Is Sex on the Internet a Serious Issue or is it Time to Focus on
More Positive Aspects of the Information Superhighway?
Speaking at the Connections X conference in Atlanta, Howard
Rheingold, author of "Virtual Reality" and "The Virtual Community,"
assailed the press for not spreading the good news about the Internet.
He said, "The important thing about the new technologies that are
emerging is that people are communicating with each other again (Webb 30)."
With the Senate's passage of the Exon Amendment and the
continuous efforts for the government to criminalize encryption
technology, computer users' First Amendment rights are being assaulted.
Not to mention that a torrent of stories on cyberporn have buried the
better aspects of the Internet.
The purpose of the Exon Amendment prohibits lewd or indecent
material on the Internet and imposes criminal penalties on network
providers who allowed such material to be carried on their systems.
Commercial on-line services, such as America On-Line, Prodigy, and
CompuServe, though, were exempt from liability on the grounds that they
shouldn't be forced to act as government censors. The amendment was
named after Senator J.J. Exon who realized at a family reunion that his
granddaughters, age 8, knew more about computers that the adults. If
those kids knew so much, what prevents other kids from obtaining such
knowledge and gaining access to adult subjects?
This amendment supposedly takes the same legal protections
against harassing, obscene, and indecent communications that already
exist for tellephones and extends them to computer networks, with the
main intention of protecting children from accessing pornographic
material. After all, the Iinternet has various sites where hardcore
pornography depicting explicit sexual acts, including rape scenes and
bestiality, are available free and can be accessed with a few clicks of a
button. But pornography permeates American society in general, not just
the Internet. And, groups who continue to lobby for laws regulating the
Internet also fail to understand that the technology on which computer
networks is based gives Net surfers the power to filter out material they
don't wish to see. And if children are too yound to know what to filter
from their viewing capabilities, maybe they're too young to be on the Net
in the first place and it becomes a parental decision, not government
legislation.
Rheingold continues to advocate that on-line communities are a
new medium for human communication: "Millions of people around the world
are using this medium already to buildnew kinds of businesses, to conduct
education experiments, and are trying to revitalize the grassroots of
democratic institutions (Webb 30)." After all, one of the most important
aspects of the Net is free speech and people's access to information, but
the new legislation invokes the threat of censorship to such aspects.
These censorship precautions seem to hinder the progress of technology,
and therefore prevent the Internet from accomplishing that primary goal
of PROGRESS.
When is the media frenzy about sex in cyberspace going to
subside? Isn't it time to debate more vital issues as the networked
world becomes more prevalent? Examples: How can access be provided to
everyone, and not just the privileged? How can the privacy of the
individual be maintained without dangering the security of society at
large? Who will do the regulating in a system that recognizes no
national borders? These inquiries seem to take precedence over
pornography and sex, and therefore should be taken more seriously. After
all, there is nothing concrete anyone can do about sex on-line. It is
there and will continue to be present in cyberspace and in the real world.
There seems to be a general curiosity about the Internet, and sex
seems to be the ideal vehicle to discuss such an intimidating subject.
The actual news in these reports, dealing with sexual solicitaion or
digitalized porn, usually hinges on one theme: illicit subjects that
happen everyday in the real world are now happening in cyberspace. But
these reports detailing sex on-line are guaranteed to be misunderstood by
the public and cause apprehensions about technology, which is the reason
for the creation of the Exon Amendment and other such legislation. And
then, we are back to where we started, and the debate continues...
To check out more information on the subject at hand, look at the
following Web pages:
http://www.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/cyberporn.html
or
http://www.hotwired.com/special/pornscare
Bibliography
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