pornography

=Online Pornography=

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//“The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.”// //(Lord Chesterfield)//

It was a nice Sunday evening. I was showing the pictures of my cousin’s engagement party to my mom on the internet. While I was going through the pictures, from somewhere another link opened up. All of a sudden, a horrible picture pops up onto the screen. The picture depicted a girl humping with two guys. I just freaked out and slammed the power switch on my laptop. My mother was looking at me like she was about to slice me into pieces and bake me into the oven. Thank God! My mother was a computer literate person. When I told her how it happened, she comprehended it to my asylum.

What is pornography, and where does one draw the line? Originally, pornography derives from a Greek word which means the writing of prostitutes. There is no widely accepted definition, so this extends porn to a very vague and wide definition of sexually explicit content. Is a woman posing in a Bikini half naked pornography? If the bikini is revealing and her disposition is overtly sexual, it is poronography-one could argue. The Calvin Klein ad campaign (2005) shows women and men engaged in sexually insinuated 'positions'. The question of 'What is porn' is relative to culture and social background. It is important to note the difference between Obscenity and pornography. Obscenity deals specifically in a legal context with violating statutes in the law relating to sexual content. However, both soft (referring to subtle pornographic images and borderline sexual content) and hard-core porn are common in the media today. The media slogan 'sex sells' is unfortunately used way too often in execution of most advertisements, programs and movies. The most unsafe and hard to monitor form of porn is online porn.

Public access to online pornography has become a major problem. Minors were exposed to sex obscenity through magazines and TV, but the internet has made it more approachable and accessible. Moreover even if a user is not accessing sex sites, he or she has some way of the other. Several researches have shown that majority of young internet users have accidentally encountered sex sites on the Internet. If someone tried researching pornography censorship, several porn links would appear along with the results. The U.S. Supreme Court has tried to help reduce youth access by upholding a ruling that requires public libraries to have strict filtering programs. It is debated that the younger a child begins looking at pornography the higher the potential that youth will become a violent or sexually aggressive person. Although it may ultimately be impossible to completely censor adolescences from pornography even with parental support, the Internet needs to be one less place youths go to obtain pornography, Even if that censorship infringes on free speech.

Internet pornography allows adults to enjoy adult entertainment without embarrassment. However, as long as adults keep these sources available for themselves, youths will have access to controversial sites, as well. Whether a child searches for sexually explicit material consciously or is solicited, he or she will be bombarded with pornography. For example if a child looks for the music videos web page but uses .net rather than .com the child is brought to a porn site. Kids do not have to go looking for porn, they "can be drawn into viewing material they have no desire to see on the Internet through devices such as pop-ups', spam emails and even manipulation of search engines"(Colman, 10).

Many Internet service providers have created parental controls to filter sites and pop-ups. There are even websites with age blocks which only allow people eighteen years and older to enter and some sites even require driver license numbers. Yet, filtering and blocking have proven to not be enough. Not every computer has filtering software and there are methods around these blocks. A teen can borrow his father's drive license, save the URL address to favorites allowing that teen to enter directly into the site, and sometimes just skip the block all together. Technology is advancing so well that it keeps overtaking filtering programs forcing people to continually upgrade who can't necessarily. Parents have to keep buying updates which is expensive. Meaning one out of three times a child can access pornography despite filters.

It is impossible for concerned citizens to depend upon a general law to prevent minors from receiving pornography over the Internet. “This means that parents and schools will have to spend more time and effort supervising what minors might receive. Although parents clearly have the right to regulate what their children have access to, there are many problems associated with filtering devices. It is unfortunately impossible for such devices to make a distinction between materials promoting prurient interests and those providing serious information about issues of sexuality”.

Implementing such a severe course of censorship will cost billions of dollars too, but at least the effect of complete removal will last longer than two minutes. Taxes are paid to traffic the roads to keep children safe--why not traffic the Internet and keep children safe at home? Television is censored everyday to not permit pornography, so censoring the Internet should not be different. The public will complain that restricting particular sites denies free speech; even the pornographer has some rights to display what they want. However, this is not a matter of free speech because minors do not have the right to see pornography. If a kid cannot go into an adult store or buy a Playboy then it should not be right that he or she could go online for the same information.

Perhaps the most fitting way to deal with this social issue is to encourage responsible parent involvement but not everyone can always be there to supervise, demonstrating the fact that eliminating porn from the Internet would be for the best. Pornography might always be around, and restricting it from online might deny our constitutional rights but, society has already tried other methods and nothing is working. Removing pornography may be a slow and difficult process but nothing will improve until changes and decisions are made.

Name: Seun Olowolafe Prof: Jones

Wiki Assignment: The Pornography Industry

It’s fair to say that the pornography industry has come a long way from its taboo days, to the multi-billion dollar industry it managed to attain in the mainstream. Pornography, also commonly known as porno has is the representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal. Not to be mistaken with erotica, pornography, usually depicts sexual graphic nature intended for adults. The difference lies in the so-called high art, low art value of the two genres. At times used interchangeably, porno is conotated to have little or no artistic value, while erotica holds a high art value; for example the Karma Sutra, would be referred to as an erotica, and a playboy magazine would be related to pornography. In general pornography can be perceived as obscene and taboo until recently when pornography became a robust industry generating billions of dollars worldwide. Pornography is as old as civilization but the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. Previous to that time, though some sex acts were regulated or stipulated in laws, looking at objects or images depicting them was not. In some, certain books, engravings or image collections were outlawed, but the trend to compose laws that restricted viewing of sexually explicit things in general was a Victorian construct. Today Pornography may use any of a variety of media from printed literature, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video, or video game, and may even be performed in a live venue, possibly in front of a live audience. Notably, all of these mediums can be found over the Internet. Lets delve into how big the industry has really become, by seeing figures and how it has impacted the media, and western culture. Taken from the Adams Media Research, Forrester Research, and veronis Suhler Communications Industry report, over the past 5 years adult video sales has generated from $500 million to $1.8 billion annually. The internet is said to be the most accessed medium of pornography for minors; that boasted $1billion annually. Adult pay-per-view rakes in $128 million a year and magazines such as Hustler make astounding revenue of $ 1 billion annually. This totals to astronomical numbers between $2.6 billion to $3.9 billion dollars the pornographic industry manages to bring in. How does this affect other genres in the media? Could this account to non-pornographic industries such as toys, video games, movies, etc. to gear towards sex; to exemplify the “sex sells” idea? It seems that the numbers do not lie, but then again; statistics can be overtly exaggerated for bias reasons. Pornography is one of those hot-button topics that generate passionate reactions from people on both sides of the issue. Some say it exploits women and promotes violence against them. Others argue it is protected by the freedom of speech clause. "The government understands the argument that pornography is degrading to women; however, we believe that the censoring of pornography sets a dangerous precedent," Pornography has been a major issue around the country lately, with the release of The People vs. Larry Flynt creating a new round of debate. The controversy has ignited over the rights of the pornography industry versus the rights of the public not to be exposed to what it may deem as indecent. Once one examines the numbers of this robust industry, it seems less than marginal, as its influence continues to impact the fabric of our culture.



Works Cited:
Rubin, Hannah Gladfelter. "Anti-Porn Filters in Libraries Get Supreme Court Approval." Education Daily. Vol. 36 i119. Aspen Publishers, Inc. 2006: 1-2. "Study: Internet Filters Brings Problems." District Administrator. Vol.39 i2. Professional Media Group LLC, February 2006. "Youth, Pornography, and the Internet:." Science and Technology. Thornburgh, Dick and Herbert Lin. Vol. 20 i2. National Academy of Sciences, 2006: 43-49.

Azy Barak, PhD William A. Fisher, PhD. Sex, Guys, and Cyberspace: Effects of Internet Pornography and Individual Differences on Men’s Attitudes Toward Women.[|http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~azy/BarakFisherBelfry&Lashambe1999.pdf]. 2006

Geoffrey Nunberg. The Internet Filter Farce. Issue Date: 1.1.01. http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/1/nunberg-g.html. March 2006 Herold, S. Edward, "Publications : What Sexual Scientists Know... : About Pornography", December 2006, online at: http://www.sexscience.org/publications/index.php?category_id=440&subcategory_id=336&printable=1 http://www.afec.org/issues/pornography/facts.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronography