Sunday, April 15, 2007

labels for adult websites

A bold move this week by members of the Senate in an effort to make access to adult websites more difficult for users is causing a lot of controversy. The proposed movement by the some members of the Senate have suggested that the adult explicit material websites should be forced to change their sites to a registered adult web site tag or they could face serious fines from the government. Some members in favor of this policy agree that this is an attempt to clean up the Internet for children.
There are many violated constitutional rights that would limit the proposal to pass in the Senate. If every company engaged in the industry would go along with the proposal willingly, there would be much less tension converting everything in the industry over. The largest problem that causes much controversy seems to be the volunteer part of the actions. If there is a mandated government requirement many people suggest that there is a violation of the freedom of speech right.
Other ideas have surfaced to come to terms with this racy subject such as labeling websites material, much like the rating that television shows that appear on TV. However, there has not been much success with this idea because the large time burden this would place on web providers as well as the issue of who would mandate it.
I believe that this is a troublesome issue and I am not sure of a solid solution to it. The Internet was created for communication between computers. Users of the computers should be given the right to access any material that they feel they want. However, when it comes to many people in the United States, they are very conscious of what they believe that their children should be allowed to view. This society has been a very controlling one since its inception and this is another example of how the government would like to control what the web can offer to people. Many countries in Europe do not feel that it is too racy for naked women to be broadcast their bodies on late night television. America has always felt a need to censor everything. If the country were to take more of an open minded approach then maybe a better outcome could arise. I am not saying that it should be alright for eleven year old children to be downloading porn, but I am saying that if they really what to, they will figure out a way to anyway.

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