Essay/Term paper: Cyberporn: on a screen near you

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Information Technology

CyberPorn: On A Screen Near You


Cybersex. This word brings to mind a barrage of images, which might be on Stra
Trek or virtual reality video by aerosmith. Sex is everywhere today--in books,
magazines, films, internet, television, and music videos. Something about the
combination of sex and computers seems to make children and adults for that
matter, a little crazy.

In an 18 month study, the team surveyed 917,840 sexually explicit pictures on
the internet where pornographic. Trading in explicit imagery is now "one of
thelargest recreational applications of users of computer networks." The great
majority (71%) of the sexual images on the newsgrouls originate from adult
oriented bulletin-board systems (BBS). According to BBS, 98.9% of the consumers
of online porn are men. The women hold a 1.1% in chat rooms and on Bulletin
boards. Perhaps because hard-core sex pictures are so widely available
elsewhere, the adult BBS market seems to be driven by demand for images that
can't be found on the average magazine rack, such as pedophilia, hebephilia, and
paraphilia. While groups like the Family Research Council insisdt that online
child molesters represent a clear and present danger, there is no evidence that
it is any greater than that thousands of other threats children face everyday.
The Exxon bill proposed to outlaw obscene material and impose fines uo to
$100,000and prison term up to two years on anyone who knowinglymakes "indecent"
material available to children under the age of 18.

Robert Thomas spends his days like any other inmate at the U.S. Medicalcenter
for Federal prisoners in Springfield. Thomas, 39 a amateur BBS in California,
made headlines last year when he and his wife were indicted for transmitting
pornographic material to a government agent in Tennessee. This case shows how
tight of a squeeze the govenment is putting on internet Freedom.