Child Porn

A few years ago, problems related to the Internet were the problems of a few people who actually used the Internet. Today, the Internet is used by millions of people, many of them children. One of the virtues of the Internet is that it is an unlimited source of information, knowledge and communication that keeps growing, developing and changing every day. Yet, this virtue is itself one of the Internet’s worst evils, especially when it comes to children. The reason is that pedophiles, child-porn traders and others obsessed about child sex find the Internet as a medium through which they can look for victims. More seriously, the Internet is also widely used by thousands of children who are curious to discover into sex-land without any supervision, since Internet is open to everybody. The Internet represents a double-jeopardy for children who are victimized when they are sought by pedophiles and when they seek prohibited but accessible pornography on the net.

There are at least 28,000 erotic sites on the Internet, half of which are operating for profit and money. This means that they are motivated to use aggressive marketing and advertising on the Internet to attract more business and fight competitors. While such marketing and advertising policies are attracting millions of potential customers, they are also attracting children who access these sites without any controls by their parents (Schmickle & Sanden, 1997, online).

Erotic sites on the Internet are legal, at least in most countries, and in 1996, the US Supreme Court rejected a law that was going to prohibit these sites on the basis that such a law is unconstitutional as it violates freedoms of speech and expression (Schmickle & Sanden, 1997, online). The vulnerability of children on the Internet even became more serious as the American government, as well as many other governments, started providing public funds to schools in order to install internet facilities for students to use during school...