Hardcore pornography must be restricted for minors
Prime Minister David Cameron, of the United Kingdom announced Monday that every household in Britain will be required to declare whether or not they want Internet access to adult content, more commonly known as pornography. The main goal is to use this law as a tool to eradicate both child and rape simulating pornography from Britain’s computers, and protect children from stumbling across potentially innocence robbing material.
Cameron is said to be doing this to quell complaints of how he doesn’t take enough action. This is truly an admirable fight to take on, to want to protect children from accidentally stumbling across hardcore pornography, or from seeing children their age being forced into sexual situations.
The law is keeping up with technological advances by requiring each household that pays for Internet access to select if they want family friendly settings or not. Once the decision is made it applies to any device that connects to the Internet in the house, therefore there isn’t the complication of deciding each time something new is added.
In the U.S., censorship of illicit content has been approached in many ways. Yahoo, via the Tumblr phone app, has recently blocked terms like: Lesbian, Gay, Sex, and Bisexual, automatically changing the search to LGBST or voiding it altogether. Local government initiatives have voted on bills that would filter all pornographic websites to an .xxx domain. Schools and libraries are constantly trying to protect their computers from showing anything pornographic by blocking certain websites and search terms.
With all the talk of the NSA’s extensive network of Internet spies, it begs the question: why can’t our government step in to protect households who want no part in hard-core pornography, or in rooting out the makers of child pornography? The NSA’s lenient terrorist search policy of “51 percent foreignness” could just as easily be applied to searching the database Google has compiled and finding the culprits with information like IP addresses.
It seems a natural mission for the Obama administration to want to protect children, seeing as Obama is the father of two girls. However, when coalitions like Morality in Media have approached the administration with signed petitions from lawmakers, nothing has come to fruition.
There is ready access to rape simulating and other forms of hardcore pornography through most major pay per view companies and therefore copious hotel chains and homes throughout the country. The first amendment doesn’t protect obscene material; so legal action could be taken to curb the creation and dissemination of these videos.
While there are a lot of easily divisive topics between the major political parties that keep laws from being passed, the protection of our country’s children’s innocence shouldn’t be one of them.