Not just children Essay

The essay is effective in that it provides some convincing examples of potential internet dangers that can be experienced, with emphasis on how these â€Å"bad guys† can get away with their deeds with no law to control their actions. I must agree that â€Å"people who use the internet should not be exempt from many of the rules and regulations that govern their conduct elsewhere. † Its arguments about general online business holds much merit. I do agree that there should be laws against copyright violation, fraud, child pornography, trust violation, and child-stalking. However, the essay’s great failing is that it does not address the issue of freedom of expression as much as I think it needed to in the context of the topic, especially concerning pornography. Internet pornography is certainly a complicated topic, considering that many children have internet access. The essay contends that pornography must be controlled, particularly because of these children. Although the welfare of children should indeed be of concern to us, I subscribe to the idea that â€Å"if you don’t want to see, don’t look. † Encountering pornographic sites (or going anywhere on the internet for that matter) generally requires an active decision by a person. I take the view that sites on the internet are public only in the sense that they are accessible when a person chooses to access them; but that these sites are not publicly displayed in the sense that a billboard on the street is. Since seeing content generally involves the decision of a person to visit, making whatever information accessible to whomever chooses to access it seems to be reasonable. There have been times when a search using a seemingly innocuous phrase turns up results with nudity or pornographic content, especially when I’m using a search engine with filters turned off. It seems to me that encountering sites with offensive or objectionable content is unavoidable, even if one does not want to come across them. I feel that children’s access to pornographic sites should be restricted. I recognize that total censorship would be very difficult to impose, but still, measures should be enacted to deter or hinder young children from accessing such sites. One solution that has been proposed to solve this problem advocates a change in the domain naming system that will easily identify sites that are â€Å"for adults only† (i. e. , pornographic sites). For example, if sites with adult content ends in â€Å". xxx† rather than the usual domain identifiers, users will know that the site contains adult content, and therefore, can steer clear from it. Using this system, it will also be easier to filter out those kinds of websites. However, if there is any censorship, it will affect everyone, not just children. I still subscribe to the notion that it should be the parent’s/elder’s responsibility to protect children from the darker side of the internet. History has shown that anything that is suppressed by the government does not really disappear, but goes underground. Censorship in any form is a blow to the whole notion of the freedom of expression of the public. With this freedom comes responsibility, and it might actually be better to allow the public to take care of themselves (on the internet) in this regard.