2004/01/12 20:40:00
The BBC have been running an artical about the Internet being blamed for rise in child porn. Fascinating title but as per usual I think that there is too much being made of the Internet’s roll in this. I will be the first to admit that it has enabled more people access to images of child porn. But have the arrest rates gone up because it is now easier to track these people now they are starting to put their credit card details into websites! Don’t get me wrong I don’t think that there is any way to defend these disgusting people but I don’t think that you can blame their ill doings on a communications protocol. My greatest fear is that, in these days of populist, knee jerk reactions, the government will try to meddle with the Internet. The power of the Internet is the freedom that it gives people you can’t take away one of those freedoms with out reducing the rest. We should be looking at the people who commit these crimes and not the tools that they use to commit them. The extreme power of the Internet comes from it’s simplicity and it’s inability to discriminate. Soon it will go the way of all other free ideas and be controlled by large corporations that allows us to view only what they decide is the correct thing, based upon profit and governments dictates. It will then become another TV where we get fed more unproductive sludge. Already the major phone companies are drawing up a “Code of Practice” that will allow them to filter the content. There is no simple answer but I am sure that a lot more effort should be put into the causes of these crimes than the tools that allow them to be done.
I was thinking about gun law in the states and how that compares. The argument there is that you should have the right to defend yourself. But in this day and age in civilised society I can see no need for me to carry a gun and if everybody carries a gun then this just increases the usage of them. This is different from the Internet, I see the need for everybody to have access, and for them to be educated about it. The internet is a powerful tool that enables free speach and the exchange of ideas across boundries.
Or perhaps its just me being paranoid?
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