The Fight Against Child Pornography

In recent years, pornography has established itself as perhaps the most controversial topic arising out of the use of the Internet. The easy availability of this type of sexually explicit material has caused a panic among government officials, family groups, religious groups and law enforcement bodies and this panic has been perpetuated in the media.

One of the unique challenges to regulating or settling on the appropriate way to regulate is that there is no concrete definition of pornography. While law enforcement bodies such as the police, prosecutors and judges, are accustomed to dealing with issues that are exclusive to the United States, the Internet is a worldwide community with servers and members coming from hundreds of countries. Defining "pornographic content" on a global level has not been easy because of different moral and legal variations. In the United States one type of act may be defined as being "hard-core porn", however, another country could see this act as much less offensive. So while the United States may try to regulate one level of pornography, a person could go find it on a website launched from another country. This is one the problems that is being acknowledged when trying to find a way of dealing with the pornography on the Internet.

There are two real issues at stake when looking at this controversial topic. The first issue is finding a way to protect our children from potentially damaging material. There are advocates to censoring the Internet and removing this type of material because it will help shelter our children from this type of content. On the other hand, Free Speech advocates believe that it is the individual citizens right to have access to this typ...

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...nt and Civil Liberties groups, no one seems to be making much headway in determining where the line should be drawn when it comes to pornography. The positive is that child pornography is being acknowledged as a real problem, but law enforcement officials are still having a great deal of difficulty fighting it. The United States is taking steps toward implementing a multi-layered approach to governance, which will allow adults their freedom and protect children at the same time, but as of right now we are a long way from a solution.

Sources

www.netparents.org Teaches parents to be safe with their children

www.wam.umd.edu List of filtering devices

www.aclu.org Homepage for the ACLU

www.pedowatch.com Up to date info in the quest to eliminate child pornography

www.thecpac.com/stop-it.html Provides a list of wanted pedopjiles on the Internet