There are two interesting developments this week on the pornography front. Adam Greenwood wrote an excellent article for Junior Ganymede endorsing government efforts to block access to porn sites for children. Meanwhile, Marriott announced that it will no longer be offering adult movies at its hotels because…everybody can get their porn via laptops and ipads (presumably), so they don’t need them on the hotel TVs.
I encourage everybody, no matter how you feel about this issue, to read Adam’s piece, which makes as good an argument as you can make for government action on this issue. But ultimately I disagree with him (respectfully and lovingly).
This paragraph by Adam is a gem:
Our current partial social model of hook-ups and cornucopic pornography is unsustainable. A society by definition is about rich and multi-textured connections between people. It is also, if it is to have some sustaining depth, about children and child-raising. Hook-ups and pornography are not about any of these. They are self-centered and now-centered. Nothing comes of them. Their ethos is incompatible with a prior commitment to marriage and family.
I completely agree with this on a personal level. Let me say that the worst thing about pornography is that it destroys relationships because people begin living in fantasy worlds rather than the real world. Young women are especially victims of this horrible malady — so many young men are addicted to porn these days that it is impossible for them to have normal relationships with the women around them. This is why modern-day prophets decry pornography at every single General Conference. In our homes, we should do everything possible to shield our children from pornography and to avoid it ourselves.
The issue here is whether the government should step in and protect us. Australia and Britain are looking at doing this by blocking porn access for children. Adults would presumably still be able to see porn, but children would be shielded.
This issue is not simply a freedom of speech issue, as Adam points out. We don’t sell alcohol to nine-year-olds, but we do sell it to 21-year-olds. Our society has special protections for children, and this should be considered.
Ultimately, I would oppose similar efforts in the U.S. for three reasons: 1)technologically, such measures are extremely difficult to enforce by government 2)market forces have already stepped forward to offer home-based solutions and 3)I fear big government solutions in general.
If you look at this article, the UK plans on blocking pornography by putting filters on internet service provider servers. This is a massive, hugely expensive undertaking. Who would be doing this in the U.S.? Presumably, some area of the DoJ. The cost involved would ultimately run into the billions. Why? There are thousands of ISPs in the U.S. running literally millions of servers. So, the DoJ would order the ISPs to put the blocks on their servers or suffer fines. This means new regulation, new enforcement powers, new costs for internet providers. You’d have cadres of young bureaucrats monitoring the ISPs, poking around and causing trouble.
We are facing a brave new world. This is the reality of the internet. A few years ago, the United States cracked down on internet-based gambling. What did gambling companies do? They simply moved their servers overseas. Panama, the UK, Russia — their data centers are literally filled to the roof with servers running gambling operations, and most of their traffic still comes to the U.S. There is no evidence that internet-based gambling has gone down. The same thing would happen in the arena of porn. So, companies in the U.S. would face huge burdens blocking porn, but other companies would step in with unblocked porn. We would see no appreciable decrease in the amount of porn flowing into the U.S. Kids would still be able to see it. One porn IP address would be blocked — 10 new ones would pop up in its place.
Much more effective at blocking porn aimed at kids are the various software solutions out there. Again, it is possible to get around these solutions, but the key for me is that it puts responsibility where it should be: on the backs of the parents. If parents would follow common-sense rules such as making kids only use a computer in a public area and monitoring what their kids are doing on-line (ie, being actual parents), many of the problem with porn would be eliminated. But these software solutions can help.
My last point is a general lament about big government solutions in general. Folks, you do not want the government ordering ISPs what they have to do with their servers and monitoring what kind of content goes in and out. The great success of the internet, and the reason that it is still one of the fastest-growing areas of the economy, is that it is a truly free market, despite government’s occasional attempts to control it. Measures like this are the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. First we tell ISPS they can’t do gambling, then we tell them they can’t do porn. Then we tell them they must have “balance” in the kind of news they report (a fairness doctrine for the internet). Then we tell them they must promote good eating habits and exercise for children. And on and on.
Nobody wants a single child to see porn, especially not me with my five kids. But I don’t think there is much the government can do about it.
With regard to the decision by the Marriott hotel and porn, I don’t know what to make of it. Was this caused by all of the pro-family groups protesting? I don’t know. I almost always stay in Marriott hotels when traveling for various reasons, and it will be nice not to have to see the ads for porn when I turn on the TV. I am most inclined to believe that this was simply a market decision — it may have cost more to provide porn than Marriott was getting in revenue.