Television, film and news media have all changed drastically due to the dawn of the Internet. But so has another industry: pornography.
The rise of the World Wide Web has forced pornography into the age of information. The Internet has made this controversial media genre more accessible, affordable and anonymous than ever. A recent poll conducted byABCNews.com showed that over 50 percent of 17,000 Internet users regularly visit websites of a pornographic nature. For better or worse, the amount of pornography accessible through the Internet is close to limitless.
This abundance and accessibility is a key concern to many who oppose the idea of pornography. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to the problem. For one, the Internet is a medium vastly different from older forms of media. One cannot simply apply the same censorship and control practices upon the Internet as could be done with television and radio. This provokes the question: is there a reasonable argument to support the censorship of Internet pornography?
Many individuals regard pornography in a negative light and see its censorship as crucial to maintaining order in society. This is especially pertinent in regards to child pornography, a sub-industry that has seen unprecedented growth in the Internet age. Yaman Akdeniz, a PhD student of law at the University of Leeds, discussed this issue at length in an essay titled “Governance of Pornography and Child Pornography on the Global Internet: A Multi-Layered Approach”.
The essay cited Owen J, an authority on child abuse, in saying that pornographic pictures of children: “could fuel the fantasies of those with perverted attitudes towards the young and they might incite sexual abuse on innocent children.” Complicating the issue, the essay pointed out, is that there is no set definition for what constitutes “pornography” since cultural differences exist that make it difficult to define what is pornographic in a global society of various cultural, moral, and legal perspectives.
Most nations that have taken a stance against Internet pornography have enacted censorship and filtering of pornographic content. Marie Eneman, a PhD student of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg, has highlighted the pros and cons of such action in her writings. Internet filtering can be argued as a positive endeavour that protects people from potentially harmful content. One the other hand, intentionally or not, filtering often restricts more material than just pornographic content.
Eneman also posits that Internet investigations that seek to uncover providers of pornography on the Internet can also be seen as a violation of an individual’s freedom of expression and rights to privacy. Eneman argues that while censoring child pornography protects the right for a child not be sexually exploited and abused, it directly contests an adult’s privacy and freedom of expression.
Despite the ambiguity and contradictions inherent within the debate for the censorship of Internet pornography, some countries have taken a firm stance to limit their citizen’s access to such content. China offer an extreme example.
In 2009 China took a firm stance against “vulgar content” on the Internet and threatened to shutter major search engines such as Baidu and Google, as well as 19 other major websites and Web portals. The government cited a wish to “protect” its citizens, but certain individuals saw an ulterior motive to the censorship. Blogger Wang Junxiu pointed out in an interviews Maclean’s, “as the government blocks sites that they deem inappropriate, they are also limiting access to Internet sites that may voice opposing and dissenting views towards the nation’s administration.” In this respect, Wang believes that the government may be being using its objection to pornography as an excuse to silence all public opinion.
The United Kingdom has also been the site of a long-running debate regarding Internet pornography.
Statutes against pornography within the UK date back as far as 1959. More recently, sections 62-68 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 (CJA) officially criminalized the possession of virtual child pornography. The penalty for possessing a “prohibited image” of a child is a maximum of three years in prison. In an interview with the Sunday Times in 2010, UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey expressed that he would like to further censor pornographic content by stopping it at the “source” with Internet Service Providers.
Such harsh and restrictive actions did not go unopposed within the UK community. Many thought that section 62 of the CJA imposed incredibly harsh penalties for possessing what was only a virtual image of a child. In an interview with the BBC, Trefor Davies, the chief technology officer at the ISP Timico, directly responding to Vaizey’s comment. Davies said that “it’s technically not possible to completely block [pornographic content].” This statement referred to the fact that most websites share IP addresses and therefore blocking one site would block many unrelated sites, thus limit a Net user’s access to information more generally.
Closer to home, the United States has taken a more hands-off approach to limiting access of pornographic content. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 tried to limit the access of “indecent speech” to minors, a grouping that extended to various mature topics, such as AIDS. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the CDA in opposition to this act, asserting that it as an attack on freedom of speech. On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the CDA, stating that the “regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it.”
Although extreme cases of Internet censorship do not exist in Canada, attempts to contest the illegality of possessing digital child pornography were largely unsuccessful. In 2010 the Canadian Supreme Court went on the record within the International Review of Law, Computers and Technology, stating that such images “violate the dignity and equality rights of children.”
With varying responses throughout the world the notion of censorship and Internet pornography is a heated debate without one definite answer. A filtering system does seem like a likely solution, but as the Journal of Sexual Aggression pointed out in 2010, there is no example of a filtering system that does not over or under-block content. To mitigate this, PC Magazine online, posits that ISP’s must work with governments in censorship. ISP’s Verizon, Time Warner and Sprint have already done so.
Rather than place responsibility solely upon the government and ISP’s, Yaman Akdeniz’s essay proposed the solution of a “multilayered governance system.” This would potentially involve “the on-line users, Internet Service Providers, codes of practice, self-regulatory bodies, technical solutions, and the Government” in the task of maintaining the safety and integrity of the Internet. By involving various levels of control, Akdeniz believes, the digital rights and freedoms of all individuals can be better preserved.
