Two major dangers to children online:
1. Children’s easy access to pornography

-Indecency: Material legal for adults, but illegal for children
-Obscenity: Material illegal for both adults and children *
-Child pornography

2. Pedophiles’ easy access to children

Three Prong Solution - Partnership
1. Legal community

-aggressive law enforcement
-update laws

2. Technology community

-family friendly policy
-implement technological solutions
-abide by the laws

3. Public (Parents, schools, libraries)

-awareness of online dangers
-precautions to protect children: monitor activities, use filtering/blocking software or clean ISPs

-Pornography is the third largest sector of sales in cyberspace, with annual revenues of over $100 million. (Boston Sunday Globe, 12/1/96)

-There are over 92,000 commercial porn sites on the Internet (Family Connect, 1/31/98)

-The pornographic non-commercial Internet sites, public newsgroups (alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism,) are all as accessible to an intrepid 10-year-old as to an adult.

-Exposing children to pornography, either actively or passively, is a form of child sexual abuse.

Primary Locations

1.  Usenet News Groups (non-commercial pornography)

2.  World Wide Web (commercial pornography)

Children’s ease of access to online pornography

1.  Intentional search: sex

2.  Unintentional toys: toys, dollhouse, "Little Women"

* Indecency is a residual category of speech. In order for pornography to be obscene, it must go through Due Process, otherwise it is treated as indecent. Therefore, with no indecency standard in cyberspace obscenity, including bestiality, bondage, and watersports, is as accessible to children as Playboy....no difference.