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Limiting Children's Access To Internet Pornography Essay

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Pornography is one of mankind's most revered, respected, and repulsed pastimes. Adults can use pornography to relieve stress, enhance their sex lives, or simply as a means of entertainment. One of the easiest and most popular ways of obtaining pornographic material is over the Internet. The only downside is that the Internet is accessible to children; therefore, pornography is accessible to children. While adults should have limitless access to Internet porn, minors should be kept away from this concubine. Usage of Internet pornography grows rapidly every day. It can be accessed easily enough by anyone that wishes to see the material, has a modem, and some times a wishful intent. The material ranges from semi-nude photos to videos …show more content…

Their biggest reason is the endangerment of American children that use the Internet. Children can be endangered in many ways, one of which is being lured by a pedophile and possibly sexually assaulted. A pedophile is an adult with a psychosexual disorder where children stimulate sexual arousal. There is evidence that children who have been sexually victimized are more likely to be troubled adults. Advocates worry about the safety of the American children and wish to eliminate this from happening. A recent example is People v. Barrows, 174 Misc. 2d 367, 664 N.Y.S. 2d 410 (1997): an adult, James Barrows, entered an AOL chat room and seduced what he thought was a thirteen year old girl, who in actuality was an officer of Kings County District Attorney. Barrows had transmitted pictures of under-aged children having sex, engaged in sexually explicit conversations and attempted to lure the child to engage in sexual acts. Barrows was one of the few pedophiles to be caught and brought to justice.
One proposal that was struck down from protecting children is the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, argued that the CDA was in violation of the U.S. Constitution and laws that would be enacted were clear and undefined. If made into law, the CDA could severely censor the Internet in ways that were never attempted before. It would filter out anything that is deemed obscene and

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