407 lines
27 KiB
Plaintext
407 lines
27 KiB
Plaintext
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* COVER STORY
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On a Screen Near You:
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CYBERPORN
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It's popular, pervasive and surprisingly perverse, according to
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the first survey of on-line erotica. And there's no easy way to
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stamp it out
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By: PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT
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SEX IS EVERYWHERE THESE DAYS-in books, magazines, films,
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television, music videos and bus-stop perfume ads. It is printed on
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dial-a-porn business cards and slipped under windshield wipers.
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It is acted out by balloon-breasted models and actors with unflagging
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erections, then rented for $4 a night at the corner video
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store. Most ,Americans have become so inured to the open display
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of eroticism-and the arguments for why it enjoys special
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status under the First Amendment-that they hardly notice it's
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there.
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Something about the combination of sex and computers,
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however, seems to make otherwise worldly-wise adults a little
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crazy. How else to explain the uproar surrounding the
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discovery by a U.S. Senator-Nebraska Democrat James Exon - that
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pornographic pictures can be downloaded 'From the Internet and
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displayed on a home 'Computer? This, as any computer-savvy
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undergrad can testify, is old news. Yet suddenly the press is on
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alert, parents and teachers are up in arms, and lawmakers in
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Washington are rushing to ban the smut from cyberspace with new
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legislation-sometimes with little regard to either its
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effectiveness or its constitutionality.
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If you think things are crazy now, though, wait until the
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politicians get hold of a report coming out this week. A re-search
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team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
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has conducted-
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ducted an exhaustive study of on-line porn-what's available, who
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is downloading it, what turns them on-and the findings (to be
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published in the Georgetown Law journal) are sure to pour fuel on
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an already explosive debate.
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The study, titled Marketing Pornography on the information
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Superhighway, is significant not only for what it tells us about
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what's happening on the computer networks but also for what it
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tells us about ourselves. Pornography's appeal is surprisingly
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elusive. It plays as much on fear, anxiety, curiosity and taboo
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as on genuine eroticism. The Carnegie Mellon study, drawing on
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elaborate computer records of on-line activity, was able to measure
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for the first time what people actually download, rather than
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what they say they want to see. "We now know what the consumers
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of computer pornography really look at in the privacy of their own
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homes," says Marty Rimm, the study's principal investigator.
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"And we're finding a fundamental shift in the kinds of images
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they demand."
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What the Carnegie Mellon researchers discovered was:
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There's an awful lot of porn on-line. In an 18-month study, the
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team surveyed 917,410 sexually explicit pictures, descriptions,
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short stories and film clips. On those Usenet newsgroups
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where digitized images-ages are stored, 83.5% of the pictures were
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pornographic.
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It is immensely popular. Trading in sexually explicit imagery,
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according to the report is now "one of the largest (if not the
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largest)
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* PORN IS IMMENSELY POPULAR: IN AN 18-MONTH STUDY, THE
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CARNEGIE MELLON RESEARCHERS FOUND SEXUALLY EXPLICIT PICTURES,
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SHORT STORIES AND FILM CLIPS ON-LINE *
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recreational applications of users of computer networks." At one
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U.S. university, 13 of the 40 most frequently visited newsgroups
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had names like alt.sex.stories, rec.arts.erotica and alt.sex.bondage.
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it is a big moneymaker. The great majority (71%) of
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the sexual images on the news-groups surveyed originate from
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adult-oriented computer bulletin-board systems (BBS) whose
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operators are trying to lure customers to their private
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collections of X-rated material. There are thousands of these
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BBS services, which charge fees (typically $10 to $30 a month)
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and take credit cards; the five largest have annual revenues in
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(excess of $1 million.
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It is ubiquitous. Using data obtained with permission from BBS
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operators, the Carnegie Mellon team identified (but did not
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publish the names of individual consumers in more than 2,000
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cities in all 50 states and 40 countries, territories and
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provinces around the world-including some countries like China,
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where possession of pornography can be a capital offense.
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It is a guy thing. According to the BBS operators, 98.9% of the
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consumers of on-line porn are men. And there is some evidence that
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many of the remaining 1.1% are women paid to hang out (in the
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"chat" rooms and bulletin boards to make the patrons feel more
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comfortable. It is not just naked women. Perhaps because
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hard-core sex pictures are so widely available elsewhere, the
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adult BBS market seems to be driven largely by a demand for
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images that can't be found in the average magazine rack:
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pedophilia (nude photos of children), hebephilia (youths) and
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what the researchers call paraphilia - a grab bag of "'deviant"
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material that includes images of' bondage, sadomasochism,
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urination, defecation, and sex acts with a barnyard full of
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animals.
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The appearance of material like this on, a public network
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accessible to men, women and children around the world arises
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issues too important to ignore or to oversimplify. Parents have
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legitimate concerns about what their kids are being exposed to
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and, conversely, what those children might miss if their access to
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the Internet were cut off. Lawmakers must
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balance public safety with their obligation to preserve essential
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civil liberties. Men and women have to come to terms with what
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draws them to such images. And computer programmers have to come
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up with more enlightened ways to give users control over a network
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that is, by design, largely out of control.
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The Internet, of course, is more than a place to find
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pictures of people having sex with dogs. It's a vast marketplace
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of ideas and information of all sorts-on politics, religion,
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science and technology. If the fast-growing World Wide Web
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fulfills its early promise, the network could be a powerful
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engine of economic growth in the 21st century. And as the
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Carnegie Mellon study is careful to point out, pornographic image
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files, despite their evident popularity, represent only about 3%
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of all the messages on the Usenet newsgroups, while the Usenet
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itself represents only 11.5% of the traffic on the Internet.
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As shocking and, indeed, legally obscene as some of the
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on-line porn may be, the researchers found nothing that can't be
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found in specialty magazines or adult bookstores.
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Most of the material offered by the private BBS services, in
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fact, is simply scanned from existing print publications.
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But pornography is different on the computer networks. You
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can obtain it in the privacy of your home-without having to walk
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into a seedy bookstore or movie house. You can download only
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those things that turn you on, rather than buy an entire magazine
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or video. You can explore different aspects of your sexuality
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without exposing yourself to communicable diseases or public
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ridicule. (Unless, of course, someone gets hold of the computer
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files tracking your on-line activities, as happened earlier this
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year to a couple dozen crimson-faced Harvard students.)
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The great fear of parents and teachers, of course, is not
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that college students will find this stuff but that it will fall
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into the hands of those much younger including some, perhaps, who
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are not emotionally prepared to make sense of what they see.
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Ten-year-old Anders Urmacher, a student at the Dalton School in
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New York City who likes to hang out with other kids in the Treehouse chat room
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on America On-line, got Email from a stranger that contained a
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mysterious file with instructions for how to download it. He
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followed the instructions, and then he called his mom. When Linda
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Mann Urmacher opened the file, the computer screen filled with 10
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thumbnail-size pictures showing couples engaged in various acts of
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sodomy, heterosexual intercourse and lesbian sex. "I was not
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aware that this stuff was on-line," says a shocked Mann Urmacher.
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"Children should not be subjected to these images."
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This is the flip side of Vice President AI Gore's vision of
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an information superhighway linking every school and library in
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the land. When the kids are plugged in, will they be exposed to
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the seamiest sides of human sexuality? Will they fall prey to
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child molesters hanging out in electronic chat rooms?
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It's precisely these fears that have stopped Bonnie Fell of
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Skokie, Illinois, from signing up for the Internet access her
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three boys say they desperately need. "They could get bombarded
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with X-rated porn, and I wouldn't have any idea," she says.
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Mary Veed, a mother of three from nearby Hinsdale, makes a point
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of trying to keep up with her computer-literate 12-year-old, but
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sometimes has to settle for monitoring his phone bill. "Once they
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get to be a certain age, boys don't always tell Mom what they do,"
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she says.
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"We face a unique, disturbing and urgent circumstance,
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because it is children who are the computer experts in our
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nation's families," said Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana
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during the debate over the controversial anti-cyberporn bill he
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cosponsored with Senator Exon.
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According to at least one of those experts-16-year-old David
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Slifka of Manhattan the danger of being bombarded with unwanted
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pictures is greatly exaggerated. "If you don't want them you
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won't get them," says the veteran Internet surfer. Private adult
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BBS's require proof of age (usually a driver's license) and are
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off-limits to minors, and kids have to master some fairly daunting
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computer science before they can turn so-called binary files on
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the Usenet into high-resolution color pictures. "The chances of
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randomly coming across them are unbelievably slim," says Slifka.
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While groups like the Family Research Council insist that
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on-line child molesters represent a clear and present danger, there
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is no evidence that it is any greater than the thousand other threats
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* THE BIGGEST DEMAND IS NOT FOR HARD-CORE SEX PICTURES BUT FOR
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MATERIAL INCLUDING PEDOPHILIA, BONDAGE, SADOMASOCHISM AND SEX
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ACTS WITH VARIOUS ANIMALS *
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every day. Ernie Allen, executive director of the National Center
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for Missing and Exploited Children, acknowledges that there have been
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10 or 12 "fairly high-profile cases" in the past year of children
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being seduced or lured on-line into situations where they are
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victimized.
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Kids who are not on-line are also at risk, however; more than
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800,000 children are reported missing every year in the U.S.
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Yet it is in the name of the children and their parents that
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lawmakers are racing to fight cyberporn. The first blow was
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struck by Senators Exon and Coats, who earlier this year
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introduced revisions to an existing law called the Communications
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Decency Act. The idea was to extend regulations written to govern
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the dial-a-porn industry into the computer networks. The bill
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proposed to outlaw obscene material and impose fines of up to
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$100,000 and prison-on terms of up to two years on anyone who
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knowingly makes "indecent" material available to children under
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18.
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The measure had problems from the start. In its original
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version it would have made on-line-service providers criminally
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liable for any obscene communications that passed through their
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systems - a provision that, given the way the networks operate,
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would have put the entire Internet at risk. Exon and Coats
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revised the bill but left in place the language about using
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"indecent" words on-line. "It's a frontal assault on the First
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Amendment," says Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. Even
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veteran prosecutors ridicule it. "It won't pass scrutiny even in
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misdemeanor court," says one.
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The Exon bill bad been written off for dead only a few
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weeks ago. Republican Senator Larry Pressler of South
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Dakota, chairman of the Commerce committee, w which has
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jurisdiction over the larger telecommunications-reform act to
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which it is attached, told Time that he intended to move to
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table it.
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That was before Exon showed up in the Senate with his
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"blue book." Exon had asked a friend to download some of the
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rawer images available on-line. "I knew it was bad," he says.
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"But then when I got on there, it made Playboy and Hustler look like
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Sunday-school stuff."
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He had the images printed out, stuffed them in a blue folder and
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invited his colleagues to stop by his desk on the Senate floor to
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view them. At the end of the debate-which was carried live on
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C-SPAN few Senators wanted to cast a nationally televised vote
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that might later be characterized as pro-pornography. The bill
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passed 84 to 16.
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Civil libertarians were outraged. Mike Godwin, staff counsel
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for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, complained that the
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indecency portion of the bill would transform the vast library of
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the Internet into a children's reading room, where only subjects
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suitable for kids could be discussed. "Its government censorship,"
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said Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
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"The First Amendment shouldn't end where the Internet begins."
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The key issue, according to legal scholars, is whether the
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Internet is a print medium (like a news-paper), which enjoys
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strong protection against government interference, or a broadcast
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medium (like television), which may be subject to all sorts of
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government control. Perhaps the most significant import of the Exon
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bill, according to EFF's Godwin, is that it would place the
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computer networks under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications
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Commission, which enforces, among other rules, the
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injunction against using the famous seven dirty words on the
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radio. In a TIME/CNN poll Of 1,000 Americans conducted last week
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by Yankovich Partners, respondents were sharply split on the
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issue: 42% were for FCC like control over sexual content on the
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computer net-works; 48% were against it.
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By week's end the balance between protecting speech and
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curbing pornography seemed to be tipping back toward the
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libertarians. In a move that surprised conservative supporters,
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House Speaker Newt Gingrich denounced the Exon amendment. "It
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is clearly a violation of free speech, and it's a violation of the
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right of adults to communicate with each other," he told a caller
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on a cable-TV show. It was a key defection, because Gingrich
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will preside over the computer-decency debate when it moves to the House
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in July. Mean-while, two U.S. Representatives, Republican
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Christopher Cox of California and Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon,
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were putting together an anti-Exon amendment that would bar
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federal regulation of the Internet and help parents find ways to
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block material they found objectionable.
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Coincidentally, in the closely watched case of a University
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of Michigan student who published a violent sex fantasy on the
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Internet and was charged with transmitting a threat to injure or
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kidnap across state lines, a federal judge in Detroit last week
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dismissed the charges. The judge ruled that while Jake Baker's
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story might be deeply offensive, it was not a crime.
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How the Carnegie Mellon report will affect the delicate
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political balance on the cyberporn debate is anybody's guess.
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Conservatives thumbing through it for rhetorical ammunition
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will find plenty. Appendix B lists the most frequently
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downloaded files from a popular adult BBS, providing both the
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download count and the two-line descriptions posted by the
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board's operator. Suffice it to say that they all end in ex-
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exclamation points, many include such phrases as "nailed to a
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table!" and none can be printed in TIME.
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How accurately these images reflect America's sexual
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interests, however, is a matter of some dispute. University of
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Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann, whose 1994 Sex in America
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survey painted a far more humdrum picture of America's sex life,
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says the Carnegie Mellon study may have captured what he calls the
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"gaper phenomenon." "There is a curiosity for things that are
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extraordinary and way out," he says. "Ifs like driving by a
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horrible accident. No one wants to be in it, but we all slow down
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to watch."
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Other sociologists point out that the difference between the
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Chicago and Carnegie Mellon reports may be more apparent than
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real. Those 1 million or 2 million people who download pictures
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from the Internet represent a self-selected group with an interest
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in erotica. The Sex in America respondents, by contrast, were a
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few thousand people selected to represent a cross section of all
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America.
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Still, the new research is a gold mine for psychologists,
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social scientists, computer marketers and anybody with an interest
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in human sexual behavior. Every time computer users logged on to
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one of these bulletin boards, they left a digital trail of their
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transactions, allowing the pornographers to compile data bases
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about their buying habits and sexual tastes. The more sophisticated
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operators were able to adjust their inventory and their descriptions to match
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consumer demand.
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Nobody did this more effectively than Robert Thomas, owner of
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the Amateur Action BBS in Milpitas, California, and a kind of
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modern-day Marquis de Sade, according to the Carnegie Mellon
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report. He is currently serving time in an obscenity case that
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maybe headed for the Supreme Court.
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Thomas, whose BBS is the on-line-porn market leader,
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discovered that he could boost sales by trimming soft and hard
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core images from his data base while front-loading his files with
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pictures of sex acts with animals (852) and nude prepubescent
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children (more than 5,000), his two most popular categories of
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porn. He also used copywriting tricks to better serve his
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customers' fantasies. For example, he described more than 1,200 of
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his pictures as depicting sex scenes between family members
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(father and daughter, mother and son), even though there was no
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evidence that any of the participants were actually related.
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These "incest" images were among his biggest sellers, accounting
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for 10% of downloads.
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The words that worked were some-times quite revealing.
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Straightforward oral sex, for example, generally got a lukewarm
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response. But when Thomas described the same images using words
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like choke or choking, consumer demand doubled.
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Such findings may cheer anti-pornography activists; as
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feminist writer Andrea Dworkin puts it, "the whole purpose of
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pornography is to hurt women." Catharine MacKinnon, a professor
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of law at the University of Michigan, goes further. Women are
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doubly violated by pornography, she writes in Vindication and
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Resistance, one of three essays in the forthcoming George-town
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Lawjournal that offer differing views on the Carnegie Mellon
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report. They are violated when it is made and exposed to
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further violence again and again every time it is consumed.
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"The question pornography poses in cyberspace," she writes, "is
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the same one it poses everywhere else: whether anything will be
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done about it."
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But not everyone agrees with Dworkin and MacKinnon, by any
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means; even some feminists think there is a place in life and the
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Internet for erotica. In her new book, Defending Pornography,
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Nadine Stross argued that censoring sexual expression would
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do women more harm than good, undermining their equality, their
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autonomy and their freedom.
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The Justice Department, for its part, has not asked for
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new antiporn legislation. Distributing obscene material across
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state lines is already illegal under federal law,
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and child pornography in particular is vigorously prosecuted.
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Some 40 people in 14 states were arrested two years ago in
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Operation Longarm for exchanging kiddie porn online. And one of
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the leading characters in the Carnegie Mellon study a former Rand
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McNally executive named Robert Capella, who left book publishing
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to make his fortune selling pedophilia on the networks was
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extradited from Tijuana, and is now awaiting sentencing in a
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New Jersey jail.
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For technical reasons, it is extremely difficult to stamp out
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anything on the Internet, particularly Images Stored on the Usenet
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newsgroups. As Internet pioneer John Gilmore famously put it,
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"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
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There are border issues as well. Other countries on
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the Internet, France, for instance-are probably no more
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interested in having their messages screened by U.S. censors than
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Americans would be in having theirs screened by, say, the
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government of Saudi Arabia.
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Historians say it should come as no surprise that the
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Internet the most democratic of media would lead to new calls for
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censorship. The history of pornography and efforts to suppress it
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are inextricably bound up with the rise of new media and the
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emergence of democracy. According to Walter Kendrick, author of
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The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modem Culture, the mod-ern concept
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of pornography was invented in the 19th century by European
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gentlemen whose main concern was to keep obscene material away
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from women and the lower classes. Things got out of hand with
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the spread of literacy and education, which made pornography
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available to anybody who could read. Now, on the computer
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networks, anybody with a computer and a modem can not only consume
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pornography but distribute it as well. On the Internet, anybody
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can be Bob Guecione.
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That might not be a bad idea, says Carlin Meyer, a professor
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at New York Law School whose Georgetown essay takes a far less
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apocalyptic view than MacKinnon's. She argues that if you
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don't like the images of sex the pornographers offer, the
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appropriate response is not to suppress them but
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to overwhelm them with healthier, more realistic ones. Sex on
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the Internet, she maintains, might actually be good for young
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people. "[Cyberspace] is a safe space in which to explore the
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forbidden and the taboo," she writes. "It offers the possibility
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for genuine, unembarrassed conversations about accurate as well as
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fantasy images of sex."
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That sounds easier than it probably is. Pornography is
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powerful stuff, and as long as there is demand for it, there
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will always be a supply. Better software tools may help cheek the
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worst abuses, but there will never be a switch that will cut it
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off entirely not without destroying the unbridled expression that
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is the source of the Internet's (and democracy's) greatest
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strength. The hard truth, says John Perry Barlow, co-founder of
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the EFF and father of three young daughters, is that the burden
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ultimately falls where it always has: on the parents. "If you
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don't want your children fixated on filth," he says, better step
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up to the tough task of raising them to find it as distasteful as
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you do yourself."
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-Reported by Hannah Bloch/Washington
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Wendy Cole/Chicago and Sharon E Epperson/New York
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