Protecting children is the main focus when it comes to laws and regulations in regards to the internet and child pornography. After reading the dry material for Chapter 11 I came to a couple conclusions. One of those would be that it almost seems as if this National Research Council is telling parents how to raise their children. The other conclusion would be that this council has a bunch of really great ideas and has thought this through, but can they really overcome all the obstacles that the internet has to offer?
This council gives tons of great advice to children and parents on how to become computer savvy to protect themselves from viewing and encountering pornography and child porn. Such things would be to avoid chat rooms and message boards as well as to ignore instant messages of those whom you are not familiar with. They also advise one not to give out any personal information to any one stranger on the internet. What I feel is stepping over the parental boundary is when they are telling the parent what they should be doing to protect their children from the internet. I know they are only giving them guidance, but this reading has the tone that if parents do not follow these meticulous instructions, then their children are doomed to be child porn victims. Telling parents where the computer should be located or making promises with their children to tell the parent when they have encountered obscene material are great ways of avoiding pornography, but most parents are going to do as they please. On a scale of one to ten of importance I bet the safety of one’s child in relation to child porn is a three or two. Yes, child pornography is supposedly growing rapidly, but most people do not see the primary affects of this and feel it is not a problem. No matter what any council or legislation tells parents what is the best option for avoiding child pornography they simply will not listen until it is too late for the simple fact of being stubborn. How many smokers are told to quit because they will get cancer or how many teenagers are told not to drink and drive? All these people say it will never happen to them and they never take the precautions until after it has happened and it is too late. Everybody thinks “it will never happen to me,” and time and time again that proves to be wrong and we still have not learned from it. So I do not feel that by telling parents how to raise their children in conjunction with the internet is going to help this situation unless actual laws are developed or something is physically done over the internet to stop the invasion of porn into our homes.
Continuing on with the idea of parents not really taking any of these guidelines seriously I feel this council has some really great things to say, but they all have the words should, could, or would in front of them. They have never really been put into play so we really do not know if they are going to work. In the reading there was all this talk about public policy. I remember taking Government in high school and having to write a public policy paper. The readings about the public policy concerning the protection of children from child porn reminded me of when I had to write this paper. Since I have written that paper on the public policy of Euthanasia nothing has progressed concerning the topic. It takes years for these laws to be put into effect even in a single state let alone the entire country. I know that they should be given credit for the effort, but just because they have an idea does not mean that magically in one day everything will be better. And I am not saying that this is how the council feels. I am just stating that by reading this one should not assume that everything is going to be solved because some council feels there can be an improvement and that changes can be made.
