EDITORIAL: Apply Same Laws to Internet Porn
By Belleville News-Democrat, Ill.
Mar. 22–Google’s fight to keep Internet search records from the government has focused on privacy rights, and glossed over the real issue: how to protect our children from pornography on the Web.
Our society routinely provides such protections when brick-and-mortar businesses are involved. A child would be stopped if he tried to walk into Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club, or rent a pornographic movie. In Illinois and in most states, it is illegal to sell or display adult materials deemed harmful for minors.
But for some reason, the Internet gets treated differently. Instead of protecting children, the concern seems to be protecting adults’ privacy rights and free speech.
In the Google case, the judge may require the company to turn over some but not all the information the government initially wanted in its efforts to protect children.
The Internet is precisely where safeguards are most needed. According to statistics in a recent Wall Street Journal article, 4.9 million kids 17 and under visited adult web sites in February. Filters block out about 91 percent of pornographic sites, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That leaves a lot of pornography that can be easily accessed by kids.
As a newspaper we value free speech highly — even speech that’s part of the $1 billion a year online adult industry. We also don’t want Big Brother looking over our shoulder and monitoring what Web sites we routinely visit.
But protecting kids on the Internet is a separate issue. We need to find a way to apply the same child protection laws that exist in the non-cyber world.
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