[Apr. 30, 2007]
The establishment of Internet has given freedom of choice and unified the world making information transaction easy and fast. This process has made humanity better, but at the same time it has a dark side too, particularly pornography. Internet has given unlimited access to pornography in unlimited quantities. Numerous links to pornography websites try to capture the surfer's attention. It is rather difficult to ignore the images and links displayed.

A feeling of interest appears "pushing" you to visit these websites. After some time you can become addicted to the images and movies. This is particularly dangerous for children. When seeing such websites they experience emotions of disgust and horror. The obscenity and vulgarity of the contents of this information is polluting to the mind.

The money circulating in the pornography industry is BIG. Where there is demand there is supply. Since people visit these websites and buy their products there is demand for it. Annual rentals and sales of adult videos and DVD's top $4 billion, and the industry produces around 11,000 titles each year (20 times as many as Hollywood). [1]

The word "pornography" comes from the Greek words "porno" and "graphia" meaning "depictions of the activities of whores." In common use it means, "material that is sexually explicit and intended primarily for the purpose of sexual arousal."

Before the establishment of Internet pornography was sold at special places and only with identification papers. That way the government could monitor the amounts of pornography and the age auditory it was available to. Internet has made it possible to access the information from public libraries, café’s or from homes.

A two-year study by Alexa Research, a web intelligence service, has revealed that "sex" was the most popular term searched online, 0.3289% - or roughly 1 of every 300 terms.[2] In January 2002 there were 27.5 million U.S. visitors to adult-oriented pornographic Web sites, says Christine Chan of Nielsen//NetRatings, the Internet audience measurement service. About 72% of visitors were men, 28% women. [3] Georgetown University Law School surveyed 900,000 computer images. Of these 900,000 images, 83.5 percent of all computerized photographs available on the Internet are pornographic.

The simplicity of creating your own website has resulted in a tremendous infiltration of the pornography industry into the WWW. Images can be put on the Web using a digital camera or scanning them in. Even whole movies can be published and put on the Web for download. Faster connections, like ADSL and cable, allow downloading quickly and with better quality. With more countries becoming connected the market increases.

Research has found that "more than 20,000 new hosts for pornography sites were created daily. The average site contained around around 43 images, but some sites had more than 100,000 images."[4] The simple law of market economics says "Demand meets supply".

The supply of the service is over abundant. But the impact it has on our society is alarming. Repeated exposure to pornography causes mental abnormalities. Patient usually got addicted and kept coming back for more. The seen aroused in them a strong stimuli and created false fantasies. Nothing kept them back; loss of job, family, possessions, their only wish in life was to see more obscene things.Finally this led them to wanting to act out what they have seen, resulting in crime and obscenity. [5]

These images provide an abnormal view of life, perceiving wrong morals. The images portrayed in the movies create an illusion about the world and the way it functions. Professionals admit that that after watching some of the material you need counseling. While constant illumination to this, causes an alteration in the person.

With people surfing at work and at school other need to install filters and firewalls or even monitor the pages that they go to making access almost impossible. The economic costs of this are high too, Spam and pornographic e-mail costs British firms 3.2 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) a year, (figures provided by Internet service provider (ISP) Star Internet).[6] Of course as a result your privacy might suffer, but our society will benefit from actions taken. It is particularly worrying for the parents. With children’s minds forming, such things could cause shocks damaging the psychic.

The future generation being portrayed all these sexual indecencies makes it our future under threat. It is important to teach what is wrong and right. That way we can be sure that pornography will be outlived in the 21st century. The current solution of using filters enables to limit access but not only to obscene materials but valuable information too. For now this is the best solution, so installing a filter in internet café’s and public libraries will start the process.

Looking at the issue further we see that government position is most important. Implementing laws that clearly prohibit all kinds of sexually abusive material should be considered. Often pornographic websites portray the images as art, therefore it is culture and heritage for the future generations. All cases of abuse should be revised and clearly defined. The government has not caught up in introducing the laws that will regulate the Internet.

Thus creating censorship on the net will benefit the society. This can also be established as an international police force. Amongst its functions would be not only to monitor and forbid pornography, but also finds the sources of the material and the people behind it. Adequate punishments must be implemented for "Internet criminals".

Another important role to play is for Internet Service Providers(ISP). One possible way is not to give domains to these websites and portals, as well as any links to them. That way they can be isolated and forgotten about with time. To find and limit pornography special recognition software can be used. That way we will be protected from it initially. This software can either be installed at ISPs computers or at the home PC, or even installed in the operating system.

References:
[1] Frammolino, Ralph and P.J. Huffstutter. “The Actress, the Producer and Their Porn Revolution.” Los Angeles Times Magazine. 6 January 2002
[2] "Alexa Research Finds 'Sex' Popular on the Web..." Business Wire
[3] Elias, Marilyn. “Cybersex follows Mars, Venus patterns.” USA Today. 26 February 2002
[4] Financial Times, October 21/22, 2000, Weekend edition(FT), Marcus Gibson “ Uncovering the dark side of the world wide web”.
[5] www.moralityinmedia.org. Subheading: “Porn’s effects”.
[6] Steve Gold, "Spam, Porn Costing U.K. Firms $4.6 Billion A Year - ISP.(figures compiled by business Internet service provider Star Internet)" ,Dec 4, 2001


Other sources:
· Charles Platt, "Anarchy Online (net sex)", Harper Prism 1997.
· Tom Forester & Perry Morrison(2nd Edition), "Computer Ethics" Chapter 1: Social, ethical, professional Issues in computing and Chapter 6: The invasion of privacy; MIT press,1999.
· Anne Leer, "Welcome to the wired world" Pearson education 2000.
· George Beekman, Computer confluence(4th edition), Pg.290-293, Prentice Hall 2001.