One of the most troublesome public policy topics of our day surrounds the vast impact of the Internet on our cultural institutions, economics and politics. Whether it is the Internet's impact on government revenues by avoiding sales taxes, the national security/law enforcement debate concerning encryption programs, and allowing anyone with an Internet connection and web authoring tools to become a worldwide publisher (a la Matt Drudge), the Internet provides new opportunities for innovation and communication.
But the most contentious debates regard the availability of pornography on the Internet, and the access of such by children from schools and libraries. The debate thus far has been a battle of extremes: on one hand you have so-called conservative organizations who believe that there is a legislative solution to be had regarding the issues of online porn and Internet filtering in schools; and on the other you have the cyber-anarchists, such as the ACLU and the American Libraries Association who have enshrined the pornographer as the bastion of the First Amendment, and subsequently believe that children should have access to smut on publicly funded computers.
Much of the conservative rhetoric has centered on legislatively prohibiting pornography on the Internet. However, this position fails to consider the unfortunate demand for such material, as well as the technical realities of the Internet. The nature of the technology is such that any American prohibition will result in an exodus of pornographers to foreign Internet servers, which remain easily accessible and affordable as disk space on domestic servers. The technology itself denies any legislative solution for the problem of online decency standards.
This ideological logjam has to date prevented any substantive compromise in recent years. However, there is an online decency solution.
One approach was the advent of Internet filters, which screen out websites based on a set list of URLs and keywords (most of which are not repeatable here). However, the ACLU and ALA have argued that these filtering programs sometimes filter out material on breast cancer and Liza Minelli. Thus, the cyber-anarchists argued that the exclusion of non-offensive websites excluded the use of filtering software on First Amendment grounds.
I believe the solution is to create a voluntary domain for adult-oriented material, such as .adu or .smut (just kidding), which would be easy to configure browsers to prevent viewing on home, school and library computers, and would end the need for keyword-based filtering programs and end the verbal objections of the cyber-anarchists about non-offensive sites being subject to filtering. This would essentially create an online "red light district."
This purely voluntary domain would have several market incentives. The primary is that the pornographers have a vested interest in devising a market solution, rightly fearing the alternative - legislative mandates. With that in mind, it should be noted that the online porn industry does not make any money from children, because of the nature of economic transactions on the Internet - credit cards. Internet Service Providers would also have the incentive to encourage any porn site operators on their servers to move to the new domain to prevent regulation by the federal and state authorities.
As stated earlier, this would provide a transition from keyword filtering programs, the main point of attack by cyber-anarchists. Web browsers could easily be configured to exclude all URL addresses within that adult domain. This solution would also prevent the filtering of conservative material on the Internet, which was recently demonstrated when the American Family Association - one of the most vocal advocates of required filtering software - was targeted by CyberPatrol (the most popular filtering software) for "hate speech" directed towards homosexuals.
This approach robs both extremes of their main position. For the cyber-anarchists, it flushes out their real views into the open. The ACLU has consistently defended the rights of child pornographers and pedophiles under a First Amendment protection argument for all published material. That clearly doesn't fly with the public. The radically liberal ALA would be forced to admit that they have no problem with children accessing offensive material from publicly funded computer systems.
On the other end of the political spectrum, it would demonstrate the statist roots and philosophy of organizations like Family Research Council, Christian Coalition and the AFA, who believe that the state can mandate a REAL solution to the problem. Do they want to severely limit children's access to harmful material, or are they interested in making a lot of noise for fund raising? At least one of these organizations has expressed the belief that it is the state, and not parents, who are primarily responsible for what children view on the Internet - an inherently statist (and in terms of conservatism, contradictory) view.
Imputing the federal government with the power to regulate Internet content is fraught with danger. In our emerging pagan age, this power will be quickly turned against Christian and conservative organizations and belief. In practice, this is what is happening, as can be seen with AFA and CyberPatrol, with hate speech and religious intolerance as the justification for such.
The Internet presents an enormous opportunity for communicating right and responsible principles around the world and for economic development. It would be a tragedy for this debate to be governed by forces with other interests at heart. In the debate for online decency, it is time for cooler heads to prevail.
This article is re-posted with permission from the July 8, 1998 edition of the Covenant Syndicate.