Introduction

Pornography itself is not new, it dates back 1000s of years. The media is new. This article tries to examine some of the issues around internet pornography and for those who make use of it examines some of the pitfalls and problems.

Internet Pornography - The Issues

Internet pornography has become so popular partly because it offers a level of anonymity never available before. While most people simply enjoy keeping their personal thoughts and interests private, others use this factor as a shield for dubious activities. A married man can reasonably keep his wife from discovering his dissatisfaction with their sex life; a paedophile can conceal his interest from family members and co-workers; and a teen can learn a great deal about the facts of life without her parents' knowledge simply by clicking a link saying she is older than she really is. What impact this ultimately has on society is a question for debate.

Internet porn is also available in much higher quantities than traditional porn and at a cheaper cost. For a few people, this can be a good case of having 'too much of a good thing.' Many psychologists believe it is possible to become addicted to online viewing of pornography. As with other addictions, this has the potential to cause problems in other aspects of life -- like one's career, family relations, friendships, and sense of self-esteem. Someone who feels they have become addicted to internet porn should seek professional help and/or counselling.

There are also those people who feel that all pornography is exploitative in nature. They argue that pornography teaches viewers to treat some people as mere objects of lust instead of as individuals with feelings and unique personalities. Some such theorists feel that this effect is increased as greater quantities of porn are consumed, so internet pornography represents an increased threat of social injustice in their minds.

Other people feel that internet pornography is not culpable in this fashion. They argue that the worriers have a misplaced sense of cause and effect, and that people with prejudicial and over-simplified views of their preferred 'sex objects' are already predisposed towards pornography. They claim that such people are a very small minority of online porn viewers, and that most consumers are well-adjusted citizens. They point to the fact that crimes like rape and domestic violence have not increased in any country at the same rate that internet pornography has grown.

Internet Pornography - Hard Cash

Internet porn is also big business with sales of over $140 million in 1997 and this was predicted to rise to over to $366 million by 2001. With sex sites being one of the highest vistited types of site on the web, being visted by over 13% over surfers over the age of 12 and with sites being able to generate over $3million a month it is here for good. This is a basic guide to what is out there

Legal Note

Whatever your views on the moral side the legal side does need to be mentioned as it is an absolute. Most countries in
the world have laws on what is considered decent and what is not.
In the UK, photos of an errect penis are considered obscene and
not allowed. The definition of obscene dates from the 1959
Obscene Publications Act: "an article shall be deemed to be
obscene if its effect . . . is, if taken as a whole, such as to
tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely . . . to read,
see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it." Similar
laws exist world wide. Therefore much of what can be viewed on-line
may be illegal somewhere in the world. However if you stick to
some basic, common sense principals you will avoid major problems.

• Keep what you download to
  yourself - do not share it.
• ALL images of children in any
  form could be considered as child pornography - even
  the holiday snaps of your 4 year old daughter naked,
  paddling in the sea. NEVER download such images. If you accidentally stumble on some, and this is
  possible, for your own protection delete your entire web
  history and temporary files. There are sites such as Internet Watch that you can report such sites.

• Images of models aged 16-18
  are illegal in many countries, most of the USA for
  example. Whereas in the UK the law states it is an
  offence to take or distribute indecent photographs of
  children under the age of 16 (Protection of Children Act
  1978 ). So be careful if teenagers turn you on.

How Do You find the Porn

Well any search engine will throw
up thousands of hits for any of the words you may want to search
on (Hardcore, teens, softcore, pornography, sluts etc). But you
could end up flitting all over the net without finding anything
you consider decent.

There is no easy way really apart
from word of mouth to finding the best sites, however once you
have found ones that meet your needs, bookmark them and use them
again and again.

Types of Sites

Generally these can be divided up
into Six basic types.

• Free Sites - These
  normally have examples from a related pay site or are
  soft to moderate porn. Some of these can offer
  exceptionally good images.
• Index Sites -These are
  the ones, when found, to bookmark, as they will give a
  list of other sites - usually free with a brief
  description of what is on the site and number of images
  or movies. Some of these are updated daily.
• Forums - Behaving the H2G2
  forums you can post and read can write messages, and more
  importantly links to sites you have found or put requests
  for similar sites. Often linked to Index sites.
• Pay or Membership sites.
  These will all require a credit card number to gain
  official access, some claim this is only as a proof of
  age and your card will not be billed. Believe this if you
  will. Others are up front about the charges, again if you
  feel like taking a risk with your card details go ahead. Often sites that say they will only bill you once make repeat billings against your card. Whilst your credit card company will sort this out for you and refund any money fraudulently taken, many people are to embarrassed to do this and take the more drastic method of cancelling their card
• Mixed sites - some may
  contain a few galleries and an index of other sites.
• Private, hidden sites,
  frequently just a list of files in a free storage area,
  frequently on the wrong side of legal in most states.

Types Of Porn

• Most porn can be classed into
  hardcore, softcore and others. Hardcore usually refers to
  material showing two or more people engaged in sexual
  acts. Softcore can be anything from bikini clad models to
  naked spread-legged models, but always on there own. The
  other cover bestiallity, bondage, urination, sneak
  pictures, old, fat - the list is as long as your
  imagination.
• The vast majority of
  pornography is still images. These are nearly always
  displayed as a page of small, thumb-nail images. Clicking
  on these opens the full picture.
• However there is a sizable
  market for movies. These can be of varying quality and
  size, ranging from a few seconds to 100 MB plus movies
  that will fill your hard drive up in no time.
• There are also an increasing
  number of chat rooms with streaming video of a model (nearly
  always female) at the other end. Some of these are free
  initially, the model will almost always stay almost
  clothed. However for some money you can enter a private
  session, where the model is yours to command.
• There are also site dealing
  in pure text pornography. The benefit of these site is
  that there is less chance of any legal infringement.

All the above can be further
broken up into subject matter; teens, mature, asian,
schoolgirls, sluts etc.

Hazards/Pitfalls

Apart from the legal side there are several hazards you should be aware of. Most sites contain advertising, these sites will attempt to place cookies on your PC, these will enable other sites to see what sort of sites you have been visiting, more importantly others who use your PC can see them.

• Pop Ups - These are the
  extra windows are opened as you enter or leave a site,
  they usually display advertising of some sort. However
  some sites can spark of a loop of pop-ups, no sooner have
  you closed one then two more spring up. These can cause
  severe PC problems and be very confusing.
• Dummy links - frequently
  you will be viewing a page you like and you see a link at
  the bottom saying "Page 2", you click on it,
  only to be taken to a totally different site
  frequently a pay site. Never trust links.
• Hijacking - Some sites
  allow you to download a program which, it is stated, will
  allow you to view their material. It has been reported
  that some of these will log you off your current service
  provider and redial to a premium rate line, frequently in
  some far flung country.NB This trick is not just limited to Porn sites

Cleaning Up and Protecting others

If you use a PC that is shared with others and you don't want them to see where you have been, it is important you clean up. Evidence of your visit can be found in Cookies (hotlinked to guide reference if cookie entry gets approved) - best disable them first usually in your browser settings somewhere. This will also help reduce pop-ups. Your history, will need to be purged as well as temporary internet files, again each browser has settings to do this within them somewhere. If you use Internet Explorer and you have manually typed in an address this can also be embarrassing as the list of typed addresses will appear on the pull down menu. These can only be removed by editing the registry - unless you know what you are doing, do not type in addresses.

For those who worry about the moral or social consequences of viewing internet pornography, there are software filters that help people and their families avoid porn sites. Examples include NetNanny, Cyber Patrol, and Surf Watch. Most such software is available for free download. Most can also be bypassed with a password, in cases where some members of the household are comfortable with internet porn and others are not.

However, even software filters are generally understood to be a flawed solution. The user surfing with the filter turned on can expect some loss of non-pornography sites. Frequently, the filters censor certain words, causing problems with topics that may contain those words, like gay rights, breast and testicular cancer, and family planning. Also, many filters will allow access to a small portion of porn sites in error -- particularly sites that avoid frequently censored words while maintaining extensive pornographic photo galleries.

Finally, children who have been forced to use filters frequently find ways around them. Some learn their parents' passwords to bypass the filters, while others develop or utilise renegade software that renders the filters useless. Because of this, parents are urged to discuss the possibility of viewing 'adult material' with their children before allowing them to surf the internet without supervision -- whether they have decided to employ a filter or not.

If you follows the advice given
here you should be able to find sites that meet your needs in
relative safety with minimum cost and risk.

References: Issues of Criminal Liability Mark Gould
University of Bristol

MSNBC News

Co-researcher Fragilis the Melodical