liberties group filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice...

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...nformation Week in an article written in June of 2007, most of the pornographic material is being arranged to log into remote servers in places like Amsterdam to or other places overseas that is far from the reach of the United States jurisdiction where the law is concerned. Another problem is that catching people who make these sites and are doing illegal things like using children for pornography are really hard to catch because they use a web address only for a few weeks before they change it. It makes it hard to catch their criminal behavior.

Most people who are into technology feel that the best place for policy makers to start as a role is defined is what our actions should be is to preserve and maintain trust in the internet. (Strickland, 2012). According to him, we have a much higher expectation of the internet today than we’ve had in years prior to now.